Texas Longboarder

I’m pretty late to the game with this review, as the FSM has been out for a while. But I just got mine, so here goes…

A few weeks ago I had the opportunity to ride my friend Mike’s Comet FSM board, set up with Milehighskates.com Indy 215 Hybrids and Retro Freerides.  I kind of already knew I’d like the board, so when I took it out on Mike’s street, which is a nice downhill paved with super smooth asphalt, I wasn’t surprised that the board was great. Much like my Comet Pagan, but a bit shorter.

When the next month’s spending money rolled around, I didn’t hesitate to order that exact setup from Milehigh, with 83a Lemon Freerides.

As you’ll see if you click through to the description on the Comet website, this board is the result of massive collaboration with the readers/skaters of silverfishlongboarding.com. It is designed to be a fun downhill freeriding board. “Freeriding” being the “hip” name for riding down hills not in an effort to get the bottom fastest, but rather to have fun. The deck is symmetrical front and rear, with a pretty deep rocker and rad concave. I purchased the standard drop-through version of this board, and with the Indy/Core Hybrids, the thing sits low.

The shape of the board will allow you to run pretty much any wheels you want without worrying about wheelbite. To help further, Comet routes away a few plys on the bottom, effectively creating some pretty big wheel wells.

I’ve been riding mine for a few weeks now. While there are not really fast hills here, and I’ve not had a chance to travel to some faster ones, I can tell you that in the 15mph – 20mph speed range, this board is really a blast. It it very very nimble. Like all the Comet boards, the rocker/concave create a very dialed -in feeling. The feel is very much like the Comet Pagan, but even “more”, since the rocker extends through both ends of the symmetrical deck.

I have my trucks adjusted non-symmetrically. That is, I do use one end of the board as the “rear”, with that truck a bit tighter. I’m sure I’m missing out on the functionality of the deck. I expect that when I eventually go to a good hill and do some sliding, I will probably change this and try using the board bi-directionally. I can see how this would be a very cool way to do things. Right now I’m mainly enjoying the deep rocker and low profile, as well as the very comfortable and functional concave.

Here’s a little video of the FSM being ridden — just some stuff I shot today.

Tags: Comet FSM, freeriding, longboarding

This entry was posted on Monday, November 23rd, 2009 at 3:10 am and is filed under Downhill Freeriding, Reviews, Video. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.