What Is Sewa Kroetkov's Setup?

welcome back you guys uh we have a special guest today SE a yeah I tried I tried so we are going to review his setup not everybody rides something exactly like what he's got under his feet so I thought it'd be interesting to you guys what why don't we see what you have here right here one just St with the board yeah what size do you ride so a 8.125 I don't even know what what you would consider this concave I would say like a medium that looks like a medium concave to me yeah yeah it's not too steep not too mellow the nose and tail look like about a medium kick as well like a pretty standard BBS mold yeah which is where you get it right exactly and then I do customize my boards a little more in the sense that I adjusted the nose and tail length quite a bit compared to what's usually on the market yeah so especially for an 8125 yeah so from my perspective I believe that a lot of boards get made kind of too short again that's just my opinion but I just feel like when I started making my nose and uh longer I noticed that the pop response was a bit quicker and it feels like when I Alo flick it's like I can really carry my board with me versus when the nose is a bit short it feels like I flick for example yeah my board kind of still stays a bit behind yeah you've got that extra space yeah there's more on the nose to actually flick off of yeah and then uh I adjusted my wheelbase just a tad bit so nowadays I think the standard is 14.25 but I think a while ago the standard was considered 14 um for the longest time I would skate 14 and then decided to uh lengthen my wheel base a little bit as well I lengthen or shorten lengthen a little bit oh sorry from 14 so it's a it's a 14125 oh we got some sirens in the background here here why don't we see that I'd love to actually put a tape measure to it and see what we're really reading on all of this okay so the length you guys is like just a hair over 32 and A4 so that's a pretty long board most of the time when it boards 32 and a/4 it's an 8.5 and if we want to get a nose measurement here it's 7 and a/4 which would be fairly consistent with an 8.5 and then seven and just over 7 and 3/4 no that's the wrong over 6 and 3/4 so pretty long like on your standard 825 you're going to have usually a 6 and 7/8 nose with like a 6 and 5/8 tail so in both cases it's longer than what most people ride and if we double check the wheelbase it's bang on at 14125 so again right in between the old common 14 and the new common 14.25 so yeah exactly cuz with this length nose until I tried a 14.25 and and it the wheelbase just felt a tad bit too long it's like my board was responding really well but it almost felt like I didn't have a certain connectivity and then when I shortened the wheelbase again back to 14 you know you kind of feel like that that power to really carry your board with you but I felt like my feet felt a little too close at times okay so that's why I was like yeah you know let's try the 14125 and feel like that's a sweet spot for me yeah it might actually be a sweet spot for me too I'm on 14 right now and it can feel a little small I all of my rotational tricks are way easier on a tighter wheel base but I definitely do feel that like I've come up a little short sometimes on my flick like for kick flips and stuff and and uh I do have to say though cuz I I released like some kind of like oneoff drops M I do believe that this board length is going to be too long for the majority of skaters I think it as I was saying I feel like the majority of what's on the market is too short in my opinion this will be too long so when I did those oneoff drops I still had a bit of a longer nose and tail compared to what's on the market but still a bit shorter than this I think that's good because then people are getting the experience of something a little bit longer than average but not so like yeah not not to the point that it's going to be unpleasant for them to skate it and then I kept the wheel based on those 14 inch as well except the 85 and I actually made that one 14125 ah you know it's nice to it's actually nice to find an 8.5 you know like wide boards that still have a tighter wheelbase that's becoming more and more common I think the old 8.5s were really based off vert boards probably yeah so how tall are you uh 61 so I think that's a 1 M 86 61 so same same uh same height as me yeah and do you mind uh do you mind telling us your shoe size 10 and a half 10 and a half same shoe size as me it's actually 10 and a half is a surprisingly common shoe size it gets sold out so often it's one of the first to sell out yeah um so yeah that's interesting in your video you did about 8 years ago 7even years ago you were riding a 7.9 still yeah when did you start sizing your board up for the longest time I was getting a 775 and then I sized it up I think like around 2015 I went to a 79 then maybe a year later to an 8 and then eventually I got to an 8.1 and I'm kind of like have you