I have been giving the new nobile pads a fair old work out fore the last 6 or so months. I have found that the pad is good for some styles of riding but not so good for others. The base is nice the soft top layer with the harder inside is great for comfort and hard landings, a lot nicer than the hard white pads used in previous years.
The strap is where these pads suffer a bit, i do like the feel of the strap across the top of the foot and the pad does allow you to move around a fair bit which i like for carving. But no matter how hard you pull them down they wont hold your heal down on your board you just feel more presure on the toe which can become a bit painfull after a while riding.
The thin adjustment strap which will slip for a while to start with but does eventualy bed in tends to make the pad rock forward a fair bit, well to much, in a hard crash where your heals are lifted off the board first the strap can clamp down hard on your toes not allowing the board to come off your feet, which at the time feels like your toes are going to be ripped off.
As far as durability my straps allmost lasted the season, but i have just managed to break the adjustment strap, not the plastic buckle that i thought would go first but the actual strap. Lucky i had a spare set laying around.
I think if nobile put a decent width adjustment strap on these they would be a lot better.
Yeh I think the webbing used for the adjustment strap is a bit underdone, managed to break one of mine the other day getting smashed from a failed loop attempt.
The webbing gave way where it is stitched to the wider part of the strap that runs inside the padding (the bit the screw actually goes through) Waxy I'm guessing that your's probably failed the same way ???
Getting a replacement strap was no hassle at all thanks to Nobiles great warranty so all good, it would have been an easy fix anyway as the webbing just needed to be restitched and it could be beefed up a bit as well. Just thinking about it now I think it would be possible to fit a wider adjustment strap and buckle with a bit of help from an upholsterer to do the stitching.
It wasnt so much a failed trick that broke it but maby 200 failed tricks combined. They have taken a lot of abuse since i got them more than what i thought they would take so not so much disapointed in them but would like to see them beefed up a bit next year. I think for most riders they will still never break one.
I am currently riding a NHP ( 666 ) and like you guys found the straps to be woeful.... the pads feel great but the straps ....$h1thouse. ( found myself holding them on by lifting the toes )
I swapped mine over to my old setup which is the liquid force luxury footbeds with cab syc straps ( had to cut out part of the footbeds to get the straps on )
However I have just noticed that the Liqidforce pads have lost their cushion and so I am now thinking of modifying the original nobile footbeds to take the sync straps.
^^^^^^^ yeah the 2010 NHP but to be honest I probably still prefer my Shinn
The NHP is probably a bit better in the hard landings ( due to the rocker ) but the obvious trade off is the loss of speed over the Shinn and to me the board doesnt feel quite as responsive as the Shinn was. This could be due to the fact that the NHP is wider and also I had to go up to a 131cm from the 128cm Shinn to counter the extra rocker.
I am in the market for another Shinn board as my had a rather nasty altercation with a submerged rock....... do you mind me asking where you ordered yours from ? as I am having some difficulty in sourcing one through the usual avenues.
