Today Martin Potter denounced the S-Core

General Discussion
1

Today, while commentating the Boost Mobile Pro at Trestles, Martin Potter (former world champ from South Africa) was asked what he thought of the S-Core. He said, “I’m off them.” He then went on to say that he like foam and glass with glass-on fins and finished by saying, “Get back to your roots.”

I agree. I mean, the last time surfboards with drain plugs were taken seriously was when Tom Blake was in his prime.

Plus, they are 700-800 bucks, and have a sign on them (at Surfride) that say, “don’t squeeze.”

It reminds me of the time my mom tried to impress some relatives from Utah by taking them out to a fancy French restaurant. The “salad” was litterally two pieces of lettuce with a couple fancy doodads on top, and the “dinner” was slighty more than that. We left very hungry and embarrased. We paid more and got less.

But, hey, someone buys Am-way, so, what the heck. By an S-Core.

And as far as fins are concerened. I have been surfing for 25 years. I don’t give a rip what kind of fins I have. I just want a board that works, and then I keep it until it falls apart. If it doesn’t work, I’m not going to go spend fifty bucks on a new set of fins only to find out it still doesn’t work. Starting with my last board, I’m going glasson from now on.

2

Ida thunk you wuld have made that decision years ago, about the time the whole concept of hollow technology was introduced.

We can choose to participate in the R&D of those concepts, and pay with our own money, but Ida thunk…

3

you guys wont mind.

~ The real thing.

768×576 69.2 KB

4

Where’s JLW? He needs to look at those templates!

And I have the same red handled saw!

5

You guys won’t mind, ‘the real thing’ !

Points for you to consider:

  1. A vent is not necessarily a ‘drain plug’

  2. Surfboards do not have to be ‘taken seriously’ to be functional

  3. Tom Blake era boards are currently being revamped and enjoyed by those who like them.

  4. Your buying behaviour may be interesting, but is perhaps not as interesting to others as it is to yourself.

PS Nice looking boards, KneeloRob!

6

I posted those pics with a link and not online because a forum member asked to see my boards.

Hence the ‘you guys wont mind’.

Moreover, there was a link not an inline picture.

What are you the King of Unsolicited Left Handed Compliments

also.

  1. Your buying behaviour may be interesting, but is perhaps not as >interesting to others as it is to yourself.

PS Nice looking boards, KneeloRob!

7

hey kneelorob!!!

i liked that orange one …ive got a small wave groveller that more closely resembles a kneeboard ,i love it , but would love to squeeze a bit more range out of it ,

you blended those flyers nicely , so the tail is tight enough to get a touch more bite but still keep the overall small wave theme…

the s core , well ,

a guy ive been dealing with in business since the late eighties , one of the only guys to still sell my boards…

when a customer came into his shop and was confronted by my boards and expressed interest ,

his first response was to get a new board out of the rack , put it on the ground deck down , then proceed to jump up and down on it like a trampoline …

i used to have a board which i purposely asked customers to try and dent by any means possible , kicking ,kneeing,punching,the old fashioned squeeze, no one could do it for at least 5 years …

one day 2 guys come in, i do the usual and ask them to have a go at this board , the first guy , then the second , the second guy had another few goes and actually dented it and punctured the skin by slamming his knee into the bottom …

i was stunned , stood there with my mouth open …

his mate leans over and says" hes a black belt , you should see what he does to concrete"…

i have a friend whos an engineer , he said about 5 years ago the crew from salomon came to him with some machine requests , they gave him a rough outline of there business plans ,

his first response was “what are you wasting your time for , just go see bert hes been doing it for years” …

in the last few years ive had at least 15 people , from retailers , other board builders , ex team riders ,material wholesalers , sales reps , all of whom deal with salomon ,

all those people have told me , that they told salomon to come see me and all there problems would be solved , and that what they were doing was nothing new …

what they were thinking when they put together there original r&d team is there business ,i have heard a few of there reasonings from crew in the circle , to me it seemed to have nothing to do with building a good product from scratch…

but more to do with blowing there trumpet about the millions going into r&d and how much they are supporting the industry …it was more about generating media interest in something new , rather than supporting a concept that was already in place, which was a proven formula…

im not going to belittle there efforts …without a doubt a lot has been learnt by all the people involved…

