Greg Liddle is a California shaper who has built a rabid following on his famous hull designs. Liddle is compadres with the likes of Kirk Putnam and Marc Andreini, and you can find Liddle’s boards in fine surf shops like Mollusk. Even Hollywood luminaries love Liddle’s surfboards. I understand that Liddle is no longer hand shaping boards himself, and that boards produced under the Liddle Designs label are based off his old templates. That said, given that Shred Sledz is a blog focusing primarily on vintage surfboards, it’s only natural that there is a special soft spot for vintage Liddle surfboards.

Pictured above is one such vintage Greg Liddle design. The board was featured for sale on Craigslist in Orange County recently, although the listing is no longer available. The board is not mine and pics are via the old Craigslist post.

I would say the board above is not a hull shape, but without seeing the board in person, it’s hard for me to make any definitive judgments. Either way, you’ll note that the vintage Liddle surfboard pictured above has some marked differences from classic Liddle boards.

A trio of modern Liddle hulls. Pic via Greg Liddle Designs

The photo above was taken from Liddle’s website, and you can clearly see the classic hull designs in the shapes above: relatively low nose rocker, rounded noses, and the famed “belly” up front.

The vintage Liddle board also has a very different fin that is a departure from the Greenough-inspired flex fins that you’ll see on hulls. In the picture above you can see the red fin has a much wider base when compared to the modern hulls. The vintage Liddle measures in at 7’3″, and given the size of the board, I would hazard a guess that this is more of a gun shape than anything else. As always, though, I am open to suggestions, and I’d like to repeat that my interest in surfboards often outpaces my knowledge. I’d also estimate the vintage Liddle was shaped sometime in the 1970s, but I can’t be certain.

Close up shot of the signature on the vintage Liddle

Another thing I dig about Liddle’s boards are his often elaborate signatures. I’ve seen some examples that come with tons of different measurements — usually bracketed by dots, like in the example above — but the vintage Liddle featured here keeps it pretty simple. I can only assume the 7’3″ on the bottom refers to the board’s length, but I have no clue what the “X-142” might refer to.

The vintage Liddle pictured above was listed at $600. I don’t think this is an insane price, but it’s not exactly cheap, either. I think that it’s likely the price would have been much higher had the board been more of a traditional hull design. Examples of vintage Liddle hulls tend to command higher prices than his other shapes, from what I have seen on Craigslist and eBay. Liddle seemed to experiment a bit more on his earlier boards, as I have seen some examples of fish and even pretty standard looking thrusters pop up here and there.

Thanks for reading, and if you have any rad vintage Liddle hulls that are just begging to be shared with a larger audience, you know where to find me!