Here at Skateboard-City HQ we’ve been lucky to have a pack of bearings sent through to us from our friends over in California, SkateAmerica.com.
Your board’s going nowhere without a good set of bearings, and when looking at any hardware you’re thinking of buying for your skateboard it’s important to look at who’s behind them – who has designed the product and should you trust them? Do they really know what they’re talking about? In the case of Andale Bearings, it’s safe to say all your rolling needs are in safe hands, with multiple Manny Mania winner and Cliché pro Joey Brezinski, and multiple Street League winning Paul “P-Rod” Rodriguez as the co-founders of the company.
What we’re looking at here are the Andale Swiss, the most expensive of the bearings Andale have to offer from their range of ABEC 5, ABEC 7, and Swiss bearings. We have touched on the ABEC rating system for bearings in our Bones Reds article, and mentioned how it has fairly little relevance to skateboard bearings, but what about Swiss bearings? What is a Swiss bearing? Are they better than any other bearing…?
The answer, sadly, is that it’s often almost impossible to answer that question, because other than being made in Switzerland there are no set specifications to which they bearings have to be made, or standard to which they need to perform. You could technically have a budget Swiss bearing that performs worse than a Chinese made ABEC 3 bearing… Although word would soon get out to avoid them if that was the case.
So why put Swiss on the box at all? As far as i can tell the only reason is because over years the word Swiss has become synonymous with quality, so do the Andale Swiss deliver?
These bearings don’t immediately say quality when you get the packaging, very plain, simple, almost cheap packaging, the sort of thing any teenager could design in a few hours, and opening the package you find nothing but the bearings… No useless leaflet (hooray) but also no free sticker (booo!), they come with no washers and no spacers. While i’m pleased to see Andale trust skaters to not need a booklet to explain their bearings i’m genuinely a big bummed on the lack of a sticker, especially when the Andale hombre is such a perfect logo to be turned into a sticker… But i digress…
The bearings come with a fairly standard set up 7 ball bearings housed in a nylon retainer… Open on one side with a removable rubberised shield on the other. This is an incredibly common layout for bearings – shared by almost most non-stamped bearings – with the notable exception of Shorty’s Black Panthers, which come with shields on both sides.
As with any other non-stamped in bearings can remove the shields to expose the shiny shiny surface of the internal ball bearings, and while the inclusion of only one rubberised shield leaves the bearing more prone to drying out and letting dirty in the single shield set-up does allow for easy cleaning and lubrication, something that is very important if you’re going to have the bearings for many years. When you’re spending this much money on a set of bearings looking after them is a no-brainer.
The argument as to whether popping shields is a good idea or not will rage on for years, however personally i like to leave the shields on, and and facing the outside of the wheels – this prevents lubricant from getting out and dust and grit from getting in. Shields are there for a reason kids!!
The blue of the rubberised shields is a nice bright colour and pleasing to the eye, and the initial spin once fitted was really encouraging – smooth, fast, and quiet, everything you want from a bearing.
I have now been riding these on my main board for 3 months and they have only gotten faster with time (despite no further lubrication being added yet). They are still smooth and almost completely silent, absolutely brilliant.
The box states that Andale bearings “have been tested against crushing forces over a ton”, so i have specially been stomping down on a few hard Blunt Fakies to test their impact resistance, and have noticed recently that one bearing has become quite noisey in comparison to the other 3, but i am going to put this down to a need for some TLC rather than a failure of the bearing itself, there certainly haven’t been any blow-outs or cracked bearings so far. I guess i need to find a heavier skater to test their claims!
So far i have painted a very good picture of these bearings, they’re brilliant in every way… But are they worth the extra money you pay for having the word Swiss on your bearings? Bearing in mind these bearings are almost double the cost of some ABEC 7 bearings I’ve got to say that i’m torn… I personally love these bearings, their performance so far has been incredible, but i have got good performance out of Bones Reds, Shorty’s Black Panthers, and even from cheaper sealed/stamped bearings in the past so i would honestly find it hard to justify buying these again when the increase in performance over cheaper bearings is so small. For me they’re a solid 8/10, loosing points only for lack of washers, spacers, and a sticker – the performance of the bearing themselves is very impressive indeed. Importantly though, do not buy these bearings because they are “Swiss” – buy them because they’re skater owned, skater tested, and because they work. Swiss is just a word.
If you feel like picking up a set of Andale Swiss bearings and trying them out for yourself, they’re available from our friends over at SkateAmerica.com for $35. It’s a lot to pay for bearings, but with regular maintenance i can see these bearings lasting me 5 years, unless i suddenly start trying Hollywood High size stair sets! (which isn’t likely to happen any time soon!!)
