DSD (digital surf design) surfboards

[a normal day]

Hi all,

Just wondered if anyone knows much about them? Where I currently live in Asia they are the normal stock for the few surfshops (mostly it's all they can get for non epoxy boards) around.

Anyway, without naming specific shapers (very famous) they have 3 or 4 brands of the upper bracket named boards. I have researched it a little and one of the websites claims that main benefits are that the shaper only has to add limited shaping which takes around 25 minutes rather than the old 90 minutes average it used to take a world famous shaper to knock out a blank.

Thing is, I know where all these DSD boards come from (same factory) and it isn't in either USA or Australia where most of your top shapers live and work so am very dubious that they are having any input at all at any stage other than supply the laptop design for the manufacturer.

I'm not saying they aren't a good board (although the glassing and look appears an off white, rather than the lovely clean white most boards start out new) its just got that globalisation money making machine feeling about all of it to me.

Some surf shops I've found searching in Europe (maybe elsewhere) are selling these at top money too, as if you'd ordered from a highly reputed local guy! In contrast, here they go for just over half what they want in Europe which seems to be what they should be as a highly mechanically influenced product .

They can spin it how they want but to me they are not the same as going in talking to a local shaper you respect and him starting from scratch on a hand made board.

Just thought it an interesting topic.