were to place bindings? more forward,or back??

[hoffmac11]

so in the never ending quest to find the set up that works the best, were would you put your bindings if they couldnt be perfectly centered on the board? would you want to place them more towards the nose, or more towards the tail??

reason im asking is because i just moved my front binding towards the tail to reduce my stance to 20.5 and i noticed that the board started to make bigger/longer carves..which was expected but i only moved the binding back a 1/2..so i was suprised the noticable differenace and such a small change..

also, for the canting disk, why not have the front binding have heel lift, instead of toe lift? and to be sure, the cant disk is suppose to be in line with your toes/heel, and not the centerline of the snowboard..or at least thats where one should start

[Mike T]

Answering your second question first: I've seen few folks use heel lift on both feet. It worked for them. Just for yucks I set a board up like that, and felt very unbalanced for the 4 or 5 runs that I stuck it out for. Board went back into the car after that and I chose another weapon. FWIW I ride a flat front foot and my back foot is lifted 3-6 degrees depending on board and bindings, more or less in line with my feet.

As for your first question: "it depends". On some boards I like to be in front of center, on some boards I like to be behind center, on some I prefer dead center. Even among boards from the same builder/manufacturer, my tastes vary. Kinda depends on the flex of the particular board.

[tex1230]

Move the bindings around and see what works best. I personally find it depends on the board, but 8 times out of 10 I mount slightly towards the nose.

As for canting, just do what feels comfortable. I find inward canting (toe/outside foot lift front, heel/outside foot lift rear) works best for me, but it depends on your individual comfort.

[hoffmac11]

seems like my questions are all the preferance of the rider, which i kind of figured that it would be...well, back to the mountain for some more playing around with the set up..

[Hilux]

In experimenting with newer setups, I personally prefer a bit of setback and just shift weight forward when needed. On my new board I had it perfectly centered at first but after trying it out I pushed everything back 1/2" and it felt that much better for me. I think your feeling/observations are correct in that small changes can make dramatic differences. One thing I've learned is to try to make one small adjustment at a time instead of many. And yes, a lot of this is personal preference but it never hurts getting other opinions.

[crucible]

I also find that the type of terrain that you like to ride and the type of snow that you encounter also have some bearing on binding placement.

For the steep terrain and high moisture snow that we get in the Pacific Northwest, I like my bindings to be between 1/2" or 3/4" off of center, to the rear of the board and in the last 4 binding inserts.