Snowboarding

Dude...how the hell do you afford so many boards! thats crazy, are you sponsored or something, or just into collecting, great taste though....mervin boards are beautifully made, whats it like riding a banana board, i've heard mixed reviews from different people, some say its unstable at speed, and sketchy as fuck on big landings, and some say its simply amazing for ollies/butter tricks/anything that involves popping an ollie basically!
What do you think?

Well i am pretty well hooked up in the snowboard world, but stopped any resemblance of being professional as long a go as 1997!

Banana tech works great, but you are right in that it has had mixed reviews, and i could bore you for hours with tech comparisons between the various reverse camber/rocker designs - however i would look at it this way, the majority of reverse camber/rocker boards are designed for jibbing, and are brilliant at that, but not so good at other stuff, in much the same way as you wouldn't expect a Rome Artifact or Ride Kink. K2 WWW etc to be great at carving, big kickers etc . . .

The Skate Banana i have is a completely different beast to the Danny Kass, despite them being near identical specs, because the Danny Kass is a lot stiffer - the Banana washes out at speed, where as the Kass holds more of an edge, and has way more pop.

The Jamie Lynn, which is an all mountain board, and the Travis Rice BTX, which i have also ridden, are as good as any other board i have ridden at speed, and both are rock solid and carve like a motherfucker, and have a lot of pop.

Also it takes a good week to get used to riding a reverse camber board - the same with Bataleons and their TBT - it is impossible for someone to get a decent impression of how these board handle from just one day on one, as you need to subtly change your riding style to get the best out of them.

The K2 Gyrator which is pictured above, and designed primarily for off piste, is the best board i have ever riden in Pow, including Fishes etc - and the rocker on it is insane, makes the Libs look mellow, and as a result it has very little effective edge, which takes a while to get used to on the pistes, but once you are used to it no probs.

Anyway i am waffling, the moral of the story is that the re is as much difference between a rockered jib board and a rockered freeride board as there is between conventional boards, and a lot of people seem to think that a 52 Banana is going to handle as well as a custom x on the groomers, and a dominant on a rail, and that just isnt the case. The one thing that is true is that they are work much better in Pow than a simialr length non rocker board!