Description
Pantheon Stylus 149mm TKP Trucks – Designed Without Compromise
The Pantheon 149mm Stylus Truck was designed from the ground up to be a longboard truck. It’s not a “street truck” adapted for longboards. It is a longboard truck made for carving excellence, control, grip, and precision. Sure, you can stick this on a street deck and even get away with grinding some coping. But if you’re going to grind on curbs, you’ll sadly be carving into your kingpins in no time. That is because we focused these trucks on designing a perfect fit and performance for our longboards, with no compromises made to this number one goal.
Pantheon Plug Bushings Define the Design
Our Stylus truck features a “plug bushing” in the roadside position. The only other TKP cast design we’ve ever seen do this are Tensor Trucks, although the concept is becoming more popular with RKP style designs for cast trucks of the modern era. Other products that have used similar concepts for improving precision in TKPs are like the inserts you could put in SurfRodz called “Surf Keys” or the spherical bearings added in the hanger of modified Bennett trucks. Simply put, we like a precise, lively turn, and we like the added benefits of increased grip provided by the improved precision of the plug bushing, so we decided to use this idea for our cast TKP truck. The world needed it.
Lastly about the bushings: They respond exceptionally to tightening them down with the kingpin. Think they’re riding too lively? Give them a half turn on the kingpin and see what happens. Getting wheelbite with your 102mm Hokus on the Pranayama? Tighten them down a touch. They will actually restrict the turn without killing the truck entirely. While our bushings are 92a, the lively geometry allows these trucks to be very active when they’re tightened down just enough to engage the bushings. My 10-year-old kid has tried them and finds that he can turn just fine. Tighten them down a little and you can take a bite out of the reactiveness. Swap out the bushings for a non-plug style and you’ll end up with a much less reactive truck more akin to other trucks you may have tried before.
Other Features
Other awesome features include faced hangers, so your bearings sit flush and true. A 55.75mm ride height is fairly low compared to any other TKP style truck that turns this well. These 397 gram trucks are quite light weight due to their design combined with hollow kingpins and axles.
And here’s the thing that I think we can be most proud of. These are probably the straightest axles you ever seen on a cast truck. What you get out of this is a more efficient roll, as your wheels will touch down evenly and as designed, and you get more grip!
There’s not much else to say. I look forward to you trying our trucks and (hopefully!) loving them. Please leave us a review after you’ve tested them out a bit, so that others can hear what you think! It’s not easy to bring a truck like this to market. It took us nearly 2 years to go from design to production trucks in hand. The Stylus Trucks are uncompromising. We are excited about these and hope you will be, too!
Tim of Glendale (verified owner) –
Bought these for my park/street/tech-slide setup. They have great turn and it’s awesome that they take the longboard bushings. They have clean edges and look great. My only complaints (why it’s not 5 stars) are:
1. So much wheelbite on a top mount. I have never had to crank down a set of bushings so much in my life. Even after i added a 5 degree wedge and tightened the bushings it still wheelbites on big slides.
2. The baseplate doesn’t really make much contact (compared to the wheels) on tail-slides. My wheels are getting eaten up on tail and nose-slides but the baseplate is spared…. not good. I know they weren’t really made with this kind of skating in mind though.
Jeff Vyain –
Hi Tim, thanks for the review! Interesting feedback, given the use case that you purchased the trucks for. I cannot help with the baseplate not grinding on tail slides. Like you said, this wasn’t really what we had in mind for the trucks. BUT hopefully this helps on the wheelbite front: have you tried putting a cupped washer boardside? Again, we really focused on depth of turn for our drop-through decks, so we equipped with flat washers. But we have found that swapping for a cupped washer still gives the truck a pretty loose and playful range of motion but provides more of a stopping point. We have found this helps with fitting the 102mm wheels on our Pranayama for heavier riders for which tightening down the truck a little bit doesn’t work, but it may help in your case as well. Worth a shot!
Also remember that because you have standard height bushing trucks, a lot of options may be open to you for swapping bushings that can limit the truck a bit, from just harder barrels to Riptide fat cones and chubbies. I’m sure you can find something that works!
Matt Higgs (verified owner) –
I have been riding the Pantheon 149 mm TKP trucks for a little over a week, for commuting and some short distance rides, so these are my early impressions. I have them on a Trip that has been re-drilled to put the trucks almost in the proper Pranayama position, with McFly wheels. Compared to the Paris Street trucks, to me the Pantheon trucks feel a little more stable, with a little less sketchiness in small slides. They are slightly lower than the Paris, which is nice except that there is basically no room for drop-through wedging/dewedging without making the board too low. They also seem to give slightly more wheel clearance. The supplied bushings have good rebound, and the stepped boardside bushing fits perfectly in the hanger and makes a nice tight package with limited slop. For me (160 pounds), the bushings are just right in back but a little too hard in front, but this is no problem because the trucks accommodate standard longboard bushings. Switching to a Nuckle bushing roadside in front made it about right for me. The pivot seems to fit a little tighter than the Paris, which probably also reduces slop. Overall, these trucks seem like a bit of an upgrade from the Paris, and I would recommend them. It would also be very cool if Jeff could offer a good, basic (probably cast) low-angle rear truck that eliminates the drawbacks of existing products (rattling sphericals, difficult disassembly, flimsy tail designs, very high prices, etc). I wonder whether this TKP design could be reconfigured to a low-angle rear truck, tipping everything to reduce the steering angle by about 20-25 degrees while keeping the axle in the right position for a Pantheon pusher?
Paul E Alexandrou (verified owner) –
I’m writing this review to all the skaters who freeride the hills of San Francisco, Seattle, Portland and all up and down the Pacific Coast. Pantheon Longboards just revolutionized our discipline with their Standard Truck!
Been riding them consistently every day since I’ve had them, and after only ever feeling comfortable riding fast on RPK trucks, this 8.5” wonder took all the jitters out of going fast. The incredibly precise response they have and return to center on any slight over or under correction of weight distribution had me gunnin for more speed. This got me thinking. Is this truck going to change the game? I don’t put this mildly. I understand that trucks are difficult to review in general with all the different riding preferences. However when standing on any of my other trucks, be it Ace, Indy, Mini Logo, and gullwing, the Pantheon STD truck makes all the others feel dead.
Finally found a std truck for my 17”wb double kick to shred the streets of SF on. And they match rail on a 9” deck with Snakes! Thanks again Jeff for all the due diligence and research with all the product line to insure the absolute best experience the rider can have!