On Feb 11, 6:41 am, speede541 wrote:
Wow, not much love for the Cinch in this thread. What's up?

I relatively new to snowboarding (started last winter), and mid-season
went the route of a conventional Burton for my front foot and a Cinch
for my rear. Can't say I notice a difference in control of the board,
and love the ease of getting in/out.

I haven't tried the Flow design, but have been led to believe that
while more comfy, it's not as precise as a conventional binding (or
Cinch, for that matter) -- especially for us bigger guys.

So clue me in: what's the gripe?

Hi Speed, my friend has a Cinch (he used to have FLOWs). From my point
of view, the Cinch idea is not bad, but the Cinch designs from last
season were just not that well made, in particular the materials for
the baseplate and highback were all really low-grade and flimsy (I
could twist the baseplate/highback with one hand). For instance, the
toestrap pad on my friend's Cinch is always coming off after only
about 20-30 days of riding and I think the highback catches on his
boot heel a bit. Since you are new to snowboarding, you probably
wouldn't have noticed it as much. I did notice that this year's stuff
is better (cheap and better materials) so I think the cost of making
the Cinch system took a lot of money in the first year models and so
they skimped on the construction. Now that they are making more of the
bindings they can afford to improve materials as they can more easily
amortize the research costs with economies of scale.

As for FLOWS and Cinch, from my friend's comments FLOWS/Cinch can be
very precise if they are well micro adjusted for your boot (like an
hour over the first day or two). Oh course, there are FLOW/Cinch
zealosts, and FLOW/Cinch haters, so it's difficult to get a straight
answer out of anyone and I personally have not tried the bindings yet
myself (there are a few more strap bindings I would like to try before
I move onto the hybrid step-ins hopefully by then the Cinch will be
really solid - as like what I'm told the FLOWs are now compared to the
flimsy ones I tried in the late 90's).