XTR

[casa_mugrienta]

Basically it boils down to it's a crapshoot when you get a new board, there is some variance in the production of all material goods.

While I agree that there is a variance in production of material goods, I would disagree it's a total crapshoot when you order a new board.

There seems to be a pattern with XTR boards coming out too chunky as well as issues with finish shaping likely due to the foam itself.

I had a very similar to experience to Muscles.

 

[daave]

Thanks for sharing your height! Yet another useless piece of information you’ve contributed to this thread. Yes the boards are the same file, which is what Pyzel said. Didn’t pass geometry/spatial relationships in elementary school?

 

[MrSteve]

Thanks for sharing your height! Yet another useless piece of information you’ve contributed to this thread. Yes the boards are the same file, which is what Pyzel said. Didn’t pass geometry/spatial relationships in elementary school?

You'd be pissed too if your 6-1 Ghost came in at 6-1.33. Throws everything off

 

[surfysurfy1476]

The Ghost is known for having a domed deck and low knifey rails.

And once you get to 6'5+ the rails arent all that knifey. How do you expect a 6'5" to hold 39.4 Liters and still have knifey rails? I have one from pyzel and posted pics, the rails are not knifey.

 

[racer1]

I've felt one of JJF's Ghosts at a friends house. It said 2.5 but those rails felt like 2 1/4 I rode in the 90s lol. Stringer felt 2.5 though.

 

[trifish]

Was talking with a buddy the other day who got a custom about a year back. He scrapped the wax off recently and found the top of his board delaminating pretty badly. First time i've heard anything inside my circle of friends that ride XTR's, counting myself. Seeing more of these postings popping up & hearing this is shitty. Like I 've mentioned before, I've purchased most of my customs through them over the past 10 years without any issues other than coloring being off on one. My Album will be finished soon from them for pickup & will see if my streak continues.

 

[sdsrfr]

purple boards pretending to be black or grey was the tip of the iceberg. who knew?

had some old school XTR boards. couple lasted forever, one had deck delams, but overall served their purpose. Yellow AF tho and swore never again w/o color.

was gonna get an xtr next bort but changed my mind due to them selling purple boards to someone who ordered grey/black.

amazing salesmanship and integrity. at least take away the option for the purple surprise.

 

[Muscles]

I've felt one of JJF's Ghosts at a friends house. It said 2.5 but those rails felt like 2 1/4 I rode in the 90s lol. Stringer felt 2.5 though.

This is why I don't understand how my board came out looking like it does.

 

[ehiunno]

@Muscles Did you get in touch with XTR? I know you bought the board a while ago and it sat waiting for proper waves, but I'm curious what they would say.

It's likely that the foam is hard to shape, but that isn't going to cause a board to come out half an inch thicker than it's supposed to be... that is squarely on whoever cut the blank (+everyone else that touched the board after and didn't notice).

FWIW I don't think this is an issue with the "rails" specifically. A 3.5" thick board is going to have fat rails, much fatter than a 3" thick one which will be a lot fatter than the 2.5", even if the file is the same.

I seriosly feel bad for everyone on here that has had issues. It sucks to spend so much money on a dud. On the other hand I'm not sure whether to feel bad for XTR for the bad press, given that it's hard to know often this happens. There are clearly lots of people on here who have had lots of boards from them with no issues, and this forum is a weird subset of the surfing community. There have been threads with major issues from other big makers, for example the massive Lost custom thread, a couple of weird R.s, etc. Is XTR substantially worse than anyone else? Hard to say, tbh.

 

[surfadelphia]

From what I can gather, the foam is hard to shape so shapes aren't being finished as well as their PU counterparts.

It's XPS so it should be easier to shape than EPS, right?

I've got an off menu XTR board I got used, no lams so no idea on the glassing aside from hd blue foam. Feels better than EPS and I enjoy the lack of urgency when it comes to little repairs.

 

[Muscles]

Is XTR substantially worse than anyone else? Hard to say, tbh.

Probably not. I've been through a lot of different customs and had some duds and some magic sticks. Hard to say if it is worth the effort of ordering a custom since you can't look at the board.

I do know that I would not have bought this board off the rack. lol.

 

[ehiunno]

For the curious, I measured the rails on my OTR 5'11" Ghost (2.5" thick) and my custom XTR 5'9.5" Shadow (2.375" thick). I kind of expected them to have a similar rail profile since the shadow has a less knifey rail but is 1/8" thinner. The rail profile looks very similar between the two.

I'm not sure if there is like a formal way to do this, I don't have a rail gauge. I measured the thickness of the rail 1.5" off the edge at the wide point of each board with calipers. Remarkably, I got the exact same measurement for both - 1 13/16"

That's a damn knifey rail for the ghost.

 

[Havoc]

I thought long and hard before posting. Believe me. My family owns a business so I considered not posting at all. I only posted because there seems to be a trend of XTR boards coming out way too thick and chunky across a lot of brands. And from my perspective, XTR is not interested in taking ownership of their issues in order to fix the problems.

This was by far the most expensive surfboard I ever purchased and I did so with a belief that I was paying for quality and durability. I spent nearly $1K with shipping and the board has sand throughs and is so thick that it looks like a mini-SUP. It definitely does not look or feel like a pro level board. My CI Fever is only 1 inch shorter and .25 inches thinner on paper but it is not even comparable when you place the boards next to each other. The Ghost is laughably thick next to it. Same goes for when I compare the Ghost to my CI proton that is 2.88. There should not be that much noticeable difference when comparing .12 - .25 inches.

