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Element Helium |
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No one knows skateboards better than Bud Stratford of Concrete Wave, one of the world's leading skate magazines. We asked him to put together five dream rigs. Here they are. Click to view Top 5 Skateboards.
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Best Street Board (Element Helium) |
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 Element Helium Construction deck, Tensor Mid Trucks, and Ricta Aircore or Ricta Speedband wheels. The cutting edge in New School skating technology, this setup is ideal for technical street riding and the very latest tricks. |
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The Element Helium construction is the latest brainchild of Paul Schmitt, aka “The Professor”, and owner of PS Stix, which is the woodshop responsible for the production of these very lightweight, very durable decks.
The Helium construction is a 7-ply hard maple deck that incorporates corrugated “aircore” chambers through the board. Much like a corrugated cardboard box, the corrugated centre plys increase the stiffness and strength of the wood, while allowing 5% of the deck to be hollow (air-filled, if you like), producing a lighter board. This helps you ollie higher, catch cleaner flips, and generally makes all this modern trickery just a little bit easier to accomplish. |
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 Like the deck, the tried-and-true Tensor Trucks also incorporate some great new technology. The most obvious being the plastic slider in the baseplate that eliminates that frustrating sticking that almost always happens during nose and tail slides on regular all-aluminum trucks.
Another novelty is the machined “steps” on the axle ends that serve as bumper-guards, allowing the axle nut to be easily removed and replaced, no matter how bashed the axles get. |
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 And, lastly, the wheels ... the Ricta Aircore wheels stick to the same air-filled theme that the deck. Ricta wheels are tough and slippery, ideal for tre flips and suchlike. If you skate on rougher pavements, you might consider the smoother-riding Ricta Speedbands instead. |
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Typical prices - £90-£115 / $170-$210 |
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