ever gone bigger than 8125 whenever I stand on the 825 it feels really comfortable but then I get uh I'm not sure if I feel like it works well with my trucks cuz right now you can tell that the trucks are like already in a bit I person like that they're 11/16th in on each on each side yeah so I personally like that cuz that's just how I grew up skating so for certain Scoops and Pops that's just feels I kind of like it too I kind of like it too yeah uh whenever I have trucks that completely line up it like on one hand it feels comfortable for certain things on the other hand it feels like I don't get that proper bent when I'm trying to trade yeah it doesn't fold over as quickly no I know exactly what you mean it changes it slows down the point where it flicks it's like it it's it takes a little longer before it starts to flip and then it might flip over kind of quick but it's just different yeah yeah kind don't get that that like you said that that's bold you know yes so so on that note what trucks do you have here so fenter low uh 5.25 so when I was getting the 775 I would skate the fure low 5.0 yeah then once I switched to 7.9 that's when also uh starts getting the 5.25 M so the the 5.0 is a 7.625 truck so yeah 7.6 on a 7.75 gives you again that 116 tucked in so it's exactly the same I remember when I stepped up to skating a 7.75 and um and yeah I would have been riding 7.6 trucks and I remember thinking like wow this is good why haven't why haven't I been riding that size the whole time yeah but don't you feel like every time you kind of size up it kind of feels that way yes to a point um because 825 and up starts to feel a little sluggish 825 is like the comfortable maximum for my flip tricks yeah you see that yeah but um these trucks are not your standard not your standard Venture lows so you want to tell us what ones those are yeah what time do you need to be at the airport no dude I mean if you want to give the whole story or the short version you can do either so as we said like back in the day I would skate the 5.0 and I think at the time fenter didn't make 5.2 FS yet or was very rare to find those you just didn't see him much cuz it wasn't common then I think after like 2012 when they also I think they still make them in the same Factory but they like went from Street for and distribution to Deluxe y uh that's when the logo changed too so this been the logo since like 2011 2012 back then I know if you remember it was like this really small I remember it but not vividly um basically what happened is that you know when they uh switched the distributions y I think they also changed molds uh they did they i' I've spoken to someone at Deluxe and they said they made some improvements they thought were necessary so what we're talking around 2005 isue saying no uh 2011 2012 late 2011 I think mhm so what we're saying Deluxe takes over makes a few um you know revisions to the truck yeah I don't know if they that's what I'm still wondering if they intentionally made revision that time but the truck became a tad bit different they did they did it's definitely known if you're correct yeah so uh still great trucks is just something about the feel of the oh that's different rally still skates stage seven Indies I heard that and I'm on the same page with him when if I see someone riding the old F I'm like yeah know up you they know what's up right or they don't you're hoping they don't so you can buy them oh yeah yeah exactly that point and and yeah you have old Ventures hit them up going on like eBay and stuff and like yeah just just finding a but you got lucky you have a supply now right yeah so there was a shop in La uh that had boxes of the old Ventures y so yeah in the beginning I just bought a set cuz um the field was just what I was used to from skating all you know Avengers all those years yeah if you don't have to CH if the truck works for you and you don't have to change it there you yeah so I found the well I found the Shop's been around it's a classic Shop La skate a set of Ventures those felt really good and then I went back to basically buy whatever boxes he had left just full of fers so I spend a good amount of money getting the old fers uh back so to speak yeah um so that's basically what this is yeah let's let's show a comparison that's why I have my board here um it might be hard to pick up on camera but so the pivot pivot right here is like like this one's a little thicker this one the stem is like a little Slimmer mhm yeah there was definitely some changes I don't know exactly what it is it's not like Indie where they they kind of like to talk about how they changed the trucks they just changed them and you know I like them I have no problems with them but it's still really solid truck mhm it's just like I said when I was skating the let's say the pre 2011 trucks a lot of tricks for me personally just felt more consistent and like man just felt a little better so that's why once I was able to find them at a