by Mac » Sat Jan 28, 2012 7:15 pm
Okay, time to update this thread. It's taken me a while to get out and demo some of this stuff, mainly because the conditions have been so marginal that the shops have been reluctent to let their gear out the door. Have been to a few demos, but they never seem to have what you're looking for in the size you want.
Anyway, got to try the new Supershape Magnum last weekend. Conditions were a couple of inches of fluff from the day before on top of a very firm base. At 6'1" and 210 lbs, I would typically grab a 177. Unfortunately, all they had was a 170, so I decided to give that a go. And I'm glad I did. This new version is nothing like the older pre-KERS model that I owned. Everthing that I didn't like about the older version has been addressed with the new model. Where the old pair I had didn't track very well, had a very soft tip and overall flex, and were lacking grip on truly hard snow, the new ones were just the opposite. Noticably stiffer overall, yet with an even progressive flex. No issues with stability, no tip wander, just pulled you into the turn with very little effort. And oh so smooth underfoot, a real Cadillac ride. And these things were a total ice skate. Skied some typical New England frozen rock hard scraped off bumps in total control, and the skis didn't buck or kick, very well behaved. That smooth, even flex I mentioned before really came into play here. Versatile turn shape, easy to change the radius mid stride. And the ski was very agreeable whether you wanted to push it or whether you just wanted to work on slow speed technique drills. I must admit that I didn't want to give these back at the end of the day. I went away wanting a pair. Badly.
Skied the SS Titan 177 a week later. Conditions were snow the day before changing to rain then freezing overnight, so we're talking frozen washboard first thing in the morning. The kind of snow that kills your feet after the first run. Lots of piled up crud on the sides of the trails, with snowmaking going on, so there was a variety of conditions depending on where you went.
I'm going to reserve judgement on the Titan for now, as I suspect that there was a tune issue going on here. First run of the day was on a blue-ish green buffed out frozen groomer, just the type that you figure the Titan should excell at. And the ski never felt right from the very first turn. I should have been screaming down that run laying them way over, and instead, I went all the way down trying to figure out what was going on there. And things didn't get any better when I got into some variable conditions. The skis were a ton of work, took a concentrated effort and a lot of upper body input that Harald wouldn't approve of just to get down the runs. After a handful of runs like that, I decided it was time to put them back in the truck and grab my own pair, because I wasn't having any fun on those, and my legs were about shot, and it was only 10 o'clock.
So I'm just writing them off as a bad tune. Both myself and some of my friends have gotten some pretty funky tunes out of the shop that I got these from in the past, so I'll just leave it at that for now. If I have a chance to try another pair down the road, I'll give it a shot, cause I'm sure that these are a far better ski than the ones I tried that day.