VegasHockey

FT4 Pro, FT4, FT485 and FT7=475 are the models available.

No replacement for a quality product. 🙂

As someone that is both a player and also own a store I will provide you my perspective. As a store owner: I feel investing in steel at his age comes with limited returns. He wont see much performance gain out of his steel unless he is skating 5 days week at a AA/AAA level. This is especially true if you have access to sharpen them with relative ease. Most likely he will likely grow out of those skates and therefore wont be able to use that steel with his new skates due to size differences. 3.5 skates use a different size steel than 4.0/4.5 which he will likely be using before end of the year. As a player: There is no replacement for good steel and someone who knows how to do a good sharpening.

I am a huge fan of these. Best bang for your buck.

A Jetspeed FT2 EE would fit very close to a Tacks D, though i think youll still get better heel lock in the Tacks due to the thicker foams used.

Just a heads up. The new store opened May 1. Things have been really good and I am very happy with our first months progress. 🙂 Website: http://penaltyboxhockey.com Yelp: https://yelp.com/biz/the-penalty-box-las-vegas Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/penaltyboxhockeyshops Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/PenaltyBoxHockeyShops

Maybe @JR Boucicaut and I can partner to help out the community with such. Always happy to help out any way I can.

Not available on pro custom or mybauer custom. This is correct. However, Bauer is scaling back considerably on the number of options they offer. CCM is also doing the same. I think TRUE allows just the right amount of options. The issue with giving players too many options is many times they select features that actually conflict with the skate design. I have seen far too many players have buyers remorse after going "nuts" with options. These companies spend millions of dollars on research and development. While I understand everyone has different needs a player should not gravitate significantly from the overall boot design. If you are, then you are likely selecting the wrong skate to begin with.

Correct, starting in 2020 they eliminated that injected eyelets from the Supreme lines of skates. This was toe help further differentiate the Vapor and Supreme line of skates. My understanding is the 2021 Vapor line will also no longer be available with standard eyelets at the custom level. I am still waiting on confirmation from our Bauer rep.

The tapered fit would be very similar to a standard D Jetspeed FT1/FT2. You're welcome. The Jetspeed is a composite, but not full carbon composite. This is because they needed the boot to be slightly more flexible.

TRUE customs should not really need a "break-in" period. That being said, there is always a period of time when you are acclimating to a new skate so perhaps it's just you become more adjusted to new skates and the skate itself not "breaking in."

Custom does not allow either skate to have injected laces. Only the Vapor can you select between standard and injected eyelets, Supreme only has the option for standard eyelets.

My source? I own a store. http://penaltyboxhockey.com The closest you can get similar lasts between models is if you go full custom. Even then the last will have subtle differences since the boots are made from different materials and have different design elements, symmetrical vs asymmetrical, for example.

I could see some goalies wanting to use that hollow but I have yet to have any player request a 5/16 in my lifetime. In fact, if a player asked for that I would likely attempt to try and talk him out of using such an aggressive cut.

Changing the wheel on Sparx is easy but it still takes more time compared to me redressing the wheel for a new hollow. That would be acceptable if there wasn't also a cost penalty for using their proprietary wheels. If Sparx could get the cost down to $1 a sharpen that would be acceptable but from the math I did when I owned the stores in WA the overhead cost was more like $2.75 per sharpen. I was told all Pure Hockey stores will be transitioning to Sparx from other brands (Blackstone and ProSharp) to provide a consistent experience. I think this is a good move for Pure Hockey since most of the workers at their stores are 16-18 years of age and really dont give a crap about skate sharpening. They just want/need a job an dont care about the art of skate sharpening or profiling.

This is correct. From what I have seen in store fitting players for TF7/9 skates that they usually go with a 0.5 size larger when selecting a TF7 over the TF9. I think this is dude to the tongue and because the TF9 is slightly more thermoformable than the TF7.

You can get reinforced Jetspeed skates but it does not change the structural composition of the boot.

Ehhhhh. It looks like a newer model of Dupliskate. I cannot imagine something so big and clunky is going to be affordable. TBH, I am not a fan of this machine from what I have seen. Think about the nightmare it must be to change hollows when needed since it uses a diamond encrusted wheel. Thats always been my biggest complaint when it comes to Blackstone spinners, Sparx, and ProSharp SkatePal machines. If you are a shop that does 100 sharpenings daily and 95% of them are 1/2" then its not a big deal, but if you do an equal amount of 3/8, 1/2, 5/8, 3/4 and such then this would make me very frustrated. Maybe this unit was intended to handle high capacity stores where you have 2 or 3 machines. Then you can use this to handle your most common hollows, 1/2 and 5/8, while using a hand held to do anything that falls outside of that scope.

You know the saying "too smart for your own good." Thats what comes to mind. Most times these things are only in your head and are only issues because you have made them issues consciously or subconsciously. I know this because I myself have OCD and tend to hang on "little things" instead of looking at the "big picture."

Most of the time, one side of holes line up.

Testing has shown the TRUE holders to be stiffer than TUUK and XS, so I am not sure if I agree with your "feeling." I like them just fine. If I stuck with 3mm wide steel I would rep the SHIFT holder all day long. However I am one of the few on the Flare bandwagon.

A profile would have easily fixed this, but I am glad you got this resolved regardless.

No way of properly doing this in the current generation of skates without damaging the boot.

This is already happening. Look at the new 100k skates.

They have some interesting machines that look like a hybrid between SSM and ProSharp. I have never heard of them before and while surfing the web came across their site. https://parduc.com/en/15-sharpening-machines