Recently i’ve heard a great deal about quad shortboards replacing thrusters as the standard high performance equipment, even top guys such as nathan fletcher and dustin barca are charging them at pipe saying the hold a better line than thrusters ever have. Slater himself has been using them on the tour this year. Is this just a fad? Or are we on the brink of a revolution of surf equipment and performance?
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Recently i’ve heard a great deal about quad shortboards replacing thrusters as the standard high performance equipment, even top guys such as nathan fletcher and dustin barca are charging them at pipe saying the hold a better line than thrusters ever have. Slater himself has been using them on the tour this year. Is this just a fad? Or are we on the brink of a revolution of surf equipment and performance?
I have ben riding quads for the last five or six years. I say yes, and I have caught a lot of grief from my friends a few years back…LMAO…Now, I get compliments, and can I try your board. I’m a quad swallow tail person, but I get more orders for the “bat-tail” My fin placement is differnt from the stretch or industry standard (lemmings)…The two sets have about 4" between them. (Try it)…Positive traction twinny!
I don’t know about replacing the tri-fin, but the fad will evolve. The quad will evolve through this cycle…Good for surfing…It is another option.
mako
yes 90% hype , 10% merit …
100 % merit in the right conditions …
i went through a 2 year quad tangent about 10 years back …
now i seriously thought i had exhausted all possibilities , only one group of boards actually went better , bigger wave boards , but not super big boards , waves where length was a negative because of the square bottoms and suck , solid indo and solid north west oz , plus solid southwest oz , small boards that needed serious hold in juice …
i didnt rate any of the small to medium wave performance , there were moments of glory and moments of (what the hell went wrong then ?)
the thruster was reliable and predictable …
i think the big wave aspect is the real thing for sure, as too many guys claim the same thing about there biggerwave performance virtues …
there is stuff around now which is different to what combos i had tried in the past …
all the quads ive seen to date except 2 or 3 run some type of combo ive run in the past …
so its the all rounder that most crew are jumping on the bandwagon , crew are making copies of stuff that just doesnt work that well …
im eager to try a few of the untried combos im seeing , but definitely wont be releasing a quad for small to medium waves until its a proven thing …
dont know how many times ive seen companies jump on the latest design craze , only to regret it later because they released hundreds of duds , which keep tarnishing there reputations long after the boards have left the shop …
thoughts :::
the quad will never replace the thruster , it will become an alternative in some conditions depending on rider style and board combo … and be a better choice in other conditions …
but dont forget , even single fins are a better choice in some conditions …
regards
BERT
I went with the 5 fin setup because of a strong recommendation from Christian (cj3). He has also spent a lot of time in archiveland reading up on your build techniques, and he made a copy of you Magic Carpet with the 5 fin setup, and he says it goes really well. I believe its become his setup of choice. I plan on trying my longboard with the extra fins pretty soon, but I’m so happy with it in the current configuration that I feel it will be hard to improve upon.
I’m blown away by how many boards I’ve seen and rode with 4 fins on them lately.
Most of them worked fair to horrible- be careful and selective of what is out there.
I agree with Bert, 3 seasons ago I got my med-big wave quad pretty dialed-in.
The smaller wave quad has taken quite a while to refine and now it goes well
but really is not at the level of refinement of the HP thruster.
BTW,
let’s realize this is the 3rd mass incarnation of the design. We did them in the late-70’s
to early-80’s, then messed with them about ten years later, and now it’s back
again.
In contrast the single fin (shortboard) was around in the mass market the first time
for about 11 years.
The thruster is still going and has been around continuously for 26 years.
The problem is “everything works” and that’s also the beauty of it.
It might be easier to get a consensus on how much spice is the right amount
on your food…lol
Hey Bert,
the reason your 4 finners havent worked great is because there’s one key element missing…the 5th fin.
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Hey Bert,
the reason your 4 finners havent worked great is because there’s one key element missing…the 5th fin.
By “5th fin” do you refer to bottom shape? Vee in particular? I’ve read about Vee through the tail giving a quad a bit more centre fin feel and helping to overcome the tracking issues.
I’ve just had my 1st Five plug board made. it gives me both thruster and quad options to play around with and it has been an enlightening experience.
