I was at Cuttlefishs place and checked out that zap and his other boards 2 days ago, nice board for sure, and I had a simon energy early thruster and actually have a template from it so I know both boards reasonably well, definitely some similarities but similarities betwee alot of designs IMO...I am not criticising the design, actually quite intrigued by it, doubt its user friendliness but as a yet to ride surfer, cant have an opinion really, but I will ride one when I get the chance, maybe even cuttlefish and I can take our quivers to the beach in near future and have a session of testing out our very diverse bunch of fun machines.....once I have ridden one, then I'll know alot more......
Mark,
Looking forward to that.
My quiver looks like a bloody retro garage sale at the moment Nuke.
I’d say the shared element of my boards is glide achieved through width and…
Whether it’s glide for the paddle in or glide through the dead spots of a wave all my boards have width in strategic positions which make them feel good to me.
Safe to say that glide through additional planing area is what most surfers increasing in years start to look for to give them time to react while riding the wave.
Had a few years of riding mid lengths and also longboards of various descriptions due to shoulder pain, lately though…
The intruiging thing has been searching out boards in shorter lengths (as opposed to longboards where glide is a given) which have the planing area but still a certain amount of manouvreability on the wave face.
[quote="$1"]
Mark,
Looking forward to that.
My quiver looks like a bloody retro garage sale at the moment Nuke.
I'd say the shared element of my boards is glide achieved through width and...
Whether it's glide for the paddle in or glide through the dead spots of a wave all my boards have width in strategic positions which make them feel good to me.
Safe to say that glide through additional planing area is what most surfers increasing in years start to look for to give them time to react while riding the wave.
Had a few years of riding mid lengths and also longboards of various descriptions due to shoulder pain, lately though...
The intruiging thing has been searching out boards in shorter lengths (as opposed to longboards where glide is a given) which have the planing area but still a certain amount of manouvreability on the wave face.
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Im younger than you by a few years, but this is almost exactly where im at mate!!. Love the glide of wider boards, but like short too. Will never not have a midlength though.
[quote="$1"]
I was at Cuttlefishs place and checked out that zap and his other boards 2 days ago, nice board for sure, and I had a simon energy early thruster and actually have a template from it so I know both boards reasonably well, definitely some similarities but similarities betwee alot of designs IMO...I am not criticising the design, actually quite intrigued by it, doubt its user friendliness but as a yet to ride surfer, cant have an opinion really, but I will ride one when I get the chance, maybe even cuttlefish and I can take our quivers to the beach in near future and have a session of testing out our very diverse bunch of fun machines.....once I have ridden one, then I'll know alot more......
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Would love to get a hold of an old Energy thruster by Simon. I don't think they were the same, only that they both used the similar plan shape. Wide rears for performance... Pig, Double ender, Pig fish, Egg, Zap, Thruster, Nugget etc....and now...all over again except maybe some new shaper will take one and do his thing and create another feel.
It's a good time to be a board builder and a surfer
Here’s my latest thoughts on the zap that I posted on magic seaweed…
<div class="content">Ok, McCoy fans and interested lurkers here's my latest impressions on my Lazor zap.
Second surf on it this morning in 2-2&1/2’ smooth, peaky, low tide Maroochydore beach breaks.
I can safely say I now have the zap figured out.
Had some fun lefts and rights and it performed well on both forehand and backhand.
Handled some decently steeper drops.
The lazor zap strikes me as a chubbier version of a Firewire dominator.
Actually the Firewire is like a finer (foil wise) version of the zap because the zap came first by a long shot.
Because
a Firewire is an epoxy/bamboo composite it reacts much quicker than a
zap with its Pu construction with glassing to last.
The zap should suit older surfers who aren’t looking for instant reaction that a foiled out shortboard gives.
The
board will draw very smooth lines with solid bottom turns and happy to
snap off the top both forehand and backhand and the key is to surf it
smoothly with weight centred and emphasis on the back foot.
I found myself keeping my back leg bent a little to help provide leverage and subtlety in my turns which worked very well.
I
only blew one wave where I popped up with my weight too far forward and
the belly in the nose made the board actually wobble side to side. My
bad.
Enjoyed riding it backhand with the backhand snaps being easy to do. Not a tail slide but a proper backhand reo.
I
had one wave where I figured it had almost died and spotted a little
lump ahead to hit. Almost wasn’t going to bother trying to cover the
dead spot in the wave to get to it but thought “why not have a go?” and
it did it easily to provide one more little slash.
How’s it go compared to a Surftech MR 1982 6’2" twin fin?
I’d
say if you want to surf a faster reacting board that allows you to do
get around a wave face with less reaction time up your sleeve then the
MR will do that.
The McCoy offers a very stable platform with its
combination of width and thickness albeit at the price of reaction time
offered by more foiled out boards.
At 47 years old I’m very happy
with how it goes. If I was 10 years younger I’d be opting for something
like a Firewire dominator.
So the McCoy lazor zap works rather well and I’m happy to have gelled with it so quickly.
