Shipping was really quick from the US to here, about 5 days I believe, which is basically as good as it gets for worldwide delivery! He shipped it straight away and it came in a box, as it also came with my aphlikshun box 7. 10/10
First impressions of this deck were awesome, I got my favourite colour bottom ply! And not just that, but the most amazing exotic wood that's hard to describe other than it looks like a hologram. Simply beautiful, and looks soo nice with the deck! Everything looked nicely made too, and I loved the look of the shape. I noticed its a 32mm deck, but that's not a negative, just not my preference. 10/10
Craftsmanship of this deck is almost flawless. The shape is perfectly defined throughout the whole deck, and the deck is nicely pressed so its not too thick. The holes were all perfect, but for some reason I had a little bit of trouble getting the screws in, took a bit more effort than usual. Still, after 5 minutes or so I had them all in, so no big deal really. The deck was shaped nicely, but the edges of the board weren't rounded much. Not so they're sharp edges, just not as much as normal boards. I suppose at the end of the day its preference, and doesn't make the deck bad in any way, I just thought I'd mention it. One thing I did notice is around the extremes of the edges of the deck, the dyed bottom ply had little bits where the dye hadn't reached, so from a side view it looked a bit like bad painting. BUT, from the bottom the dye is perfect, and seeming as with use a side of a deck gets trashed anyway, it doesn't really matter and is purely aesthetic. 9/10
Performance of this deck is really nice, even for a 32mm deck. I find them too wide to use, but even so I could do all my tricks on this! its a low/medium kick, medium concave deck, with fairly short kicks that are about the same length as a blosom or a pop deck. Odd with a deck that is overall fairly long (its 100-101mm long) to have shorter kicks, but this worked really well nonetheless, and was a great ride. Super nice pop on this, the perfect amount really, as well as it being a really strong/solid deck. The lacquer is nice, its shiny, but not thick, and seemed to resist scratching away even when sliding on metal rails. I was really surprised with how nice this deck performed, especially being too wide and too deep for my preference, I got used to it really quickly. But, overall it was just in my oppinion too wide for normal use. 9.5/10
Overall this is a really nice deck, with some minor flaws in terms of craftsmanship both performance wise (more rounded edges could make the deck slightly lighter, as silly as it might sound to those of you who don't know your decks too well) and aesthetically (the dye being slightly inconsistent at the edges). Otherwise, its a solid deck which for these reasons doesn't get a perfect score, but a near perfect one. Shame also that it was too wide, but I know Aphlikshun offer their decks in a 30mm size as well, which would be perfect for my preference. I think Aphlikshun get pushed aside by a lot of people in the 'core' of the scene, who simply concentrate on places such as FFI. Its a shame though, because these are some of the nicest decks I've tried in a long time, and whilst they're not perfect, there are a lot worse decks out there. Great decks that support a solid company doing a lot for fingerboarding in the US - you could do worse than to pick one of these up! 9.25/10
You can go get these on the Aphlikshun site here. If you order from outside the US, their website will quote you a silly price for shipping, as they have problems with that. Just drop them an email and you'll be given a real and much more reasonable shipping cost. :)
