Splitboard.com Forums

Anyone used these?

Are they any good or are they a useless piece of $35 plastic?

AFAIK, they are out of stock anyway?

Would also like to know as I talked to Bryce and he said they should be making some more over the holidays.

I'd like a set too. My Split30s give me hotfoot somehow. Not sure of the cause, but I get a tingly-burning sensation on the ball of my foot when I am skinning up. This does not happen with my Sparks using the same boots. I have even run one Spark and one Karakoram binding (on the same board) a number of times and the foot with the Split30 is always a little less comfortable. The only obvious differences are all the cutouts in the K baseplate, and the lack of a toe ramp.

I decided to make my own toe ramp for the time being. I used plastic lumber and with a little Skil- and jig-sawing, a little Dremel'ing and grinding, I made something passable. The ramp is 15 degrees, and may prove too steep. I may grind it down to about 10 if it feels funny. If I like it enough I will also recess the T-nuts on the top flush and smooth some edges.



Aggressive cutouts are necessary to clear all the stuff poking up from the touring brackets that guide the binding down into the groove.











The K bro's is a lot longer (rearward), and I cannot see that it tapers a lot in back, though it is hard to tell from the photo on the site.

I've had one short trip out on these so far. When riding, the toe side response is definitely improved. I think the ramp is a little too steep though. When I first started out in tour mode I thought 'whoah, that's a big lump,' but I forgot it was there after a few minutes and it ended up pretty comfortable, and I definitely liked the support when in ride mode. A ~10 degree slope would be better though. I think it helped a little with the hotfoot when touring, but it's possible that part of that discomfort is due to the wide gap in the base plate just behind the metatarsals and not the lack of toe support on the stock bindings (or a combo of the two). I'm going to make a new ramp at 10 degrees and maybe extend it back a little. I doubt I will go back to not having any toe ramp at all on these bindings in any case.

Here's what I assume will be the final. A 10 degree slope. The rest of the shape is pretty close to the earlier one.







I noticed that the plastic prongs sticking up from the front end of the touring bracket actually stuck pretty far above the binding base when the binding pivoted forward, and it was wearing notches in the sole of my boots. The toe ramp keeps my boot above the points of the touring bracket pieces now:

I guess I'm going to have to give that a try.

While it did help a little with toe-side edging and alleviated the touring bracket posts from poking into my boots, it never really solved my metatarsal burn issue. I went back to my Sparks and am happier with those. Ymmv.

Cheers