Author Topic: Head Rev 85 review  (Read 2915 times)

LivingProof

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Re: Head Rev 85 review
« on: March 13, 2013, 05:17:20 pm »
Did my first day on the new Rev 85 pro today. It was a tale of two cites, or, perhaps, the worst of times, the best of times. Not about the skis, about the conditions. Yesterday, it poured rain and was foggy, my home mountain froze overnight and was groomed, a little. For the first 90 minutes, it was boilerplate, slowly softened, and, by early afternoon, the mountain skied very well.

At day's start, even the racers were going slow. The Rev's held their own, given the technique of the driver. Better on hard snow and death cookies than I would have expected. They were skied without any tuning other than the factory tune. I hate the noise made when skis just slide all over the place. Little vibration, the dampness in the ski showed very nicely. Was a positive experience given how tough the conditions were.
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As the snow soften, the Rev's showed as a very nice, neutral ski. Lighter than traditional sandwich construction Head and Hart skis in the quiver. Did not find a speed limit, easily went through piles of crud on the lower mountain. Predictable with longer radius turns, the radius is 15.9. More of a GS cruiser. They get from edge to edge closer to a narrow ski than a wider skis, nowhere near as cumbersome of wider skis I've been on. It's a forgiving ski, far less stiff than the Pules and last years Sultan. All in all, they compare favorably with the Hart Pulse, Pulse better in hard snow, Rev's more comfortable in soft crud - what one would expect from these similar, but, different skis. The nice broad tip of the Rev promises to be a much better ski in the west, I'm thinking it would handle moderate powder very nicely.

Of interest was I had a fall where a ski came off. Putting them back on, I must have switched skis and the result was one ski just had no edge holding power. Switched skis, everything was fine...came home and did some edge work. The resulting clean smooth edges were far better than the original factory tune. I should have known better than to ski the factory tune and should have worked the edges prior to going out on day one. Another  find was that the skis were bought on ebay from a distributor and not a ski shop. There was a dime sized area in the base that had perforations, not deep, not as bad as a good rock hit, so, I'm thinking Head considered this as a defect and the skis became "blems". Very easy ptex repair to correct.

So, at the end of day one, I am smiling. Just a very nice ski. One of the people I skied with was demoing an Elan 888 and was not at all happy, but, he demo'd the Rev a few days ago and was very positive about it. He stated next years model has minimal changes - different graphics with minor changes, will drop the "Pro" designation, slightly different tip and tail trim and a lengthening of the turn radius. Pretty much the same ski.

Can't wait till Montana in another week to continue the relationship.