From what I can gather, the foam is hard to shape so shapes aren't being finished as well as their PU counterparts. I've seen quite a bit of issues regarding XTR boards on this message board and it sucks that I looked past it thinking it wouldn't happen to me. What's sad is I believe in the technology. But, XTR's QA sucks and they seem to continually have issues.

I still can't understand how anyone could hold this board and think that it looks ok to send out the door to a customer.

Oh well. Life moves on. At the end of the day it is just a surfboard. Lesson learned. Sometimes you get duds when you order a custom.

someone also posted an xtr gremlin or st iirc?? that was super thicc and chunky, especially in the tail. too bad, xtr can make good boars. maybe growing pains due to the flood of orders? maybe they can't keep up with all the tomo twin fin orders from deforest so they need to cut some corners? dunno. i've had great boars from them over the years. the yellowing issue is the true bummer. i'd get a blue tint next so that it will slowly meld into green as the boar ages...

 

[MathDebater]

^ I think that was Aruka?

For what it is worth I've ordered two customs from XTR that both came out on the money (both ghosts). On the second on (slightly longer and thicker than the first) I asked to keep the same knifey rails of the first one, which they nailed. I've also had a bunch of used ones, all have been great minus yellowing.

Edit: wanted to add the first ghost was 2.5" and the second was 2.75" and they kept the rails nice a foiled

 

[surfysurfy1476]

For the curious, I measured the rails on my OTR 5'11" Ghost (2.5" thick) and my custom XTR 5'9.5" Shadow (2.375" thick). I kind of expected them to have a similar rail profile since the shadow has a less knifey rail but is 1/8" thinner. The rail profile looks very similar between the two.

I'm not sure if there is like a formal way to do this, I don't have a rail gauge. I measured the thickness of the rail 1.5" off the edge at the wide point of each board with calipers. Remarkably, I got the exact same measurement for both - 1 13/16"

That's a damn knifey rail for the ghost.

I ordered my 6'6 from xtr at 2-7/8 and it came out rather knifey.

 

[Mr J]

This is why I don't understand how my board came out looking like it does.

2.5 vs 3.0 is not that different. Look at .5 inches on a ruler it doesn't look like much.

How did .5 extra inches on the dims of my 6'5 result in rails that look like they belong on a 10'0 tanker?

the near 1/2" extra thickness you measure (extra 7/16") is actually very significant and would significantly affect the rails. However, you should NOT have got a board with that level of thickness error on stock dims.

Out of curiosity I had a look at the thickness 1.5" from rail on my 5' 7" toy step up with fairly bladey rails, its a tiny board and it came in at 1 5/8" compared to ehiunno's stock 5' 11" Ghost of 1 13/16 - my board just 3/16" thinner at the rails, so the stock Ghost is a bladey design. Ehiunno, my board is 2 3/16" thick, so for its size fairly thick, which means it has a domed deck.

I just resized my board in Shape3d with an extra 3/8" of thickness and it produced and extra 5/16" of thickness 1" from rail, not quite as much as the extra thickness.

As Ehiunno said it is not possible to finish shape an extra half inch of thickness, so that's not the error. It is stock dims so it can't be computer shaping adjustment stuff up - I suppose file mixup with some crazy custom is possible.

Muscles, because you feel that the extra rail volume is disproportionate to the extra thickness at stringer my guess is that is something I call "seam shift" - I expect there is a proper industry term for this error, but what I mean is that one side of the blank gets machined. Then it gets turned over and the other side machined - I have seen a very small amount of sideways shift because of a tiny alignment error when turning over. I suppose vertical alignment error would be possible too - GWS or Greg would know if this is possible.

 

[oeste858]

... this forum is a weird subset of the surfing community...

ain't that the truth

 

[MrSteve]

, all have been great minus yellowing.

Your new Disorder wont be yellowing

 

[wdavis78]

hey all - just wanted to give an update. i picked up my custom pyzel phantom today from XTR. i looked over the board for about 10 minutes while picking it up. shey left the room and i went over everything frm the rails to the contours. and to be honest - the board looks good. no sand throughs, or anything of concern appearance wise. i took my board to my friends house after and we measured and everything came spot on in terms of dimensions. he took his square and checked out the fin placements for me as well and nothing wrong there as well. i know there's some good and bad feedback of xtr in this post - and we can go ahead and put my experience in the good bucket. i havent rode it yet as its stormy today - but hopefully in the next couple days i can take it out and give you all some feedback. so far so good!

 

[Puffy]

@ehiunno - Not really sure how it came out so thick.

@oeste858 - I plan to email them and ask them to verify that it was at least cut with a stock 6'5 file. I can't figure out how it could come out so thick.

@surfysurfy1476 - I understand there is some thickness to a 3 inch board. I have never weighed less than 215 lbs during the last 15 years. So I've had my share of thick boards to float me. I at least have an idea of what thick performance boards look like. This board is ridiculously thicker and less foiled than a PU Ghost that I felt up. Your Ghost looks like what I would expect. This board does not look like that.

I can't be the only one that thinks the board looks incredibly odd. It doesn't look like any other Ghost that I've held in my hands.

Let me put it this way: Would anyone here walk into a shop and look at my stock 6'5" XTR Ghost and buy it?

EDIT: Look at how thick the nose and mid point of the orange Ghost is compared to the white one posted above.

I can vouch for this, my last xtr board came out extra thick as well, I'm starting to feel dumb for paying these guys.