- Hello my surfskating friends from all over the world.
Steve here to give you my top six
wheel recommendations for serious surfskaters.
Now, if you didn't see it a couple of days ago,
I put out a long, 40-minute comprehensive review
on all of these different wheels that I've been
testing out over the last five months.
And if you are a technical detail person like me,
and you want to understand all of that process
that went into me choosing these six
I'm gonna give you here,
then make sure that you watch that longer video.
But I figured there's probably a lot of people out there
who are just bottom-liners and just
want me to give them the bottom line.
So I thought I'd do one for them too.
So, without any of the explanation behind
how I arrived at these top six wheels for me,
let me go through these.
And I should give the caveat, obviously,
that this is not an exhaustive list
of what I've tried, by far.
There are plenty of other wheels out there
that I haven't tried.
And I'm sure that if I were to try a lot of others,
I'd probably have some others on those lists
and that might even replace this list.
So, let's get right into these.
At the very top of the list is
Seismic Defcon Hot Spots,
66 millimeter in diameter,
79A in durometer in plum.
I have yet to find their equal.
These wheels are grippy.
They're smooth, they're comfortable.
They're very high rebound wheel,
which makes them very, very fast.
And they're on the smaller side, 66 millimeter.
You see a lot of these are like,
a typical surfskate wheel, I think, is around 68 to 70.
So, it's on the smaller side,
but because of the urethane formula,
and because Seismic's wheels are just so good and fast,
this actually rides,
in terms of speed and other factors as well,
more like a 69-millimeter ride, in my experience.
Especially if you've got good
Tekton bearings to go along with it.
But this right here is the wheel that
for general surfskating applications
is the wheel that I have on my custom setup.
And I honestly very rarely ride other wheels than this,
unless I'm riding in the bowl, and I'll get to that.
My second recommendation is Carver wheels.
And I'm talking about the Roundhouse,
or the Ecothane non-concaves here.
So these come in, these are a 68 millimeter by 78A,
and I think, I'm not sure what the contact patch is
on these ones, but these are a little bit thinner
than these 70 millimeters.
And then you've got these 70 millimeter by 78As.
So any of the Carvers, any of the Carver non-concaves.
And honestly, I don't care if it's
the Smoke wheels or the Ecothanes.
To me, I don't feel a big difference between those.
Bottom line, Carver wheels.
If you don't have a Carver,
Carvers are the only wheels from any
stock company that you can buy separately.
And if you don't have a Carver, then,
to me, these are pretty much the gold standard
of what you're looking for out of a surfskate wheel.
And Carver wheels are fantastic for any application.
And I love them.
My third recommendation is also Carvers,
but I'm talking about the Carver concaves.
So, I did another review of these where you can see
how Carver did a really innovative thing
where they created these concave wheels.
And what that means is, when you push down on this,
it actually will spread.
And then those outside lips kind of grip
that concrete when you push down on it,
it also kind of widens out that contact patch.
The bottom line is these are very, very grippy.
By far and away, the grippiest surfskate wheels
I've ever tried.
So, if you want grip for your terrain
and for your style of riding,
then absolutely try these Carver concaves.
And honestly, I'm just gonna say,
even if you really don't want more grip,
but you're a serious surfskater,
and you're just out there trying stuff,
100% I'm gonna put these concaves
on the list of things to try.
The fourth wheel that I've found that works well
for certain applications is the Orangatang 4Presidents.
These are 70 millimeters in diameter,
and I actually misspoke in my wheel review.
I thought that these were 51 millimeter contact patch width,
but they're actually 53, which means it's fairly wide.
So you compare that to like, these Seismics.
So first of all, just look at the difference in diameter.
That's a 66 millimeter diameter,
compared to a 70 millimeter diameter.
So you can see the size difference.
But one of the biggest difference on these Orangatangs
is the contact patch.
So this is a 47 inch contact patch on the Seismics,
and this is a 53 inch on the 4Presidents.
And you can see what a difference that is.
And honestly, this right here,
this 53 millimeter wide contact patch
is the widest that I will ever go on a surfskate wheel.
With surfskating, that contact patch, I've found,
actually makes a really big difference
in how nimble you, your pumping and carving is.
