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I think you are on it. I have a "mechanical" background but limited overall skate and foot knowledge, so with that I see for my son there are two permanent ways to deal with the pronate issue. One is to move the holder to offset the pronate issue. We did this with the Graf's. Worked for a while and might work better with a stiffer skate if his flat feet did not hurt in say a Vapor. The other is to build a boot that deals directly with the issue. I have read on these forums and others about using wedges, etc., to compensate. I tried those fixes and consider those more as a temporary fix. I saw the MLX skate and quite frankly would have tried it on him if it were still available. Like the idea of an adjustable position holder, especially for kids skates where they outgrow them every 6 months. My bottom line is that from what I see now, I would prefer based on my son's feedback and improved skating that the custom boot is our first choice. It forces the foot to line up more as nature intended. Moving the holder to me is more of a bandage as the foot is still pronating. I am no expert but VH seems to have nailed it for us. Best of luck when you get your new VH's. I am sure you will love them.

I would also add this: 1. Before sending in the order take a lot of pictures to send with the drawings. We had Ian at Kennebec Skate Shop take additional front, side and rear barefoot shots to show visually how bad his pronate issue is. 2. Understand that since the weight distribution might be different and the fit will be different, it might take 4-5 skates to get comfortable with them. My son thought they felt weird for the first few skates, then the next time he comes home from practice and says "I love these skates, they are so comfortable". Now when I watch him play, I can visually see the improvement in his skating. I am a very picky consumer and I can say with confidence that this was a wise purchase and I would do it again in a second. Money well spent.

Ramble warning: I don't think that they moved the blade to deal with the pronate issue. They compensated by building a better boot to address this specific issue. I want to first state a disclaimer: My son is the one wearing these skates, not me. I have watched him skate from 5 years old to now (17) so I have a pretty good idea what his issues are but the comments on comfort are from him. His main pronate issue is with his right foot. Prior to making any modifications, we had him wear Graf 703 in narrow (also has flat feet, so the 703 was the only skate that had no pain) to try and lock his foot into the boot. That would work for a while and then as the boot softened up the pronate would get worse and worse and become visually noticeable (in the olden days we'd say the kid has weak ankles). It would start to affect his skating as he was only using the inner edge of his right skate blade and when real bad he would almost touch the inside wall of the outer boot to the ice when doing a quick pivot backwards. We moved the blade holder inward slightly to change the center of his weight distribution and that worked for a while but the issues kept coming back. With the VH skates, to the naked eye, they have not moved the holder to compensate. It looks to me that the holder is even with the center of his leg if you draw a line down from his thigh to the bottom of his foot. VH also said after receiving his drawings that they would not need to alter the holder location. What they did is build up the inner boot with padding so the ankle would not "roll" inward due to the pronate issue. So instead of compensating for the issue by changing the holder and therefore the weight distribution, VH altered the boot to stop the ankle from rolling inward. There is additional padding from about where the ankle bone protrudes down to the start of the bottom of the foot, all designed to keep the ankle from rolling in. The other piece of this I think is the stiffness of the boot. He can't wear other stiff skates like Vapors because of his flat feet so the Graf's would soften and then everything would go bad. The VH skates are stiff and we opted for the shot blockers to make them even stiffer. I think the other part of this fix is that since there is no space between the foot and boot, so there is virtually no room to move and start to push and stretch the boot like happened to his Graf's. In other words, the boot is forcing his foot to lay flat on the foot bed and not roll out of alignment. The best byproduct of all of this is that his skating has noticeably improved. As I mentioned I have watched him for 12 years and know his skating better than anyone. The benefits I see and he has confirmed include: 1. Faster forward straight line speed. Lighter boot than Graf and better power transfer. 2. Better use of edges. He now uses the inside and outside edges of both skates, whereas he did not use the outside edge of his right skate as it softened up and began to pronate more severally. 3. Biggest difference is his forward to backward pivot and backward skating. Previously when he pivoted to backward skating he was always searching for balance to compensate for the pronate issue with his right skate, which slowed him down. Now he does not need to worry about that so he pivots faster and get's up to speed faster. He has now worn these skates about 6 weeks or about 30 skating sessions of games, team practices and captains practices. He raves about the skates, feels he is a much better and faster skater and still can't believe how comfortable the skates are. Here is my bottom line. I wish I had bought these for him years ago when we first saw Bguffelin wear them.

I think the guy who does the Gatorade delivery to the 7-11 around the corner from my office kicked the bucket. I think his name was Wally.