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I have been riding one of geoffs new lazor zaps for the last 2 months its 6'x21"x3" with a 171/2" tail, bit of an impulse buy just saw it and had to have one. One of those boards i wish i had first time around when i was 16 but hell it looked so fun, and i just wanted it for small summer days. After alot of riding as an all round board it is probably a bit small and a 6'3" maybe better, but in small waves with a little push it definitely loves to zap eighties style. Fun summer ahead.
I was riding a lazor zap back when I was 18 and the 09 model I have now is feeling a lot better.
The single fin zap I had would spin out when trying to gouge cutbacks.
Even Cheyne said the design was “crewd” back then.
Can I get a few templates of those boards next visit Cuttlefish ? I'll call around with afew coldies and trave a few curves....
also have some ideas to do a refined version of the zap...and if I can have a few waves on yours, then I can make some changes to it, really put my spin on it...might be a fun board to try and see the possibilities......the mind is already thinking, lighter, thinner, concaves, maybe epoxy, maybe extra fin plugs to try optional set ups.....tick tick tick.....
Here is a foiled out version a mate of mine made himself…His first ever shaped board start-to-finish. 5’2" x 21" x 2 1/2" It actually surfs bloody well, from surfing it in small mushburger waves I have found that there are real merits to wide planing area in the tail regardless of overall volume. This board is totally undervolumed for me, but it was still surfable in knee to waist high mushy waves, and skated on top of the wave really nicely. He set it up as a thruster the silly man…but ah well. He called it “The Squot”
Like you say Pridmore, the zap is crying out to be played around with. If they had chine rails and (lots) fin options you could really taylor the board to suit certain conditions. Glassed in fins get on my nerves for these types of boards , and you cant tell anyway unless your a bit delusional. Ive had the centre fin slide to the back in my single fin McCoy and didn't notice anything different. If it had been like that when I took the board out I would have imagined my board was really stiff. Perfectionist ideals lose a bit in the practise.
The zap is essentially a good design.
Just that we better not hold our breath waiting for tweaks from Geoff.
Like I mentioned the Firewire dominator shows its geneaology pretty clearly and it’s may be Firewire’s best selling board model. They’ve now done the Spitfire which helps lift the performance another notch in better waves.
These two both have 5 fin options which could be what a number of McCoy devotees have been quietly wishing Geoff would do for a long time and Solo has supplied in the US.
Now Lost have done their own take and the zap influence is acknowledged in their board description…
http://www.lostenterprises.com/surfboards/details/the-blunt
Still I’m pretty happy with how the board went yesterday and looking forward to riding it more.
I’m sure Mark (Pridmore) will be able to give the Aussie contingent a fresh take on the zap template once he gets a hold of mine.
Hopefully fans of McCoys will be open minded enough to give it a go.
Mark does a great job of happily supplying demo boards to all willing to try them which is much appreciated by those with inquiring minds.
[quote="$1"]
The zap is essentially a good design.
Just that we better not hold our breath waiting for tweaks from Geoff.
Like I mentioned the Firewire dominator shows its geneaology pretty clearly and it's may be Firewire's best selling board model. They've now done the Spitfire which helps lift the performance another notch in better waves.
These two both have 5 fin options which could be what a number of McCoy devotees have been quietly wishing Geoff would do for a long time and Solo has supplied in the US.
Now Lost have done their own take and the zap influence is acknowledged in their board description....
http://www.lostenterprises.com/surfboards/details/the-blunt
Still I'm pretty happy with how the board went yesterday and looking forward to riding it more.
I'm sure Mark (Pridmore) will be able to give the Aussie contingent a fresh take on the zap template once he gets a hold of mine.
Hopefully fans of McCoys will be open minded enough to give it a go.
Mark does a great job of happily supplying demo boards to all willing to try them which is much appreciated by those with inquiring minds.
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Roger did one for us that had a bit of a tucked under edge and some release right off the tip of the tail to go with the belly in the rest of the board. Really tweaked the performance for the guy who bought it. On them being thin and with concaves...they tried that back in the day and it was too unstable with concaves and thin kind of defeats the purpose of riding on top of the water me thinks. I think the idea that thin is better is just part of the hype of the last two generations of surfers following the tour. I have rarely seen an average surfer that looks stylish on a really thin board. I think keeping it thick, but going shorter might work better. Doc did a board called the " Tail " that he called the Zap for 2000 when he came out with it. Like I said...I still the the original plan shape before they went super wide in the tail was good for your average surfer and didn't look much different than what we would just call a wide shorty today. Those did have that McCoy continual thickness from nose to tail though.
First post back here in a while. I've recently added a 6'4 x 20.5 x 3 Zap thruster (it says 6'2 and was supposed to be 6'2 but bit of a mixup - she's a 6'4) and from the few surfs on it I'm super happy. I haven't done turns like this thing can ... ever. Has more to do with my ability (or lack thereof) but the volume and neutrality of the board makes it McCoy 101 in user-friendliness and the plan and tail shape allows me to do turns I wish I'd been doing for years. It also glides through deadspots. It duckdives pretty well and the one drawback is that you have to do a bit of work to get it where you want it as cuttle says above.