Because it's just kind of intuitive
that you can get that, the wider the wheel,
the harder that is to pump that.
And so for me, these Orangatangs are a special use wheel.
I use these wheels when I'm going down declines,
and I wanna go fast.
And it's a long, glidey,
like a long-distance cruise ride.
I'm not gonna use this for doing tight, nimble carving.
This is a long-distance cruiser,
when you wanna just glide and go fast.
These keep up momentum.
They're harder to get up to speed.
They're kinda big and bulky for a surfskate wheel,
but once you're up to speed, man.
These are just fast, and fun, and glidey.
The fifth wheel that I've found works well
for certain surfskating applications,
out of all this that I've tried,
is the Orangatang Stimulus.
And specifically for me, I got the 77A durometer blue,
and then I also got the 88 oranges.
And I found that these 77A are much better
than these, these are too slidey.
So like the 4Presidents, these are
also like a specialty wheel.
I would use these wheels if
you want more slide out of a wheel.
These are going to give you the grip
that you want out of a surfskate,
but they have several properties
that make them better sliders.
Number one, they are stone ground, not smooth.
That means that they grind them out of the factory,
so that immediately when you start riding,
they're gonna slide better than a smooth-surfaced wheel.
The second thing is that they have rounded edges,
instead of that flat edge that you
see on typical surfskate wheels.
A rounded edge makes for a little bit better sliding.
So the bottom line, if you are a slider
and if sliding is a big part of your style,
or if you want to learn sliding,
and snaps and things like that,
I think this is a fantastic wheel to do that with.
And you may want to play with the durometers,
both on these Stimulus wheels and on the 4Presidents.
But, as I said, I have found that for these specifically,
I want the softest, that 77A.
And my sixth and final recommendation.
And this also is a specialty wheel,
is the Carver Park wheels.
Now this is if you are wanting
to be skating parks and bowls on a surfskate.
When you're skating bowls,
you want wheels that are smaller and harder
than typical surfskate wheels.
And that's what these Carver Park wheels give you.
But they also give you something more,
that you don't get out of other typical,
kind of, park and bowl wheels.
I tried a few others, including like,
say these Powell Peralta G bones.
These are very, very slidey.
All of the kind of, more typical skateboard wheels
that I tried were too slidey for me.
When I would pump, I'd slide out on the back end.
And then I was also sliding out a lot coming up transitions,
and it just was not a good sensation at all.
What these Carver Park wheels give you is more grip.
I don't know what their formula is.
When these come out of the box,
you'll see that they actually have these
really thin lines going across them.
Those wear off, so you can't see those
on these worn ones that I've used.
But even after those wear off, for whatever reason,
even though these are 95A and durometer, which is very hard,
the texture on them is actually quite grippy.
And so for surfskate application specifically,
oh, and the other thing about these is
they have more of a squared edge,
as opposed to more of these rounded edge
that you'll see out of more of these
kind of typical park and bowl wheels.
Bottom line, these give you all of the properties
that you want out of a park wheel,
but they also give you more grip that
you're not gonna get out of typical park and bowl wheels.
So those are my top six favorite surfskate wheels
out of everything I've tried.
And obviously this is certainly not an exhaustive list,
and I would love to hear more people's input.
If you've found other wheels that you found
work well for surfskating,
please comment on the video below
so that we can all learn from that.
Because as I've been saying,
wheels make a very big difference to the ride.
And when you start customizing a surfskate,
wheels are honestly kind of one of
the lowest hanging fruit things to try,
because they're on the cheaper end.
I mean, yeah, you can get kind of some expensive wheels.
I think these higher end wheels are gonna run you,
I mean you might be 60 to 80 bucks on some of these.
But a lot of these Carver wheels,
I think are like 36, or something like that, right?
So, it's not like wheels are super expensive.
And in my experience,
wheels make such a big difference,
that it absolutely 100% is worth playing around with wheels
and dialing in on your perfect specs for your
style of riding, your terrain, your environment,
your style, and your preferences.
So I hope you find this helpful in your quest to find,
dial in on your perfect surfskate wheel.
And if you know of any other surfskate wheels
that work well, comment below,
so we can all learn from you.