As Bert said, the bigger wave performance is a key feature. Hold in the face of steep, square waves. Small wave performance as a quad has not been quite worked out for me yet. This was somewhat of a contradiction in how it was “supposed” to perform in either form and conditions. I’m still getting it sorted for Fin size and option currently but my observations so far are…
Background first :-board dimensions 6’2" x 19,1/4" x 2,1/2" swallow tail. nose and tail are a little wider than usual as i’m 90kg and 5’7"ish tall (short stocky build)and i like a bit of volume in my rails so they’re boxy, bottom is single to double with some Vee thought the fin area.
The thrusters plugs are all 1/16th" forward of the shapers usual template. the Fins setout was devised using Bruce M’kees published formula for his M5 models.
http://www.mckeesurf.com/brucemckee/quattro.htm
I’ve found that the thruster setup is better in smaller waves (up to head high)as the quad seemed to track a bit too much. there was plenty of drive and was quite loose but changes in direction were slow to react. the thruster performs just like a thruster would. the slightly forward placement gives it more looseness with the M5 fcs fins I use than expected. usually i would run M3 fronts and an M5 centre fin for my thrusters.
In quad form I run M3 fronts and G1000 centres. this is ok for above head high although I’ve also used and old set of G3000 (plastic)fronts and It seemed looser and more forgiving than the newer, stiffer M3 fins. bucket loads of drive. top turns feel like your accelerating rather than stalling with this fin area and the change of direction seems to react more in tune as the distance around and between turns lenghtens on a bigger wave. Hold in the face is great. I’ve never been a successful Pigdogger in hollow Backhand waves but I’m glad to say my confidence with this aspect of my surfing is massively increased.
I’ve got another set of rear fins to try now…a pair of GX centres to see if I can tune the quad for smaller waves too.
cheers Roo.
sorry to highjack… nice board art #213 from the diverse catalouge. taken from an origional painting by dean coghill for flashpoint clothing. if i could post pics on the mac i would of the origonal painting and the susequent runs we did on tshirts and boards. followed on by the close to cloning by CULT clothing as a bag and ladies shirt print…
i love to see the renditions and influence my board art catalouge has created…
maybe the question should do quads work for me.
Hey Diverse people are looking up to you for style.
Here you go Roo…5 fins explained by the master himself
http://www.swaylocks.com/forum/gforum.cgi?post=333956;#333956
Yeah, sorry about that Dave, when I found that in your catalogue I printed off 2 copies, stuck one on the filing cabinet at work and took the other around to the sprayer and said “gimmie something like that” I didn’t think He’d copy it quite so…exact!!. That catalogue would have to be one of(if not) the biggest board art resources on the net. It was bad enough trying to come up with something myself when I found that I hit overload.
Every time I drive past your Tugan store I make myself promise to get one off you next.
Cheers, Roo.
P.s. I’m a fan of #205 too.
hey mate, dont apologize… i like to see the stuff out there. rip it off copy it all you want. it always markets for me anyway. and anything we put up on the web art catalouge is usually 1 year old already. the most up to date stuff is in the shop every week and gone again as soon as its seen by a couple of people.
the sprayer you use did a pretty good job of copying it too! i feel sorry for him if he had to cut the tape out by hand…
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the sprayer you use did a pretty good job of copying it too! i feel sorry for him if he had to cut the tape out by hand…
Ha,ha yeah, he reminds me every time I see him. I think he only charged me 120 bucks but spent the best part of a day doing it. I don’t think he’ll make that mistake twice.
haha, we charge $70 and takes but an hour… you got good value
cheers for the link. good to hear it from the horses mouth rather than 3rd, 4th,…200th hand. the title of the thread is kind of subjective tho’ and not so much as Hiropro…said " maybe the question should do quads work for me." but more so of the “Hype” surrounding them which I seem to have missed as I’m just an average punter who is a bit disconnected from the hype.
I was at the nssa contest at Lowers recently for 5 days and I spent a lot of time checking out the kids boards. Out of roughly 60 boards each day, there was not one quad. These kids could really surf on their thrusters , but weren’t too enthusiastic about quads.
