Parks or Premier, (both DNA)

OK,I'm torn between the Parks 38 and teh premier 35 at the moment. I'm gonna get one of them, I just wish i knew which one would be better, I'm used to a drifter if that helps at all.

Darin,

It depends on a few things. How tall are you, how much do you weigh for size of the board. What level of rider are you? What kind of tricks do you like to do? Answer those and I can probably help you out better.

I own a Premier 140 that I ride without the center fin, both my wife and brother in law ride the Parks. So I have ridden both extensively.

It depends on what you want. I ride an extremely loose style and do a lot of butter slides and flat slides and you just cant do those very well with the parks board. Parks has huge fins as well as molded rails that make it track extremely well and if you get it sideways you are going to smack the water hard where you can get away with it with the premier (assuming you ride it without the center fin like I do).

I also like the smooth pop from the premier and despite people telling me that the pop is insane with the parks, neither my brother, wife, or myself can get it very high (but I am sure that is us and not the board).

however, whenever I want to really work on something like riding switch for instance, I will ride the Parks.

They are both great boards.

Another thing - when you make your decision - look at Ebay - you'll pay about 30% less for a brand new board.

Have you given the TFD any consideration?

First off I'm about 5' 11" and weigh just under 160 pounds. i thought about the tfd, but I wanted 3 stage rocker. I'm a pretty experienced rider, but with my current board and boat, I've been having problems getting the pop I could get with a friend's premier. And since I'm used to the drifter with the outside fins, (and I ride at a pretty quicq pace where i like to get there now) I thought the parks would be a great fit for me, correct me if i'm wrong, I've riddent the premier, but not the parks. Thanks for the help.

I don't know, the TFD is a very fast board and is somewhat similar to the parks. I have only ridden a parks once, from what I hear it is quite a hard board to ride, it needs to be suited to your style, it seems to work good for some people and not so good for others. A pal of mine has a parks and he tried the premier, he is now going to sell his parks for one doesn't really like the parks.

I have both the Premier 140 DNA and the Parks 138 DNA. For me, the Premier is a much better fit, I ride it without the fin. I find the board predictable and stable. I got rid of the big fins the Parks came with and went to .8's. It's still too sticky for me, so I'll have to try without any fins next time. But I really don't care for it.

Darin,

being as large as you are I would choose either the 140 premier (2003) or the Parks 138. The 2004 premier might actually be a better fit for you b/c I understand it is quite a bit different from the 03 premier in that it tracks a lot better than the 03 premier (if you want an 03 premier you can always buy the new 04 Hyperlite Era - its the 03 premier with a new name). I have no idea why they did that.

Anyway, you also mentioned that you like to move quickly - the Parks hooks on a rail easily and holds it - its very fast and holds an edge like you wouldnt believe. maybe that will work for you. However, like I said before, I have not run into too many people that can get much of a pop from the Parks board.

Yeah, I've heard that the pop on the parks is hard to get used to, but when you hit it correctly it's amazing. but the premier keeps sounding better and better.

the parks is not that hard to ride,my cousin has one and im intermediate if that and hav no problems riding it just cuts better and is looser

but how hard is it to get consistent pop with the parks? I've heard it's very unpredictable unless you rail it up the wake every time, but if you don't do it perfect, the pop is tiny