I have to start off with the positive. Ralph was a pleasure to deal with when finding the right first board for me and my wife. He is very knowledgeable and easy to talk to. We ended up with some great starter boards, a couple of Coreban prototypes that are great boards so far! I feel like we got them at a very fair price, I didn't even try to barter them down. Only negative is when we asked if we could try some of them out, he made some funny comment and basically said no through a joke. Minus 1 star for buying without trying due to the fact that they were used boards already and we were serious buyers.
Now to the part where I have to take a couple stars off. In the excitement of the boards we asked about bundling paddles as well. By this time we were sure he knew his stuff. He showed us some some cheap aluminum paddle, I believe just to show us how horrible and heavy they are. He then showed me a wood paddle which looked nice. Then he showed us his own shop branded paddle which was carbon fiber, and we got all excited thinking this is the bees knees in quality. He assembled the paddle and handle with hot glue into adjustable shafts then we talked price. Without talking money here, he mentioned what "his" paddle retails for which was comparable to a high end brand name paddle. We balked at the price and he said he would knock off $100 dollars each paddle which still put his paddle on the brand name carbon fiber range of paddles. We then agreed at a price just slightly under what he was asking, which I thought was fair. Long story short, I've paddles roughly 20 miles on this paddle now and I knew something was wrong. The lower shaft is too short and the adjustment lock is exactly where my lower hand needs to be in order to get a good catch and submerge the entire paddle in the water without having to bend over too much. Also when making transitions I'm constantly grabbing the adjustment instead of the shaft. I thought I was going crazy so I asked Ralph and he didn't understand my problem and offered me solution of cutting the lower shaft to lower the adjustment knob so that I could grab the skinny upper shaft. This wasn't possible as I was only 2 inches from the end of the upper smaller shaft before it popped out. This also caused a lot of unwanted flex being so far extended. His next offer was for me to spend another $168 on a fixed shaft. I wasn't ok with this so I reached out to a couple local shops that sell all the brand name paddles. Each one saw this shaft and asked me if this shaft was for a little kid due to its length. We even compared his adjustable shaft to a few brand names and the kids models were at least 8 inches longer. My final plea was to ask for a refund. His response was sorry why don't you sell it, we only offer credit. If I'm lucky I'll be taking a $300 dollar hit if I'm able to sell both for the price I'm being told to ask for on craigslist. Minus 2 stars.
Not a good way to start into the sport. Ralph is a great guy and he has a nice little stash of boards in his shop, some new and some used. I would just say beware of his branded paddles. If you can't stand behind a product you slap you name on then I don't know what to say. Both of my paddles look brand new, besides the mess of hot glue and electrical tape holding on the handle and paddle. I'm going with 2 stars because "Meh. I've experienced better" is exactly that taste that's left in my mouth. read more