store it was just like the the post 2011 trucks work really well but the pre 2011 trucks work even better that's basically how I see it yeah and I'm I'm dialed in on those and I couldn't perceive the difference too much but that's because I had I didn't try them long yeah and you your trucks I would say I I rode it around a little and it's like a medium to medium loose they're not actually too tight you know some people always think like a kind of tech guy that rides Ventures rides them really tight but no no you actually have them medium to medium loose yeah and I think also that kind of by default that kind of happened as I switched my board size because I stood on a SE like one of my old 775 boards a little while ago like man how could I ride my truck so tight back then but I think because they're Slimmer by default they get they feel tigh or they are tighter yeah and you get more leverage with a wider board and a wider truck it just pushes easier yeah so right now it's almost like like I said by default they kind of like become a little more loose so it also gives just a little more room for air where when I was getting the 775 because the trucks feel so much tigh it's like you either have to land completely perfect or you just kind of fall off yeah how it felt yeah you can like only ride in a straight line yeah and these ones sometimes you can curve out a bit more and it like sometimes adds a little more flare to it and stuff those have a good amount of turn and lean like you can land on those not centered and it doesn't turn so sharp that you just start turning like that's one of the nice things about Ventures is there there is that bit of lean before the turn but then once you dig a little harder there is a turn yeah so what Wheels do you have on there uh right now I'm skating the Spitfire formula 4 classic uh started skating these a few years ago it's hard to go back once you get used to I was just going to say that I don't know why I held off for so long I mean I still switch between Wheels sometimes there's a company out of France called Haze Wheels I used to ride from back in day uh I we love their wheels as well still a few sets at home I haven't heard of them yet but yeah and then uh yeah other times escap these formula 4S it's hard cuz as soon as you're used to formula 4S everything else feels like just different off yeah what I noticed about the formula 4S cuz the first time I set him up was I was on a trip in Italy and there was like this asphal in front of the hotel that was like semi- rough and I set him up and it was like a smooth Cruise yeah yeah something about the rebound just absorbs a bit more of that even even though they're those are probably 99s I'm guessing right right yeah 999 a yeah yeah even though they're 99 they still have like a decent rebound when especially when you compare it to the older or more classic urethanes those things just feel more plasticky yeah that too and and what I noticed with that is that sometimes you have certain wheels that might feel really good in the streets and they skate like a skate Paro let's say a wooden skateboard and it feels like too soft or your trucks even start feeling super loose but with these I feel like it just feels good on any terrain have you ever experimented with different wheel shapes a little bit but not not to much uh I used to ride for rcta sometimes I had the wheels that would say round and the other ones would say they're more square right I tried I know I felt like some periods I would just skate the square some Peri I would skate around and I couldn't really figure out which one I necessarily likeed more so they were close enough that you didn't develop a preference um I think I would say that I was just more worried about maybe other aspects of the of the setup oh okay so I think at the time is when I was going through trying out different boards and messing with trucks and what not and okay as long as the Wheels rolled they were okay in that at that time yeah what bearings do you have in there do you have a preference for bearings uh right now I have the independent bearings it's called the okay back in day they would be the Sev now it's the GPR I would have to see out the independent like Indie bearings yeah oh okay I didn't know they made bearings yeah so right now it's like with the black box GPB or G yeah I have no idea yeah let us know in the comments if you know used to be the sevens yeah and the size are 51s right for the wheels yeah the wheels were 51 F4 Classics yeah 998 mhm yeah yeah and then um yeah I just feel like the independent bearings they're like at a really good price point about like 18 to 20 bucks uh they spin pretty good and they actually last a while they don't fall apart fast at all interesting a there you go yeah Indie bearings hey I also noticed that those Ventures still have the Gold Hardware the Gold Hardware yeah like like the the that and yeah it's got all the gold Hardware and I I loved the Gold Hardware