Shapers tweak their designs to work at the type of surf breaks in their local area.
For example, my surfing area (Ventura to Santa Barbara, out to Channel Islands & up to Cayucos) has almost no beach breaks. It's rock reefs and rocky point breaks. Boards here are set up a little differently than what prevails down by San Diego with all its beach breaks, and boards for coral reef breaks in Okinawa or Hawaii are different again, because waves jack up from the ocean in a different way.
You can talk with surf shop people where you like to surf, and best is to talk with long-time shapers themselves. Different shapers have different "trademark" design tweaks to influence performance, suited to different wave types.
The obvious big features like length, template, fins etc. you can see. But a LOT of what makes a surfboard' work good you can not see. Some are:
Bottom:
For years the standard short board bottom had a large diameter depression of tiny depth just behind center of the board's length, then 2 small diameter depressions of tiny depth in parallel, further back in front of the side fins. Can't see with naked eye, except with a light shining across from the side. Different shapers are experimenting with other configurations more now, so it's less a standard now. As a novice, you can ignore that, but as you improve you'll become sensitive to subtleties like this.
Foam blank:
Clark Foam supplied shapers with 3 basic types. Supergreen foam (densest, heaviest, sturdiest), Superblue (mid grade) and Ultralight (like feather). High performance surfers like the lighter foams, but boards don't live long. Get lots of delamination (fiberglass separating off the foam core) problems.
Retail customers feel the oh-so-nice light weight of a surfboard with an Ultralight or Superblue core & think -"oohh that's cool, with this I'm going to surf like a pro," but their expensive board is a ruined mess after just a few weeks.
Sponsored pros don't care since they get all the new free boards they want. Most boards you see presented for retail sale have the heavier Supergreen foam, maybe a few have Superblue. You pretty much have to take the shaper's word on the grade of foam, your eye can't see the difference. Shopowner probably won't even know.
Also, different woods used for center stringer. I like spruce stringer.
There are other foam blank types for boards make of epoxy instead of fiberglass.
Glassing:
Usually you get 2 layers of 4 oz or 6 oz or some combination, with variations. Some variations are whether the rails (surfboard's edges) are wrapped by just 1 or by both of the 2 layers of glass cloth (well worth extra cost where I surf), sometimes lay an extra patch of glass cloth on deck just where you stand to help prevent delamination (makes board a tad heavier but helps surfboard live longer if surfer is a heavy weight guy), sometimes lay a narrow extra band of glass cloth right over the stringer along whole length to prevent board-snap-in-two problem in big waves, lots of other variations.
Fin attachment systems:
Glass-on or removable, various brands of removable fin systems. Fins positioned slightly forward = looser, higher performance, fins further back=more stable, less performance.
Suggestion:
Getting into it, buy a really excellent wetsuit & damn booties. Buy used boards & just totally thrash them to destruction, go through several used boards gaining experience. Maybe buy inexpensive 7'6" "fun shape" boards USED, not intending to keep it long.
Then someday go talk directly with a shaper around where you like to surf, not the surf shop guy, and have YOUR board(s) custom made. Find a long-time shaper, not a kid in his parent's garage. In my local area, I favor Dave Johnson, what a guy. Al Merrick is here too, & lots more.
Where do you like to surf? Do you drive from Lenore to Santa Cruz? The aggro Hook? Is it Pleasure Point for you?
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