A classic product review by The Longboard Consortium, reformatted for you...

GORDON & SMITH FIBREFLEX: 44” KICKTAIL

 It was a combination of ever-increasing longboard sales and time spent as a contributor to the filming of Lords of Dogtown that pushed current Fibreflex owner Deb Gordon (Larry’s daughter) to generate a “new throwback” board. Aimed at the burgeoning market of riders longing for an old-style deck, but gravitating to the smooth-carving characteristics of a longboard, the imaginatively-named “44-inch Kicktail” was released in March, 2005. It’s an evolution of the famous G&S Fibreflex TeamRider model, and features similar construction: five horizontally laminated plies of maple, sandwiched in fiberglass (sadly, the famous BoTuff material used on 1970’s Fibreflex boards isn’t available anymore). Like the boards of yore, the “44 Kick” can be had in colors (blue, green, orange) but, unlike the original TeamRider, the 44 Kick has a concave pocket for your leading foot!

GORDON & SMITH FIBREFLEX: 44” KICKTAIL

Deck or Complete? Deb Gordon is happy to sell you the 44 Kick as a complete, set up with Randal 150’s, ½” risers and Kryptonics Classics, but will also sell you a gripped-deck to build out anyway you like. We got ourselves an orange deck and built it up pretty much the same way the completes are, but we used ABEC-11 Flashbacks and Biltin 7 bearings. This results in a fairly “tall” board (see our specs chart) and it looks even taller with the raised edges of the concaved portion of the deck. We tried a 1/8” riser at first, but found we’d rub the 70mm wheels on the rear of the deck in hard carves. So, we tried what Deb had told us to do in the first place and resolved the wheel-bite issue, entirely.

“He’s all growed-up, Ma!”. The original TeamRider was a fast, nimble board, designed and well-suited for pool and park riding, but stable enough for a ride across town to “that new ditch” someone had discovered. It was also dead-flat other than the kicktail and 31” long, overall. The 44 Kick has received a dose of growth hormone and mutated along the way: it’s got a 32”wheelbase, .400” inch of concave that’s centered at the sweet spot behind the front truck then tapers back to flat just in front of the rear trucks, and a massive 8.5” kicktail that’s 6” wide at the midpoint with 1.125” of overall rise. However, just like the TeamRider, the 44 Kick is stiff. Don’t let the name fool you: this board is stable and firm, even for our 220lb.-plus riders.

Visually, the Fibreflex is impressive. The first thing that strikes you is how long it looks: the 44” length and relatively narrow profile accentuate the length of this rig. The dyed fiberglass skin has a bright coloration and the texture of the ‘glass is clearly visible under a deep, glossy skin. The expertly cut griptape surrounds the famous G&S Fibreflex logo on the top surface, and the logo is finally placed somewhere that a rear-foot pusher doesn’t stand on all day!

Riding the 44 Kick. Our testers found this board seem way more solid than it looked, and to be “too stiff” for our lighter riders that had expected a flexy ride. A massive slab of maple and ‘glass, the power in it can be felt as soon as it’s underfoot for any rider nearing 200lb or our resident slalom champ (who can flex anything with the pumps he lays down). Our riders almost uniformly commented that this board is good for pumping carves. One rider commented, “I read in a guide on pumping that you will feel a sensation of the deck ‘pulling away from you’ when properly pumping. This is one of the first larger decks where I really felt the pump propel me forward. With the 44 Kick, I could pick up a great deal of speed in the flats just by pumping”. The concave nose helps with this, keeping the rider’s front foot securely “in the pocket”. We also liked it for carving by heavier or more aggressive riders, where the firm flex kept the board from bounding around in the transition in and out of turns, but allowed those riders to really honk on the board if they wanted to. The complaint from the bigger fellas is that the 44 Kick is a little narrow for fast riding with big feet, but hey: it’s a lot wider than a pintail, guys!

Conversely, our lighter riders perceived the board as nearly flex-free. One speedfreak reported colorfully, “the minimal flex made the deck a little squirrelly when nailing a hill at speeds. In a tight tuck the deck was as animated as Adult Swim and the soft-bushing setup rocked like a deflated moonbounce.” We also heard back that, “…“I found it great for doing one-footed carves. The lack of flex at my 160lbs made it a reliable platform for board-walking and whipping around hard turns on one foot”. So, for lighter riders, this deck might fool you with its name.

Our tallish setup was a little too high for some of our riders, but we could all see that the setup requires risers by looking at a deck rail melted during a session of laying it on the edge. Riders used to Exkate or Baku setups found it about the same as other boards they’ve ridden. The wheels/bearing combo made for a very fast, controlled ride over rough pavement and mixed surfaces, and our setup man used a mixture of Randal’s taller yellow and red “bottom” truck bushings to ensure a very turny, progressive feel to the board (and also some wheelbite before we jacked it back up another 3/8”). The concave makes it feel like it wants to tip into turns, even as the long wheelbase stabilizes the board. On that note, the 44Kick is set up for multiple wheelbases –we used the outer, longest settings.

The kicktail itself was popular with two kinds of riders: those tall enough to reach it with their rear foot when layed down into a tuck for carving, and our resident tic-tac’ers. If you do this much, get a tail-tapper for the board—you don’t want to be grinding fiberglass on pavement. As for everyone else, we found the kicktail to be pretty much “out of reach” when riding in an appropriate stance to control the board. To get back and use the tail, the rider must shift stance to the back half of the board. Once you’ve done that, you can kick-turn, manual or think about an ollie…just don’t let the kids on freestyle boards see you!

Summing it up. We think the FibreFlex 44Kick is a big board, for big kids. It’s firm enough to be a ditch rider, has enough tail for long-legged tic-tac’ers to utilize and major old school design cues that please the eye. It’s stiff, though, especially for lighter riders, so you shouldn’t expect this board to be a flexy, plush cruiser: it’s not. It’s a TeamRider on steroids, and we like it that way.