on ventur when I was at BBS so these ones don't have the Gold Hardware but when I was there I scooped a whole bag of Gold Hardware oh you did yeah I just like kept grabbing handfuls from all the different nuts and washers so now I have all gold Hardware to swap out oh man that's one thing I didn't pay attention yeah no it looks better yeah especially with the colored bushings the Gold Hardware like really shines yeah it does really have a nice pop to it definitely and are you are you fussy about your Hardware Do you have a ific Hardware um right now I'm getting the diamond uh 78 in Allen key uh I used to think that Hardware is just Hardware yeah and then um I Tred different Hardware from actually different factories to see if I would produce some with my own brand right this when I realized that there's a lot of shitty Hardware out there the Diamond Hardware is actually really good the 78 it like it stays tight even when it's barely poking through like that yeah uh I like the Len key cuz I feel like the Phillips uh the Phillips one just often strips but I feel like the Len key for Di especially on diamond is just solid and it looks a bit better too you know cuz it's more just like a circle instead of like a an X that could be pointing any direction maybe yeah that's me that's my f I'm OCD about a lot of stuff but that's like the one thing I usually don't care as much about but maybe not that you mention and I would pay more attention to it STI with L yeah you could MIT Madness to peoplein Okay so we've accidentally glossed over something really important here what do you have on your board LP grip yes of course you do y so yeah that's my own brand F all the way here so yeah okay but if you've noticed how much detail he puts like thought he puts into his setup he's not one of those guys that just gets given something he's like it's fine I don't care so you do put attention to detail into your grip too definitely so the thing with grip tape was that that you know you have a few really big players in a grip game the challenge for me was like you know I feel like all the grip are good in the own right but from my perspective there were just too many trade-offs uh some grip might be people find it too grippy um have to break it in too long but then you know once it breaks in it's like good for a while other people would prefer a different grip that might skate like good from the get-go or like breaks in quicker but then it would just SAR up too quick you have temperature uh differences like I mean we're adion in in temperature like putting it on in cold weather stuff like that so you know we're in Southern California right now like it's kind of how it is all year long it's just very uh consistent temperature MH however when you go to the to the colder States or like you know other countries where it get super cold uh sometimes you have issues with GIC heeling Yeah so basically uh from my experience from writing for different grip Brands to just trying even more grip brands doing polls on Instagram and talking to people about what they like about certain grip what they don't some of the pet peeves try to take everything in and basically try to put it in this product to start with the the formula was really important to me so it is a Formula that I pitch to the manufacturer to see if they can make it a specific way so the goal was really to have a grip tape that's like you can feel it and I have to say the hand feel sometimes is a bit uh can be misleading sometimes but it gives you a good gaug so to speak yeah so I want to have a grip that's like a nice real gritty when you set it up and you stand on your board like you really feel connected to your board like it's stuck to your feet I'm one of those people that actually likes a really grippy board yeah but you know what I mean like when it's gritty it's like you really feel that like like your board is an extension of you and you really get a good board feel I know exactly what I mean yep however I also want to make sure that you don't feel like you're glue to the board okay so I want to make sure you have a good foot maneuverability from the get-go and you can flick good that flick release flick release yeah yeah Pat patent the flick release basically because like again as I was saying some of the grip would be really grippy from the get-go and you would flick but it just wouldn't release uh easy also a little side note like back in day you know Growing Up in Holland we had a grip tape at a skate up that was like a cheaper grip and at the time I was like well when you feel that cheaper grip it feels as grippy as as some of the grippier ones but I was like might as well get the cheaper one cuz it feels the same then I would set it up and it just won't flick at all and that's why the flick release came to mind okay so yeah having a good flick release from the GTO and good foot manuverability while still being super grippy so you don't you basically set it up it's good to go you