BOARD: Kingy hps (tricore) 42” 50/50 , surlyn slick combined with mesh, crescent tail, contoured deck, bumpers, single stringer, bumpers

RIDER: Been riding around 30 years altogether, 5 ftt 11” and around 95 kg (hit 98 a while ago, but carved 3kegs off). Barrels are my love and total passion – cave-type ones, not tiny little crampy things.
Carving faces is my other delight – all that space to paint a picture of lines and spray on. Simple, old-skool basics. Preference for gouging reefs and waves more in the 6 to 10 foot range where possible (sometimes it's like trying to find a bloody unicorn though, haha). Love a wedge when I can get my hands on one of those buggers too. Not so keen on beachies generally, but exceptional places like Stix I will take any day.



CORE/STRINGER/MESH: The hps core is the main reason I got this board. My curiosity has been peaked since doing the core interview with Fish. Tors has a dallas with the same core and kept raving about the projection properties. Lots of people have asked about how these new cores are, so thought I would get me one. I’m not a fan of ‘doughy’ boards – PE that is sluggish and projects poorly. In the ‘old days’ the PE was of a different nature, as people know/have heard. It had mad projection, lasted pretty well and didn’t always need mesh. With the introduction of environmental CFC measures, the production had to change and we have PE with different flex/projection properties these days. It’s a funny thing, as the CFC reduced PE has been around for while now and so for many riders it is the norm, and saying PE “used to be like such and such” is irrelevant because unless you’ve ridden that sort of PE, you have nothing to compare it to and the current stuff is ‘normal’. Some of us are constantly looking for the projection qualities in a core that the original PE had. Not as a retro thing, but because it worked damn well.

I mentioned that Tors had the same core in a Dallas, what he said to me that made me want to get one was simply “Doc, It’s heaps like the old PE”. Sold. Feedback from mates is so good cos you know how they ride, what they like and the entire boog space they’re coming from.

The other factor to note is that in choosing the Kingy, I’ve chosen a thinner core than I normally ride. Damo usually likes a total thickness of 53mm, which usually means shaving 5mm (or so) off the original blank to make it around 50mm. I haven’t measured the exact thickness of the 4play king, but I had to chop a fair whack off the leash plug to get it to sit flush, so it’s defo a thin board (for me at around 95 kegs). Thinner boards flex more of course. Ive flexed Tor’s Dallas and it is a bit stiffer, so you have to take that into account a fair bit (reason I got the Kingy over the Dallas was the concave hull, but I’ll get to that later).

The Hps core flexes something sweet. You lift the nose and the flex curve from the elbow is smooth and graceful (I don’t like the way a lot of boards bend from the end of the stinger(s). There is one stringer in the board, but however fish has arranged it it smooths in sweet. If you haven’t read about how the HPS core is organised, check the ‘quivers’ thread. In a nutshell its centre is primarily a form of PP and the top and bottom layer are PE. What this does is keep the flow very even. In my eyes the core of PP actually acts like a mass stringer in a way. The Pe then has its usual properties. The added bonus is that it makes landings damn easy on your ribs. Surprisingly easy in fact. Also , a surprise bonus has been the board’s performance in shockies. When the power dumps on you, the board doesn’t load it all up and bounce, it kind of absorbs it. Having only had the board for a short while, I want to investigate it more. But good to get some initial ideas out anyway. I ran this by Tors and he agreed, so it defo seems to be a quality of the core dynamics.

Another factor to throw into the criteria is that with the high level boards, Fish manufactures the mesh INTO the Surlyn slick. This causes the 2 components to work more as a single unit and is said to add to projection. Because I’m trying a new core AND the mesh/surlyn combo, I can’t say exactly how much difference the combined formula makes exactly.

With the PE content and the board’s relative thinness I reckon I’ll be saving it mostly til winter for me, unless I hit a really sucky reef where I’ll want a mile of flex in the meantime.



HOW THE TEMPLATE/FEATURES WORKED FOR ME:
The template works a treat for me. Last summer I had a custom PP turbo made and the 4Play is remarkably similar in outline. A little wider in the nose, which I’m gona stick with (I put narrower nose on the Turbo to give a greater exaggeration form the widepoint to give it a little more ‘oomph” in turns, but it does make it a bit edgey. As always the wider (than the turbo) nose in the 4play gives more predictability and steadiness.

Now the reason I chose the Kingy is for the concave. I noticed I’ve ben getting very ‘comfortable’ in my boards lately, so I wanted to challenge my comfort zone and go the concave.



HOW DOES SHE SCOOP/TURN?
Because of the flex and sick projection (projection powers you out of the scoop) it is sweeeeet.. The core feels like the return of a diving board, where the more ou load it up, the bigger ‘kaboing’ <insert satisfactory cartoon sound effect> forward you are going to get. Scoop city.

Turns themselves – this is why I got the concave, just to push my comfort zone. Too long on channels and crescent and felt I was falling into a comfort niche – nothing wrong with that, but personally I like to mix things up and push habits out of the way so I always feel I’m riding on my creative edge, making my mind work on waves and getting into the Zone in different ways. Thing is, I was confident going into this one it would push me, cos Kingy tears on a concave (no question) so you can’t blame the ‘tool’, just the tool riding it.
Kooked a bit of shit for a while, mainly sorting out the rail lock on keg lines and exactly how to carve in the lines I wanted. Knowing you can’t blame the board is good, it makes you find every detail of muscle memory and thought pattern from each ride and re-evaluate where you’re coming from. Makes you nail your shit basically. The concave is fast, so turning on bug faces doesn’t take long to work out. You get a lot of speed to throw into the ‘corners’ of your carves and turns. Sickness. Getting the exact line on a glass faced power keg is more of an art and exact science. For me it involved getting into the nose and through to the wide point than I usually do and really having a mental lock on where my line is to get my bodyweight exact.

An added bonus of the concave is its ability to eat up chop. Great board for those choppy cross-shore conditions, tends to skim across chop rather than get too bogged and slowed by the cursed stuff. IMO it turns better in choppy, crappy surf (which we often get in the real world) better than a flat bottomed board as it doesn’t get bounced around so. As irrelevant as it may sound, I used to drive a tri-hull outboard boat years ago and they were made that way for the same reason, smoother on rough water a it had a concave through the centre.


FEATURES: Nose-bulbs, greatest invention in BB since … nosebulbs, haha. Yeah I like them. I like them particularly in heavy takedowns when you really want to hang onto your board but the load of water is saying otherwise. That little bump extra has in all my recent boards has made the difference between hanging the fark on – and not quite a few times and has let me ride out some shockies when I didn’t think I necessarily would.

Nose-pieces, not my thing, but I get that they give an extra colour feature for the groms, but to me it is just an extra bit that will likely fall off/peel away one day. , that would actually be my main beef with the board.

Contours – haven’t had contours for years, I think the last time was a Mach 7S about 12 years ago or something like that. They look sick , but if they’re there or not doesn’t bother me. If they’re on a stock board I’ll get it, when ordering a custom I don’t bother to ask for them. Nice lines on these ones.


WAVE CONDITIONS TESTED IN SO FAR:
Quite a few for the short time I’ve had it, from smashing, messy 8 foot big period with blowing onshores with nasty take-downs, to perfect pumping Blackrock to some thick, beasty vert-walling reef beasties to some shitty, sketchy, small cross and onshore days classic to this time of year.