I bought whatever the guy at a local skate shop recommended. It was fine, but I changed a lot of things within the first few months anyway. I think you should decide for yourself what you want.
1) Pick an appropriate width for your deck and trucks. I feel like 8.25 is a good all around width. Go wider if you are large or do mostly cruising or transition. Go a bit narrower if you are small or want to do more slow and technical stuff. Think a little bit on this, because the width affects your trucks which should hopefully last a while.
2a) Buy a complete in your desired width. Upgrade parts as they wear out or you desire.
2b) Assemble your own board. The deck company or subtle shape differences don't matter much, since decks wear out fairly quickly if you actually skate a lot. Just buy a fairly standard popsicle with a nice graphic.
Grip tape wears out with the deck and you'll probably have a chance to try many different types, so don't obsess about it.
If you are going to obsess and research, obsess and research over the trucks since those will last a while. Thunders and Independents are very common hard to beat. Ventures also have a lot of fans, but I didn't like the turning. "LIght" versions of trucks are often not much more than standards, so buy lights now if that sounds worthwhile to you.
The cheap alloy Tensors are a decent budget option, but stay away from Mag Light LOWs. The Mag Light ATGs are actually quite nice, and the lightest truck you can buy (besides the Mag Light LOWs which have issues).
In my opinion, you should should start off with either Independent, Thunder, or Venture. If weight matters more than a little bit of money, get "Light" versions, or some Tensor Mag Light ATGs. If you are on a budget, the Tensor alloys work pretty well. I'm sure there are other budget options that are ok, but nothing I have tried.
You can probably just buy some cheap wheels for now, at around 52mm, 99 to 101a. They will probably wear down before the wheel shape and formula really matters to you, so don't obsess about that now. Or spend the next three months researching wheel shapes and compounds, only to realize that you can't skate well enough for it to matter, and that you could have been skating for the past three months.
No need to over spend on bearings. In my opinion, Mini-Logo bearings are decent, cheap, and widely available. If you decide to upgrade bearings later, you aren't out that much money.
Hardware doesn't matter, as long as it is long enough. Buy 1 or 1 1/8 inch to give a little extra room for a riser if necessary.
3) Pick up some extra 56ish mm, wide, soft wheels, along with another set of bearings. You cannot skate around easily on rock hard 52mm wheels. Trying to compromise just leaves you with wheels to big and/or soft for tricks, but to small and/or hard to cruise on.
In my opinion, an extra set of "semi-cruiser" wheels are well worth it. I use 56mm 85a Bones G-slides, but there are other choices. Sometimes I wish I would have gone a little softer (78-80a), but the G-slides do still allow some goofing around and slide braking on hills.
Pick something soft, wide, and large, but not so large to need a huge riser. With any luck, 56mm will fit and not need any riser.
4) If you are ordering online, consider also buying some 1/8inch riser pads. You might not need them, but then again you might.
5) You'll definitely need a skate tools, and you may want some wax. I actually use wax to make a little mark or symbol on the nose of my board. Gulf wax is cheaper than skate wax and seems to work just fine.
Now you should have a skateboard (or all the parts of a skateboard) plus one extra set of wheels and bearings. Use the big wheels to get around smoothly, and the small wheels for learning tricks.
Topic: How did you choose your first board? (Read 2933 times)