don't have to send it down or anything yeah and then another aspect was the longevity I actually kept the diary to make sure that like the grip can actually outlive your board right cuz we all know that it's just a pain in the ass have to regrip a board or if your board is still really good it sucks if your grip where out you don't enjoy your board anymore it makes it feel older like weeks older and you want to feel confident on your board too you know so and then um you know perforate of course I feel like nowadays that should be the standard but yeah so you don't get bubbles yeah still just want to point it out yep then I made the sheets uh just a tad bed wide of 9.25 oh okay so if you the wideboard Riders 9.25 it'll just fit a nine a lot of kids now they start on 8.5 boards boards are wide right now yeah yeah like consistently wide for the most part I was skating it last night um we got to skate the Primitive Park which is like full of wax and you know it was fairly Dusty my wheels are cleaned off now but they were like caked I still had a lot of like I never felt like my board wasn't attached to my feet so it's good to hear yeah it was good I enjoyed it then another aspect uh last but definitely not least is we just talk about the temperature aspect so what I basically did was I put my my grip tape in the freezer for like for a whole day then took it out put on my board start skating the testing isn't proper enough that way because you know once you come outside it's it's warm so I did have some people in Pennsylvania as well as New York help me a bit on that front where I would send them some sheets uh it would be winter time and they would set it up and just tell me whether it would start peeling or not and it passed that test it didn't peel that's good so that way I feel like you know it's I just try to really make sure that everyone can basically enjoy this product cuz I know certain grip too that people would say well I love this grip but it starts peeling so during winter months I switch over to a different one yeah I've heard that yeah so again I just want to make sure to try to really put everything that people like into one product and remove everything that people don't like yeah that's good I got another sheet it's January right now so when I go back to Vancouver I've still got some some grip that'll stick to my board okay awesome man I mean I think that pretty much rounds out unless you have any other additional notes on the board but it'd be cool just to see you skating it yeah I think the only thing I missed a bit on the deck itself was the amount of fingers flat back in day I used to not even pay attention to that I just felt like whatever boards I was getting were were good every trick felt good and then I remember getting boards where the Nos and H would kind of kick up really quick after the bolt and all of a sudden it's like my pop timing was off like it wouldn't hit and I couldn't hold my menis anymore that's when a friend pointed out like oh how many things as flat as it so what's your preference so here here's where it gets tricky um we just talked to PJ L the other day yeah he's totally right he says you know having fingers flat is kind of like you need to put a number on it when I'm personally when I'm like kind of trying to gauge it it's kind of like about two and a half to three fingers flat and then it kicks up that feels good to me but he's right though I do want to start putting a number on it to know exactly how many millimeters it is it's so hard to measure because it's a gradual thing yeah yeah so and most boards most boards will have so your nose is about two to two and a qu yeah and the tail is like 2 and 1/2 so there it is shifted a tiny bit this way which is really common most boards do and it's actually to my preference I see yeah and then what I noticed too is that depending on your wheelbase it shifts too yes because when I was getting a 14in wheel base the amount of flat space would be just that tight bit tiny bit more yeah yeah the 14s can be pretty long and you were riding the dwindle boards for a long time some of those had a lot yeah and like I said like back in it when I started getting BL boards they had that good amount of uh fingers flat and everything just worked and then once I got the boards without it that's when I was like like I need to go back do whatever I was getting before yeah to make it work again and when the friend told me about like you know those fingers flat that's when I started paying attention to it but before that I never did that was the only thing I knew when I started the channel was that I liked a little bit less space than more really yeah anything specific well it's cuz I had more pop on a board with a bit less but I also rote Indies so that change it there's there's a few minor trade-offs cuz I do notice that this one is like a little bit has a little bit less flat space than my previous patch and it's just a little bit harder for me to hold