Hey Sanoman great to hear your still loving the Rocket! yeh im still going Direct as well i understand an A/M hull is still a large investment and a lot of riders want to talk to the builder plus i like to stay in touch with the community and hear whats going on.
I hear what your saying KTM, people that know me no i never discredit other hull manufactures and that when i make a statement like the above one is because im very passionate about the sport and what im doing and i was probably a bit over excited haha I dont need to make statements like that to sell hulls my hulls have sold so well because they work and do what riders expect them to do.
I agree with what you said above about different riding styles, abilities and physical size so many riders out there buy A/M hulls and just bolt there running gear straight across then spend a lot of the time tuning the engine and not improving the overall setup.
If your anything like me once you get to the beach your that pumped all you want to do is ride not play with setups. The best advise i can give to riders changing to A/M hulls in particular is once you've been ridding your new setup a handful of times spend a session changing the pole lengths, or moving the footholds halfway up the tray, throw a d cut plate on the back or a +2 even the different intakes make a huge difference to loosing or tightening your boat up on the wave. Start to feel what changes it makes because only then will you get 100% of the capability of your new A/M setup. If all the above makes no sense dosnt matter what hull you ride drop me an email i dont mind helping.
Specs i think i put a few pages earlier 200cm long 72cm wide (rail to rail) 55cm high 48kg surf glass. The real specs are on the bottom and the types of things ive done to improve the handling on this hull are:
Ive rolled the tail outside edge up 50mm using a 2 degree radius of a 7'2 big wave surfboard.
The rails have also been rolled up to suit.
I went from 3 degrees draft in the tail to 10 back to 3 around the middle.
I added a new style of tail plate system from the footrocket to improve adjustability for all conditions of surf small medium and big.
All of these improvements are to increase balance and handling when your in the surf and a lot of R&D goes in to the hulls to maximize improvements. I know your not having a bash i guess some people make statements to sell things i was just giving my opinion based on the above take it or leave it.
I hope to be at Daytona this year so come grab me and ill get you on one of these things finally