Bustin the Sound Barrier -- Bustin Royce Premier Formula Review

Hello Beautiful People,

   Bustin Boards always hooks me up, and they recently sent me a set of their newest wheels the Royce Premier Formula. These are the pro-series version of the original Bustin Premier Formula wheels made by none other than Bustin's own Will Royce.

   For those of you who don't know who Mr. Royce is, check him out shredding it up here:

   The Royce wheels are a lot like the normal Premiers with a few key differences that make them all the more chocked full of rad-ness. Royces come in one size and two durometers. These wheels are 75mm in diameter with a 62mm contact path. Basically these wheels are quite large, I mean huge muthas, haha. The two durometer options are 78a and 82a, so you basically have soft or hard to choose from. They have hard squared lips and are offset in shape.

 I thought that the regular Premier formula wheels were fast.... Well.... Uh.... These wheels completely smoke them. These are some of the fastest wheels I have ever ridden. I mean runs I normally hit with other wheels are all of a sudden scary adrenaline filled events again. These wheels kick downhill speed up a notch.
    To put it in perspective, the UNC Longboarding Club has an Evo with big ol' Centrax on it for downhilling. My Ibach with Royces on it was just as fast if not faster than the Centraxes which was shocking. I didn't think that any wheel could touch them in a contest of straight up speed. Part of that is because I have the 82a wheels and harder wheels are faster than softer wheels (the Centrax are softer), but still, the Centrax are 2mm bigger and have way more mass to them, which gives them more momentum. Anyways, the thesis of this anecdote being that Royces are freaking fast.

Centrax

   As crazy fast downhill wheels Royces are champions in my eyes, however, let's talk about the other aspects of riding  on these wheels. Like I said that these wheels are ginormous. Alright, for commuting they have a huge plus and a bit of a con. The con and it's a little obvious is that they take some work to get moving. Having such a hefty weight behind them means you gotta push to get them moving. However, here comes the plus side, once they are moving they hold that momentum forever. So once you get them going you can coast for soooooo long, which is kinda awesome, and allows for some serious surfy style points.
   Royces have hard squared lips and a nice sticky formula which means that they grip like crazy. This means two things. The first, is that they grip insanely well, and the second, is that they can pump them like crazy! I mean you can thrash these bad boys to the left and to the right as hard as you want without them breaking. You can really build up some momentum solely through pumping on Royces. These wheels are a little heavy being 75mm and pretty wide. So I wouldn't recommend for freestyle longboarding simply because they are a little weighty.
   Now to answer the other question anyone has about a longboard wheel... How do they slide? Obviously these wheels need to be broken in before they break into clean slides. My set, 82a, took some serious work to break in, but once I reached that point the slides started getting easier and cleaner. Initially the slides are really chattery and bouncey. However, as you wear the lips down a bit and break the wheels in the slides initiate more cleanly and drift more predictably. My set is probably not 100% broken in yet, but they are right where I want them to be, which is a wheel that I can slide in an emergency situation to kill speed or play around with at lower speeds and not get bucked, but also a wheel that will still grip when flying through a turn.

   Would I recommend these wheels??? That's a definite yes! I would not recommend them for someone looking for a light freestyle wheel that will break into a slide with no effort, however, anyone looking for a downhill wheel should check these out!There wheels are sooooo fast. I mean super fast, I mean really really really fast. They can corner hard, they hold speed forever, and the can broken in to hit some nasty slides. I have really enjoyed them and I think I will continue to do so for quite some time!
Bustin you have really come out with some sick wheels lately, and these can be added to your list of rad wheels.