blank decks don't mean shit, how do you hide 3D, est, triple base, magnatraction or unusual shapes? use your head.

and even if they could make it blind, which they can't, it still irrelevant NONSENSE. all that test tells us is what THOSE RIDERS like in a board, it may not be what YOU like.

if you took 10 groups of 10 riders with the same boards you would NEVER get any consistency

why does k2 get 3 boards one year and none the next? did they radically change? why did the agent get in one year and not the next? it must suck now right?

i guess if one board is in every year its a safer bet, but still, come on

its an insult to our intelligence that these mags even do these crap ass tests and anyone with a brain should call these idiots on it

take that FSM powder board test last year, they had everything from a 190 swallow tail (nitro) to a fish to some forum board with 10mm of taper, and that board WON! what a bunch of fucking RETARDS, why even bother with a "powder board test" if you're going to chose the most conventional board you brought?

did anyone see their "premium board" ""test""? in the first issue this year? (fsm again)i use that term very loosely. they don't even talk about any methodology and just use one or two quotes to support it. the only good thing they did was weight them, i was surprised to see the Rome design was almost 2 pounds lighter than the vapor. I wonder if they used similar sizes? they never said. fucking idiots

Give the riders a tree trunk with bindings on it, put the riders sponsor on it, and they describe it as "The next gen snowboard, it rides like nothing else! You can take it everywhere on the mountain! EVEN TO THE STREETS" so on, so forth. BLANK PRIDE.

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The flaws with the Good Wood test goes beyond that of blank/non blank boards. I've read a testimonial by a tester that due to the large amount of boards and lack of time, each tester takes only about one run per board. One run is pretty tough to fully evaluate a board, especially when most boards ride kinda similar.

There are a couple of things to say about it, but not having blank decks definately puts a bad taste in my mouth. Coming from a shop perspective, I am always telling people to do research on their products, so when a shop raves about a board for obvious reasons, it upsets me that testers (and not all do this) have the chance to be bias about the boards they ride. Sure, companies don't submit certain boards every year, but regardless, it makes me want to support organizations that will be 100% fair in their publications. Blanks all the way, let the boards speak for themselves rather than the brand.

After all, the blank burtons and forums/capitas still kept their 3D and slider inserts respectively, even on the blank decks.

I've always been cautious of that good wood stuff. I choose what I ride based on what I hear from friends and people in the know.

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Who ever pays the most $$ for advertising will benefit from this test. I think its bullshit. If the testers are sponsored by any of these company's they will feel obligated or pressured by there sponsors to say something good bout them. I think everybody would be more open minded about the deck they were riding if it was blank. But Snowboarding is a big commercial business now days with lots of marketing, advertising and as much bullshit as the Iraq war. maybe thats taking it to far but everybody's out to make a $ and grab a peace of the pie. I'm afraid thats the way most of the industry will be until people start putting more heart & stoke into it. Look @ Smokin snowboards they won goodwood a couple years ago and now they are not even allowed to enter it, bowshitt!