Amplid Dopamine - 2012

Snowboard Review:

Within one season the Dopamine has rocketed to become Amplid’s best seller. Peter and company may have made themselves a name by putting together some of the highest performance all-mountain snowboards on the market but it is their affordably priced jib and park run-around that is paying the bills. The key to the Dopamine is its WDT Pollywood core a core consisting of an H-shaped Poplar …to which a resin and sawdust composite much like MDF is bonded to create the sidecut and tips. This core was developed through joint research conducted by Amplid and Elan.

The benefits of this new technology are three fold: Firstly the process uses 50% less energy than traditional core manufacture and makes use of waste material that would otherwise be discarded of. Secondly the WDT (Wood Derivative Technology) material has extremely high compressive strength, a property that traditional wood cores do not have so for stomping flat landings and airing onto all types of street furniture it will really help increase the lifetime of the board. Lastly, the WDT core has a truly unique feel; the pop is lively but the board also feel incredibly damp, it blasts through chuncky tracked-out powder and touches-down softly on boxes and rails.

I’d definitely say that the couple of hours I spent on the Dopamine were more focused on railing carves and hammering groomers rather than lapping the park which truly shows the versatility of this board, it will really suite those riders that want a park board that will also deliver the goods when you want to do blast some runs or huck into some powder. The core is certainly one of the contributing elements to this all-mountain versatility, but the flex pattern of the Dopamine is also key. The Dopamine’s Jib Rocker profile is flat between the bindings and rockered in the tips, I usually expect boards with this profile to have a firmer flex between the bindings and super soft buttery/smeary tips… just think of the K2 World Wide Weapon. The Dopamine is different, the tips actually have a good amount of resistance, you can land on them pretty heavy and they won’t wash-out so they don’t flap around when you’re cruising. Instead the majority of the Dopamine’s flex comes from between the bindings as you would expect from a jib specific cambered board. This flex pattern means butters and presses can be properly tweaked-out, but you’ve still got pop and stability in the tips. As far as the base goes, it might be extruded but I had no issues with speed at all and I was impressed by its durability, after Peter lead us down a rocky chute with a dusting of cover, the Dopamine barely had a scratch.

Posted by Rich Ewbank in • Amplid