manise yeah but it does snap a little different even a little higher it's absolutely the trade-off between control and pop yeah yeah but yeah as PJ said I don't want to you know make myself crazier than I already feel but I do agree that if you really want to dive into it you have to really put a number on it he is correct yeah you can't gauge it if you can't measure it and put a number and we also didn't even talk about the shape of the kicks totally missed that cuz yeah tapered here maybe you guys can if you can get a look and what do you mean exactly when you say taper do you mean so taper like like like kind of like a spade right like like it goes to a point it's not it's not um some boards can be grotesquely tapered where they're like whoop super pointy and this is not like that it's a I ride a kind of blunt board I see I like blunt boards but I think because your nose and tail are um extra long compared to other boards the taper doesn't start until up higher so you still have a lot of space to slide for your feet yeah cuz that was definitely a thing that um to me this this this is what I'm used to so I'm like okay it's it's a you know normal nose and tail well you can get a better scoop on a tapered board but a lot of people they do say that like oh your your board is pretty pointy to point I'm like Oh I thought it was standard a lot of boards are more Popsicle or even more Square yeah um like myself personally I like a nice blunt nose with a tapered tail so that I can still scoop my trays and stuff but I have like a big big flat nose to slide on for the nose slides but um that one is not like I could ride that that's not a taper that I would find too difficult to ride at all yeah there's definitely some boards if I remember correctly from from backw was like the tail gets really really yeah yeah the the how old are you 33 33 Okay so yeah back then boards were still quite tapered yeah and the the really blunt and more popsicle stuff didn't come in until kind of the 2010s and stuff that's when stuff really started getting either more round and even started to get square where can we get the grip uh the grip tape you can hit up your local skate up that's what I would recommend at first uh if your local skate up doesn't have it yet you can always go online to alo.com uh make sure you also follow the page okay and um ask your local stage of care you know if they don't have it yet for Discerning grip tape lovers yep okay all right thank you well yeah we'll get some skating in okay awesome [Music] jeez not supposed to be that easy [Music] I mean yeah [Music] win okay so that was about 30 minutes of seevis skating I'd say at most once he got warmed up we turned the camera on and it's always impressive to watch somebody that can skate at that level like the lowest his tricks get it seems like is about 2et tall and it registers on camera but you really notice it when you're in person it's like you know sometimes they're like I swear 2 and 1/2 ft tall his kick flips now one of the things I love about this is that it dispels the commonly held belief that you don't get pop with low trucks cuz he's skating Venture Low's and you cannot deny that he is getting a lot of pop on those so it really depends depends on how the person uses their board and can we just take a moment to appreciate the front side flips as well like each one of them again is about 2 ft tall fully rotated and uh just some of the other things you know like kick flip crooked grind that was first try I think the hard flip backside nose grind the first one was only in a couple of tries but the wheel went a little bit over so he redid it and last but not least the treay flips I mean I've never done a treay flip that's looked like that in my life and I'm not here to compare myself to them right we all do our own things but man that was a nice Tre flip to watch anyways you guys that's enough about that they're just there wasn't a lot of skating to sink your teeth into so I thought it was worth going over it and checking it out again if you guys are like me I'm sure you appreciated it so that's about it I want to say thanks for watching hopefully you guys enjoyed this I look forward to doing uh hopefully lots more of these kind of videos I think it's definitely one of the most interesting things is finding out what a pro r and exactly why and then taking a look at their skating and seeing how it may or may not help them so yeah in this case um he's definitely pretty tuned into his setup my only regret is that we didn't film more when I was down there anyways who knows maybe next time hope you guys are doing well till the next one whenever that may be

Channel: Ben Degros

Views: 35,819

Keywords: sewa kroetkov, alveer, alveer griptape, griptape, skateboard griptape, skateboard, review, tutorial, Ben, Degros, best, easy, ollie, kickflip, grind, slide, trucks, deck, wheels, bearings, bushings

Id: zedPB_Ujits

Length: 30min 19sec (1819 seconds)

Published: Sun Jan 21 2024