Pantheon – Fantail Cruiser – Deck

Pantheon Longboards – Fantail Cruiser – Skateboard Deck

The Fantail Cruiser pushes the limits of what a cruiser deck can be!

Pantheon’s Fantail Cruiser is a do-it-all style board that crosses boundaries when compared to today’s cruiser decks. We took notes over the years from the community and followed what skaters are into. The Fantail Cruiser is a classic Pantheon offering, taking into account what makes a board like this fun to skate. It’s a lot of nuance packaged into something beautiful.

CONCAVE
The concave and curvature of the Fantail Cruiser is what this board is about. Not only is the deck a sort of modern fish shape, but we’ve pack a super tiny crescent shaped micro drop in the front and back at the truck mounts, and we managed to beautifully swoop the curves along the entire length of the deck. You’re not going to see the drop. You’re not going to be impeded by the drop. But you will feel it. The concave is a medium classic radial. The tail swoops up off the back of the deck in a way that combines all the curvatures perfectly. You are riding a perfect meld of aesthetic and functional wood craft, and you can shred it.

CONSTRUCTION
The Fantail Cruiser is a 6 ply maple construction. We put triaxial fiberglass underneath the top and bottom layers of maple to functionally make this board as strong as an 8 ply but not as heavy. The glass and epoxy construction make the Fantail exceptionally weather proof. You can shred this thing anywhere at any time and not worry too much.

CONCEPT
Cruisers are a ubiquitous design for just about any longboard company. We’ve been making boards since 2014, so why haven’t we come up with a cruiser until 2023?! Well, conceptually, Pantheon boards are boards of specificity, and we like doing things perfectly. It took quite a while to come up with a way to make this board special. We’ve tested several shapes and molds in past years, and if riding a board doesn’t create a unique and exemplary experience, it doesn’t make it into our lineup. That’s where the Fantail Cruiser comes in. What we wanted was beauty, a unique feel, and a shape that doesn’t create limitations where a lot of cruiser decks do.

Most cruisers are tiny, and tiny boards can be fun, but they can also be scary. They aren’t particularly great decks to learn on, and great skaters can show them off, but novice skaters often find themselves getting hurt or just not being able to do much beyond cruise slowly on these decks. The Fantail starts off from a more forgiving space already by increasing the wheelbase to 19.2 inches. A larger wheelbase is more stable, and having more space on the board gives riders room to shift their balance without falling over the front or falling off the back end.

The micro drops are small enough that you can stand right over the top, but you will feel it enough to always know where you are on the board. Between the curvature of the micro drops, the sweeping rails, and the tail, you never have to look at your feet on this board. But if you do, you’ll be standing on top of something sexy!

The overall footpace on the Fantail Cruiser is such that most riders will feel comfortable standing right on top of the trucks or slung back just a touch with the front foot in the micro drop and the real foot in the swooping tail. Riders with small stances may even find that they can slide the board around with both feet inside the drops. The Fantail does an excellent job of having features without making those features impediments.

SETUPS
We set up the Fantail with two sort of baseline setups in mind. Traditional street trucks are a great setup on this deck, but because it has a large wheelbase, we like to set this board up with wedges for general cruising. With this, you get a more active turn, and it essentially rides like a smaller wheelbase board with the benefit of having a large cruiser platform. This makes the board super fun but also confidence inspiring! With traditional kingpin trucks and wedges, expect to be able to ride between 65-70mm wheels without wheelbite. If you drop the wedges, you may need to change bushings to avoid wheelbite with larger wheels.

Our other setup of liking is with RKP trucks. The 19.2″ wheelbase is just the right size to level up your turn with an RKP truck on a cruiser deck. Again, smaller wheelbases can get squirrely when you make them too turny, but with the Fantail’s larger wheelbase, a small RKP truck feels right at home. This turns the board into a cruiser that can really be treated like a freeride board. It lowers the kick angle a touch, making smaller ollies even easier (although for a big ollie, it’s usually best to have the steeper kick angle of the street trucks), and adds a ton of control and stability to the setup. Now, it’s quite a bit more than a cruiser. Other benefits of RKP trucks on the Fantail are that you can more easily fit larger wheels. If you want to get silly with this thing, throw some fat square lips on it.

Length: 33.75 inches
Width: 9″ at the belly, 8.75″ at the front heel, 8″ over the back bolts
Wheelbase: 19.2 inches
Concave: Medium Radial, Shallow Microdrops
Features: Wheel wells, flush mounts
Construction: 6 ply maple, 2x triaxial fiberglass, epoxy laminat3