my mate who is the engineer , said " right from the begining it didnt look promising coz they were using people with very little composites experience and even less with regards to composites in surfboards"

plus there whole r&d shaping team were all standard p/e p/u board builders…

we were having a conversation just recently he said “im glad i got out of the composites business , to much hype , not enough science”

these days he just builds high tech 5 axis profilers and milling machines…

i question the inteligence of the people with the money…

if your going to put something together on that scale and spend that amount of resources,

youd think you would get the best people for the job…

i know quite a few crew in there marketing and sales areas …they are very capable people , seems the boys in the tech department have let the team down …

crunchie!!! change the colour of your day…

regards

BERT

8

Regarding hollow boards and vents: One doesn’t need to go back quite as far as Blake. According to his recent letter to a surf magazine, Karl Pope made nearly 9,762 W.A.V.E. boards in the early 70s here in the USA. They were molded boards whose shapes were designed by Brewer and Gordon and Morey and had a vent/drain plug called “the gill”. Apparently they could be very high performance - Purpus surfed his 6’8" Brewer hollow board in pro contests from '72-74.

9

Boards with vents are also made by Bert Burger, Paul Jensen, Tom Wegener, Grant Hicks, and many others. They are probably all too much fun to ride to be taken ‘seriously’.

10

…Abe froman, M Potter is not from South Africa, is from UK then he lives in Australia…

11

date of birth.: 10/28/65

   years rated on tour: retired

   highest asp rating: 1 (1989)

place of birth: south africa

   current residence: france 

   height: 5’6

   weight: 160

   stance: regular 

   sponsors: gotcha
12

…well, all the 80s stupid magazines wrote that he is from UK and in the firsts championships he competed for UK, then compete for Australia…

13

The reason Pottz moved to the UK was that the Americans had begun to boycott South Africa, led by Tom Curren. Martin Potter, not wanting to be considered a racist pig, moved out of there. He changed his citizenship to UK.

Martin Potter hit fame early at age fifteen by winning the Gunston 500 in, of course, South Africa. He then went on to rip for years and year before finally nailing the world championship.

He was one of the pioneers of the arial, along with many others. He was also famous for BASHING the lip.

14

In my own view, and as far as europe is concerned, Salomon went into the blank business (wetsuits also) in order to build itself the surfing image it needs to enter the surfwear market. The true strategic objective is the surfwear market, the actual market of Quicksiler, Billabong and Rip Curl.

15

yep pierre , your totally right …

thats where media hype in a new developing product with other high profile shapers had way more ability to catch peoples attention ,

its all more marketing for a higher purpose than actually building better boards …

imagine how boring the media would have been if salomon had actually just brought existing technology???

thats why i say there marketing and sales direction is sound , but if they had good r&d and tech crew , then they would have had an unstopable package …

as i look back now from an outsiders perspective , they could have got existing tech …and just repackaged it as the latest breakthrough…giving people the impression that developments were being made on a regular basis …

personally i feel even if they didnt pursue new tech , with the budget they actually had , they coulda just made normal boards and painted all of them blue , that way they wouldnt have put anyone off side ,and been more readily accepted into the whole market …

now to achieve market presence they are already are on the back foot in regards to the surfboard industry , which in most cases the surfboard industry itself has been the starting point for many other accessorie labels ,

with so many key industry people being tied back to surfboard labels , they find themselves in a hostile enviroment…

open for criticism …

i think to be fair any criticism that comes from any conventional board builders could be viewed with a certain suspicion…

the industry already feels threatened by emerging tech …

is martin potter aligned with any board labels ???

if he is , then how valid would his critique be ???

having a crystal ball would be an invalueable tool …

im not against everything salomon has done …

so far the biggest benifit for me , now people dont have any problem with paying the price i ask for my boards…

i had a guy who came in a few months back , said he checked out some salomons in the shop , they still had thumb dents in them and they wanted 1395.00 for them …

he had no problem waiting the 9 months and paying 950.00 for a board you could jump up and down on,

what it does for me now is give me the ability to raise my price next to theres and still have people swing my way coz there still getting better value …

for that i am most grateful to salomon …

they can make money out of clothes and i can make a good living out of boards…

regards

BERT

16

…hey Bert, you are really right…, but all these Solomon merchandise is only that, business…nothing, to do with surfboards…

17

I just got one. I actually like it. I really like how much feel I get with it.