Thats to be expected patrick. kids are under so much pressure to conform that no one dares try anything unconventional for fear of ridicule from their peers. I remember the pressure i felt to get onto a thruster and off my great little MR twinnie when i was a young teenager. I copped all sorts of flack for riding it and if only i’d kept it, i’d be riding it again.
I did some more research on my quaddie fin set up over the weekend, Tried a set of GX centres in the rear plugs with the M5 sides up front. Riding a hollow 3-4ft left and right beachbreak. The lefts were just a take off into pit and wait for the hole to close, the rights were a bit more user friendly round take off to practise my pig dogging but then a nice fast wall to bash before it got too fast. the GX’s really loosen the tail yet still provide adequate drive and hold in bottom turns and allow the tail to release off the top without too much effort. worked well in the barrel for holding a high line to avoid the pinching end sections…sometimes!!
I like this research thing…if only it paid the bills 
Cheers Roo.
…check out the thread I started called QRQ (Quads are Quick). Somewhere in that thread or pehaps another, I make mention of a week long swell at Rincon where Bob Krause and I experimented from making and surfing boards from 1 thru 10 fins…all during the same swell.
“Nothing is good nor bad, thinking merely makes it so” (Shakespeare).
Putting down quads indicates design ignorance. The difference between ignorance and stupidity is significant: ignorance is simply not knowing, stupidity is knowing better.
Any surfboard with a trailing fin (regardless of its position) has a leveraging effect between the fore and aft fins. The wider the spread, the more drawn the turn; this is fundamental. A myriad of dynamic variations spin off from there (foils used, cant, toe in, size, profile, fin material used, fin position relative to rail, center, or one another, etc.).
Surfboards are exciting to design because we can combine endless compound curves to achieve a desired effect. There are thousands of shapers and far less designers. There are relatively few designers that have made significant design contributions versus the self important, chest thumping blowhards that spend most their time and energy jockeying for space in the magazines.
More often than not, the magazines report on significant design ‘breakthroughs’ long after the fact, frequently distorting the original design intent and further distorting that intent with their own need to give it sex appeal and mass marketing potential. Often the true designer is replaced with a well known glory hog or someone that advertises in their rag. Surfboard design history as reported by the magazines is approximate at best, regardless of intention. This all comes from the ‘what sells newspapers’ school of thinking.
Quads are a pure design direction as valid as any tri fin combo out there. When Simon Anderson wanted a board with more drive he decided to play with adding fins to his single and join Brewer and others that were seeking something new. The Hundredth Monkey theory states that no single person on the planet is uniquely conceiving an idea without at least one other person toying with the same (or similar) idea.
The surfboard business has always been a monkey see, monkey do business. I do not expect to see this change within my lifetime.
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Hey Bert,the reason your 4 finners havent worked great is because there’s one key element missing…the 5th fin.
? It’s amazing how similar the refined quad/5 fin are to the S-5 fin system I played with in the mid to late eighties. I am so tempted to make a throw away board with the S-5 just for shitz & gritz. But if I remember correctly there were some substantial riding differences that was like putting drag slicks on a street rod. I have a fairly fresh semi-gun that would be perfect for them. I may just have to do this.
Back on topic.
I think people are just exploring a different performance aspect. It [the quad] works well, and maybe even better in certain situations for certain people now that it has reached a higher level of refinement, but replace the thruster? No. Not in my opinion.
Well I’m a bandwagon type guy!
I’m an average surfer, never rode thrusters that well coming from a logging background. I ride bonzers well enough though.
I owned a Greg Giffin 6’6" semi fish 5 fin, rode it for 6 months as a 5 fin and as a quad. For me it sucked, solid in the tube but couldn’t turn the bugger no matter what fin configuration.
Converted a 6 X 21 X 2 1/4 thruster(Matt Keane -Byron) to a quad using Robin Mairs hannelai quad setup(cutaway) and fin positioning. It rides amazingly well in small medium waves, I feel like I can do anything on it even popping an air - believe me thats an achievement!
I re-built it wider as a compsand with balsa cored epoxy fins as a quad and that steps it up to another level of performance in small medium waves.
For me, with the hanneli fins, quads work really well, I will be exploring them further on the compsand trip with the Hannelei setup.