The one I saw was in Temecula and then I saw the one you were talking about. Good board I’m sure, but a bit more than I wanted to spend. The one in Temecula actually looks nicer and is a little less, so I may see about going up there. Not a troll, thanks for all your help it really has helped. These are the two phillips I saw, but I like the one for $300 better. It looks cleaner.
Yeah… buy either of those Jim Phillips boards instead of that Amundson.
Seriously - just buy a fuckin’ board and get out there! No matter which one you get, you’ll be wanting a different one soon enough. It’s like that Lance Armstrong book…“It’s Not About the Bike.”
Seriously… I don’t know which end is up when it comes to this stuff. All the “surfboard shops” seem to carry t-shirts, sunglasses and flip flops but with rare exceptions, I don’t see boards being made in surfboard shops…
I was honestly under the impression that most boards are in fact made in factories with some sort of assembly line process. I think you’d be surprised if you visited one of the contract machine shaper places and the various glassing facilities. Many of the boards you’d identify as ‘hand made’ are in fact mass produced. The various steps are just done in different places.
I’ve seen vans and trailers stuffed with machine shapes that get finished (scrubbed) in someone’s garage or backyard shaping room before being delivered to “The Glasser.” While hanging out at a machine shaper’s place one time the answering machine kept utilizing ‘caller ID’ to identify this or that person’s call. The names being called out surprised me but I won’t repeat them here.
For me, the lines do indeed get blurry when it comes to ‘popouts’ vs ‘shop made.’
You’re over thinking it. My advice boils down to this: Buy the board you know how to fix, and go surf. The rest is academic, fodder for the pundits poseurs and trolls.