In the past I worked in the snowboard industry as a creative product developer. I worked for the largest OEM manufacturer of snowboards in the world, in which we built some Salomon boards. As far as marketing schemes and such, consider this; Imagine a large segment of the surfboards around were made by 3-4 shapers but with different names?? Marketing has barely touched surfing in a hard goods sense. Snowboarding is rotten with it-

I know this. Salomon is in fact a very technical driven company. They have an R&D facility in Annecy france and another in Anget(?). They work on alot of crazy stuff there as I have been told. Fabrics, Hiking Boots, “S-Core” etc… It is like a skunkworks deal. I know because a girlfriend went to work there-

Salomon was just bought from Adidas, by the Amer Group of Finland, who owns Atomic which is Salomon’s main competitor… Salomon is a ski company first, and has 2 clothing brands, Snowboard division and off in the dark closet of the building the S-Core project… truthfully whether it is marketing or not I think it is nothing but good that they developed it. More stimulus for discussion and development of surfboard design-

Now with new ownership who knows how they see all the parts of Salomon-

To those who don’t like S-Core, you might be stoked as it could disappear. Or conversely might be developed and makes an impact.

As for me I think progression is good. Nothing will replace a good poly board but I am certainly not tripping on exploring what is becoming more readily available to us surfing public. I own an XTR, S-Core, and Hollow Carbon(epoxy) fish, and they all provide with something positive- It has added a different perspective to my equipment.

Same with fins… My job affords me a chance to ‘test’ all these things out and I find myself using some of the stuff with no doubt-

Being a little bigger then avg (200lb, 6’2") so these new builds provide me with some benefit as I find the weight and better float a good benefit.

To my suprise, I have found my S-Core a super good board… I have surfed on it a handful of times and see they can get affected pretty easy, pressure dings.

I enjoy the forum I appreciate the resource-

18

Donnie,

One of my favourite things about Sways is reading peoples impressions of different designs. B good if you could post somes pics and dimensions of your s-core (the others sound pretty interesting to) Interesting that Adidas sold Salomon - it was my impression that Adidas were behind Salomon’s push into beach wear and hence the s-core. What kind of waves do surf most often?

19

this time of the year the salmon swim uup stream to spawn and die

there’s a broken McTavish surph teck in my yard with the price tag adhesive still in place on the deck.

New Improved!..?..

old pitch

old saaw

berts workin’ hard

the world capital of alternative credibility/integrity,Kudos

the bear eats so much decomposing salmon it puts 'im to sleep

drain plugs are the solution to constructions that are designed with a breach feature.

the simple surf board is a glory to behold

the tricky construction one upsmanship will

consume itself and hibernate in favor of a simple solution

that will be so refreshing ,sombody will pick it up a n d

go surfin an have …fun…remember?

… ambrose…

the drain plug in my head

only operates

when I drop into a wave

with nobody on it

multinational corperations dont surf

God bless Velzy

put a drain plug in a Quigg hollow balsa 22’ 14# board in the 50’s

appropriate application of tech-knowlege

Quigg aint a kook ,Velzy aint a kook

all the rest of us are by comparison.

lets go surfin and learn sumpthin’

20
Quote:
Donnie,

One of my favourite things about Sways is reading peoples impressions of different designs. B good if you could post somes pics and dimensions of your s-core (the others sound pretty interesting to) Interesting that Adidas sold Salomon - it was my impression that Adidas were behind Salomon’s push into beach wear and hence the s-core. What kind of waves do surf most often?

S-Core Specs-

Lost Speed Demon II Template

6’4" 19.50, 2.50

Future Fins, Vectors 3/2 Tech foils, Hatchet Fin rear

Lost Carbon (Aviso)

Round Nosed Fish Template

5’10 20.5, 2 3/8

FCS, Future Vector Foils (with FCS Plugs), GS trailer fin

XTR-

Lost Speed Demon Template

6’3" 19.75, 2.50

Future Fins System, same as S-Core

I have posted pics on the surfermag design forum.

My only digi cam is my phone (for now), I anticipate a new cam soon

Heres a pic of the S core

Thanks for the interest-

D