Brand Test - 2012 Amplid Snowboards
Last February I finally got a date in the diary to go riding with Peter Bauer of Amplid Snowboards. For those of you who don’t know of Peter, he’s a certified snowboard legend. From World Slalom Champion to AK veteran Peter has ridden it all; he’s even had a pro model at Burton, the PJ, which he shared with French carving extraordinaire Jean Nerva around 1990.
I arranged to meet Peter at his local resort Spitzingsee, a medium sized resort situated in Bavaria at the boarder of Germany and Austria. Spitzingsee is the resort where Peter spent his formative snowboarding years mastering his craft; and it shows, despite the small size and the sparse snow conditions Peter was like an excited kid, pointing out the best powder spots from the chairlift. Spitzingsee is Peter’s resort and there wasn’t one person on the mountain from the local jib kid to the rotund Berghütten owner that wasn’t pleased to see Herr Bauer. From the off it was destined to be a memorable day of snowboarding.
Having met Peter in the car park and collected my media pass (thanks Spitzingsee!) we picked up a 159 Paradigma and its lighter sibling the UNW8 and headed up the lift for some freshly groomed corduroy lines. Conditions were on the whole pretty good, fresh snow had been compacted by the Piste Bashers into firm corduroy perfect for charging down. The first two hours of the day were spent in Peter’s wake pointing down perfectly groomed red and blue runs; he might be in his forties but the man hauls ass. Between shots of Pear Schnapps and bowls of Fritatten Suppe I managed to test the Paradigma, UNW8, Hi-Def and Dopamine, here are my thoughts on the boards:
Amplid brand test video
Skip to the following times for specific boards:
Paradigma - 00:48 to 02:57
Dopamine - 02:57 to 04:44
HiDef - 04:45 to 06:02
UNW8 - 06:03 to 07:45
Paradigma - From my first turn I got on with Paradigma. Over the years the Paradigma has evolved into a very refined package, its latest tweak being a mellower Flatliner zero camber profile. I’ve ridden both the 10/11 cambered and 11/12 Flatliner versions of the Paradigma and although I love the cambered 10/11 version the move to Flatliner is positive. On the one hand the revised Paradigma feels extremely light, precise and lively, on the other it’s forgiving and more versatile than it ever has been. On choppier snow the Flatliner profile skips across the surface, buttering into switch and popping small spins off the side of the slope the Paradigma is less effort than you’d expect from a directional 159. Point some bumps or lock into a hard carve and like previous cambered models the board is cool, calm and collected. Watching the way Peter rides you can tell he’s not a man willing to make too many compromises to how well the Paradigma rails a carve, with his background in racing, feeling that kick from the board’s flex on exiting carves is obviously a design necessity and it shows, feedback from turns is still on the money.
Little else has changed from last year’s board; despite the move to zero camber the shape is identical which should raise a sigh of relief from long-standing Paradigma fans. If there’s one thing that has always be right about the Paradigma it is its slender waist, directional ever so slightly set-back shape and smooth, verging on mellow sidecut. Short to Long radius carves melt together and edge-to-edge response is synaptic. Riding switch the Paradigma is also extremely capable. This year the Paradigma keeps its 6600 Sintruded base, I haven’t worked out what the Sintruding process involves (if there even is one) but I can safely say that the Paradigma ran equally as nicely on the hard mid-winter snow at the top of the mountain as it did on the slightly slushy man made white-stuff at the bottom. The build quality is fantastic as you’d expect, coming from Austria’s Elan factory and the little touches like the holographic inlay, two-tone sidewalls and Germanic Bauhaus styled graphics ooze as much class as Peter’s pimped-out Audi. The fact that I hope to be riding a 159 Paradigma next season says it all, I really loved it.
UNW8 – The UNW8 is the leaner and meaner brother of the Paradigma. It’s easy to make comparisons between the UNW8 / Paradigma relationship and the Burton Custom and Custom X, 90% of snowboarders will get all of the performance they’ll ever need from the Paradigma but for a small minority the UNW8 is where it is at. First off the UNW8 is light, actually that’s an understatement it’s practically weightless. Hexo2 Nomex honey comb inserts at the nose and tail keep swing-weight down and the prepreg glass laminates keep the honey comb from filling up with resin and adding unwanted mass. Everything on the UNW8 is minimal, the tips taper and inserts are reduced from 20 to 16, so be sure to check that your stance width falls within the range.
Obviously the UNW8 is about performance, the flex is very firm verging on stiff and the camber is extremely aggressive. Carves on corduroy, particularly shorter radius carves need to be initiated with plenty of weight and pumping through the front foot and then boy, oh boy does the UNW8 grip. As you exit carves the power from the tail is pretty raw and on occasion I found my technique of lazily loading the tail at the end of a toe side carve caused it to skip out, on the UNW8 you need to be pumping through both feet in a turn to tame the beast. There’s plenty of pop for airs available for the strong legged and in the air the UNW8 paired with a set of Amplid Balance C2.0 bindings is practically feather-light. I felt a little less confident popping into switch on the UNW8 because it doesn’t feel forgiving like the good natured Paradigma; on number of occasions I felt the camber twitching as the contact points at the nose and tail ironed out the bumps in the piste, after a couple of switch turns my confidence returned.
The UNW8 is harder work to ride than the easy going Paradigma, it demands your concentration and the incredibly lightweight construction and lack of any substantial dampening mean given half a chance it will buck you like a rookie. On the flip-side that is precisely why advanced and expert riders will get so much from the UNW8, for carving faultless trenches up pipe walls and tweaking weightless grabs out of the coping there are few other boards as uncompromising on performance. I had a ball riding the UNW8 and I definitely wouldn’t want an experienced rider to rule it out because the precision feel of the UNW8 is truly unique and exceptional. At the end of the day, I just wasn’t good enough to get the best out of it.
Dopamine – 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.
HiDef- I rode the HiDef a couple of seasons ago so strapping into it this year, it felt pretty familiar from the off. Like the UNW8 the HiDef is a minimalist snowboard. Honeycomb inserts in the tips and between the bindings keep the HiDef feather-light and to cut weight down even further all of the laminates are Prepreg which means that the amount of epoxy used isn’t one drop too much to cover the fibres . The feel of the HiDef is precise, it isn’t a relaxing board to ride; the camber depth is substantial and really needs riding aggressively to flex it. With a centred stance, all of these weight saving features, a punchy camber and a lively sidecut depth the HiDef is really aimed at the high level kicker and pipe rider. The kind of rider that has been riding a firm board like the Burton Custom X or K2 Slayblade and wants something a little lighter but one hell of a lot more exotic. If edge hold, incredibly light swing-weight and pop are what you are after you’ve found a gem, but like last time I would advise against this board if you’re not a strong and confident rider. Although it was a little more forgiving than I remember, forgiveness certainly isn’t one of its forte’s, also if you’re an all-mountain rider, although this board kills corduroy the prominent camber , centred stance and short-ish kicks are going to need some experience guiding them to keep them from submarining on a big powder day.
Find out more about Amplid at www.amplid.com
Posted by Rich Ewbank in Features.
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