I'm with solo. If you go trying to tweak the formula, I reckon you'll take a lifetime just getting it as far as Geoff has. Concave, harder rails, less width, less thickness, more nose, more rocker, less rocker. All of those things are available in another board in a rack somewhere.
Since I've been on McCoys I've also tried several other brand name boards, and although I liked things about them, there was always something I hated. Number 1 being stability due to lack of weight and volume and probably the concaves.
The reason these work and the reason blokes like me love them is they work as a package. And ask yourself, over McCoy's career you don't reckon he's tried them all?
That said, Pridmore I'll be in touch to have a look at your gear (I'm at Warana) sounds like you have your head wrapped around this stuff.
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You may well be right Kookster, but I think Geoff can only see his 'babies' as perfect. It seems that he always perfects his new boards to behave the same as his old ones which sort of defeats the purpose really of making the new board.
The thick rail all the way to the tail dictates that 'turning on top of the water' feeling which suits the single fin better than the thruster, which is why you automatically think 'quad fin'! Its also why I think chine rails, but I only surf them and not make them, so what do I know ?
I use my McCoy's as longboard replacement therapy and maybe expect more from them than they can deliver, but someone coming off a shortboard would probably say, what the f#ck is wrong with this thing ?
I hear ya Mono.
To be honest I don't have any idea how any of the Zap works at all when looking at it - I just know that I have never busted the fins out of the water on a 2-footer backside snap - but I did the other day, nor done a frontside carve deadset right on the extreme top of the wave on a 5-footer like I have with this behemoth. My surfing has improved a lot since I started the McCoy journey, and I knew this board would challenge me and hopefully step up a level, but I just can't wrap my head around why something so utterly ugly and fat can give me better performance than the dozen other perfromance boards I've owned. Maybe the weight of the thing slowing the whole song and dance down to a level I can match with my feet. f'k knows but I like it
That’s what I reckon too Glenn…the whole design package which includes thickness, subsequent buoyancy and stability through weight and width gives the surfer time to react and therein lies some of the key elements in McCoys that appeal to Geoff’s target audience.
I think there is some real possibilities here and I am enthusiastic to try some variations, I understand that the volume and the neutral feeling is what some people love but neutral is not a way I like my shapes to feel, I enjoy some volume as much as the next bloke but I like a responsive board with some twang about it, like its alive and ready for business, so I am thinking of reducing the volume a little, this is for me to ride so it'll be a real tester, not trying to replicate Geoffs work at all, all shapes will be duely creditted to be influenced by Geoff, not trying to ride on the back of his work, more trying to take it to another level, so many hybrid variations of designs out there atm and I want to see where I can take my variations...but in saying all that, I still havent ridden one, so I am jumping the gun here, but thats just my shapers enthusiasm for all things alternative and still FUNctional.....and I just may have a willing test pilot too hey Cuttlefish ???....mine will have fin plugs and plenty of options, quad being one of them....single fin will not be one of them....weight will be extremely light, chines are likely, FUN is a very high possibility.....
Always love reading the McCoy posts, here is an interview with Geoff posted a couple of days ago in Oz. Whether you agree with Geoff or not it's a nice read. He's an interesting guy, enjoy: http://www.swellnet.com.au/news/984-free-your-mind-interview-with-geoff-mccoy
Kookster & Cuttlefish: I am looking forward to reading more Zap (and Zot???) reviews once we get out of this onshore rut here on the East Coast, keep up the good work!
The Zot is intriguing but I would like a test drive before committing to another McCoy.
From the interview " I believe the starting point was the nine foot double-ended longboard.
You go from there, up and down in length. I thought about it and I went,
I know they are great, but I wonder what would happen if I take the
final step and, instead of making it 15 x 15 inch nose and tail, I made
it 14 inch and 16 inch. So I did and that was the first Nugget. It’s
natural, it just works."
Just suddenly realized yesterday, friend of mine from high school (Randy Reusch) tumbled to this idea on his own in early 70’s in San Diego (lives in Aus now, Morwell I think. Went for a visit, ended up getting married and staying.). Made quite a number of fat, softly covex bottomed, round railed, wide boards. One of my favorite rides ever was a 7 footer he made for someone else. He’s sturdy and over 6 ft tall, made himself a 9 footer that he absolutely ripped DOH Black’s on and danced around nose riding it in 2-3 foot beach break. Not same as McCoy’s I am quite sure but the basic idea, double ender, rounded rails, soft dome under tail and belly up front… Funny, somehow it didn’t stick in my mind though, lost track of the whole concept over the years and here it is, back up. No idea what he is riding these days.
[quote="$1"]
Always love reading the McCoy posts, here is an interview with Geoff posted a couple of days ago in Oz. Whether you agree with Geoff or not it's a nice read. He's an interesting guy, enjoy: http://www.swellnet.com.au/news/984-free-your-mind-interview-with-geoff-mccoy
Kookster & Cuttlefish: I am looking forward to reading more Zap (and Zot???) reviews once we get out of this onshore rut here on the East Coast, keep up the good work!
The Zot is intriguing but I would like a test drive before committing to another McCoy.
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There is no denying the Aussie influence on what we know as performance surfing.