Okay so after 2.5 months of heavy usage, here are my thoughts on Bigfoot.
The Unity Super Single gives this thing so much power, and I love it. I kinda feel like my other singles are all in another category now, none of them have as much oomph. I feel like this design pattern will be replicated.
The lighting system has some sort of undiagnosed problem where on hard bumps, the white front light gets super bright briefly, but the rear one doesn’t. Odd, since they are fucking wired in series. The exact same current is flowing across all 4 diode junctions, so I’m not sure how the front two LEDs can suddenly get real bright while the back 2 don’t. This is warping my brain trying to figure out what failure mode can cause this symptom. It’s not breaking anything though, so… yeah… it’s been left alone.
The wheels are pretty good, shame those aren’t available.
The grabber is nice occasionally, but not nice enough to replicate again.
The deck. Okay, where do I start? I’m not impressed with the Alva deck. There, I said it. I tried it, I gave it a great chance, and I tried to like it. The Powell Peralta Bones Brigade Reissue decks seem better in every way. The tail is too rounded and has too steep an angle, and is slightly too short. The nose is turned up, which makes the handle funny and long. The deck isn’t as wide in the front as, say, the “bottlenose” variant of the Powell Peralta Mike McGill Skull and Snake Reissue deck. So, I have been considering doing a deck swap or recycling the skate for its wheels and ESC. Especially with the Boardnamics BN145 hangers due next month.
Overall, this skate gets an “A-”, one of the better ones I’ve made. The deck brought that down from an A+.
The handle is broken and the grabber is bent a little and the lights don’t work. The drivetrain still appears to work. This one is going to need some service to check the inside.
It would appear the handle and grabber absorbed most of the impact forces.
And my right hand is leaking in about 3 places and my left elbow hurts a lot.
It’s great (fantastic actually) electrically but has a whole bunch of mechanical issues, not the least of which is that the motor is epoxied together and can’t be disassembled for service or battle hardening, making it essentially disposable. So, I would pass (not buy directly from Reacher) unless you can get one from a custom batch where those problems were addressed.
edit: 2022 update: these problems have all been solved by the manufacturer on newer models