The first set of skis I bought with my own money were Look Nevada's on Olin Mark 1's and the new Nordica injection molded boots. In the 80's I sold Dynastar, Lange and Look alongside the Geze's as the cornerstone of my ski shop. In an area where K2 was king and they marketed Marker. Sold a lot of the ZR's with upper Dynastar glass models and Fisher Flex skis and those who simply wouldn't buy anything else. I still have a Geze G70 demo board that can demonstrate upward release. I also have a pair of Blizzard SL's [early 90's] with my last pair of Red/white ZR's. Only we called them turntables. Doing heel release tests on them were opposite of practically every other binding. IT WAS SMOOTH! A feature that I think saved me from at least not suffering from any muscle damage due to rapid deceleration leading to a release of the heel caused by Cascade concrete and excessive speed. I have the Rosi 120 and the FKS in orange currently. Both were remounted recently for new boots and passed the tests perfectly. I am glad to learn that Dennis saved the brand name and how he did it. That took some guts but it proved the name had value in the market. I knew Rosi would use the Geze designs under their name and I was fine with that but worried that Look would be lost. Probably ending small independent shops with it. I am more impressed that in bringing back the Pivot that they continued to offer a single pivot and the pincer toe piece as options. I am getting new skis Monday and have been 'Looking' at my options. What I would like to see in the future is a model of pivot bindings that has a tighter range of din settings and focus on selling the customer one that has the skier in the middle for optimal spring performance for the user: 3-9 range for 5-7 din setting as an example. And get away from male, female, racer designations to describe models. Nice collection Phil. Thanks for jogging my memory.
In the 1980's I had some Dynamic VR27 SL skis with Look 99 RS bindings with the back facing brake on the toe. I credit those skis and binding combo in really progressing my skiing. They were a fantastic ski/binding setup in those days and I'm amazed to see the pivot style binding is still around these days. I'm skiing Salomon Shift's these days for a bit of back/side country touring or System Markers. So I think you could do a backcountry/alpine version of the Look pivot like Salomon Shift or Marker Duke.
My 1975 setup- Hexcel Competition skis, Look Nevada bindings (with safety straps) and Nordica Astral Slalom boots (aka the banana boot). And of course stretch pants. HaHa. So thankful for the ski technology progress>
One of the reasons we pushed Look to bring back the 15 was to be able to offer an all metal toe for a lower setting, with the 15 starting as 6, you are well within range.
I bought a new pair of boots with GW soles so changed my Demo bindings to Look 12GW . I can’t believe how much it has improved the ski performance . Or is just a placebo effect?
I used to ski on Marker Jester all the time, all of my life, in 2021 i switched to Look Pivot 12, and probably will never look back to something else, the flex from a short mount base and overall stiffness, gives a ton a difference, i'am still going to ski on my second pair with marker jesters, but look pivot indeed makes ski handle better. Honestly i think Marker Griffon/Jester/Jester Pro and Look Pivot 12/15/18 is the best alpine bindings on the market now.. PERIOD..
The look rep didnt seem to have much knowledge of the history. I would have loved to hear more about the early 2000s on why they stopped making them. I use to search ebay to find used pivots for my park skis.
