Best Tower for the Buck

rharter · Newbie Joined: 20 Jul 2004 Posts: 2 City: Monroe

I have a 96 MC Prostar 205, and I already have a pylon. The pylon is nice but it is causing my oringinal ski pylon to rotate and loosen. What can i do for this problem. I want to buy a tower for my boat but need some help in finding the right one. Thx.[/quote]

chavez · RIP MHL 04/25/1958 - 01/11/2006

rharter, check out MonsterTower.com

The owner, Bill, posts on this site under the name "monstertower". From what I have seen, he is a stand up guy with an awesome product.

DiyGuy · Soul Rider Joined: 26 Dec 2003 Posts: 460

I've had a Monster Tower now, going through the second year and nearly 175 hours of pulling with it, without a glitch! Very nicely designed and it comes direct to your door in 3 to 5 days.

Open it up, sort out the pieces, read directions, made a couple or relatively small holes to mount, then bukle it down using a torque wrench and you are done!

Enough are out and in use now, that you are guaranteed that someone on the lake will mention it, most always positively. Service is unparalled to anyone in the boat biz!

Hang some speakers and lights on it, and you got a nice setup!

My 2 cents!

640Pressman · Addict Joined: 14 Nov 2003 Posts: 753

Monster gets My vote too !

Erik · Posted: Jul 20, 2004 6:10 pm Post subject:

Monster gets props from me too.

Also Joystick univesal towers are very good. Bad Web site. Excellent product.

colefooter · Posted: Jul 20, 2004 6:38 pm Post subject:

I have a friend on my lake who has a monster tower. Its on a crappy boat, but yet the looks of it are awesome. They have board racks and all, and it looks sweet. I have never heard a bad thing about monster towers

wAkE_kId 86 · Newbie Joined: 02 Jun 2004 Posts: 33 City: Leesport

Just put a monster tower on our boat.... they are awesome!!! I'm pulling stuff now that I could never do before! Monster gets my vote!

tn_guy212000 · Soul Rider Joined: 12 Jan 2003 Posts: 268

got one here too

MrBlean · Posted: Jul 21, 2004 2:51 am Post subject:

At the danger of sounding like a heretic on this subject, it all depends on how much you wanna spend and what you think will look good on your boat. You have several identical opinions here so let me throw in some alternative options (for which I will probably get heavily criticised from some quarters)....................

Monster is probably the least expensive tower option and gets rave reviews (as you've seen here) but IMO, there are others that look better on an MC205. However, they will be at least twice the price.

Am not saying don't buy a Monster but take a look at the wakeside website (www.wakeside.com) and even e-mail them for alternative suggestions.

They offer the New Dimensions tower specifically for the MC 205 of your vintage. Looks nice but it's very similar to the tower fitted to the MC X5 (also New Dimensions I believe) and that's not the most rigid available. I'm sure it's perfectly adequate it does flex quite a lot from side to side - a lot more than I, personally, expected it to do.

In collapsibles, the Boss Knight appears to offer good value for money but I've not seen one in the flesh.

Samson towers get good reports too (sell direct, I believe, www.samsonsports.com)

For what I believe is the stiffest tower available (from comments picked up from many different sources) the Titan Series II is the business. Bill from Monster will confirm that, I'm sure. The Monster looks similar (rather than the other way round as the Titan pre-dates Monster) and it could be argued you'd be paying a shed load more money for a very similar looking product and one where the performance difference doesn't justify the price differential.

The choice of tower for your boat is a very personal thing that is dictated by a combination of budget, how soon you want it, how stiff you want it to be and your personal opinion of what looks good.

You pays your money and takes your choice.

When you make your decision, will be interested to hear and understand how/why you made that choice.

chane · Posted: Jul 21, 2004 5:25 am Post subject:

lets see those monsters!

DiyGuy · Soul Rider Joined: 26 Dec 2003 Posts: 460

Post Retracted

mnwakeboarder · Posted: Jul 21, 2004 7:55 am Post subject: Monster Towers

Check my Profile picture

gvb · Posted: Jul 21, 2004 8:36 am Post subject:

Monster! Super nice guys, easy install, and great product.

-gvb[/img]

Miles · Newbie Joined: 04 Jun 2004 Posts: 2

My buddy went with the monster tower. Reasionably priced and it hasn't failed us yet.

D O double G · Outlaw Joined: 26 Sep 2003 Posts: 235 City: G-vine

rharter, I'll throw out the "Monster Towers are nice and get rave reviews" to avoid any harsh feedback. MT would be a good choice.

HOWEVER, here are some other choices IF you are interested:

Wakeside offers 7 different mfg's that offer a tower for almost every boat.
Pay close attention to the New Dimension towers. They offer one specifically designed for your MC ProStar 205. IMHO, they look great and follow the lines of the boat and windshield. It's worth a look.

Check em out here.

Mike.H · Posted: Jul 21, 2004 2:40 pm Post subject:

no monster but i got an airboom

Wingnut2u · Newbie Joined: 08 Jun 2004 Posts: 21

VIVA, how do you like the AirBoom, it looks great but how solid is it. I need to put over 100lbs of speakers and boards on it and I cant have any schwing!

MrBlean · Posted: Jul 22, 2004 12:07 am Post subject:

The tower pictured by D O double G is the New Dimensions tower I referred to in my earlier post. It's by far the nicest looking of the aftermarket towers for your boat. I very nearly bought one myself for my own '94 205. It's virtually identical to the tower on recent MC X5's and having inspected an example of that closely, personally I decided against.

I agree, it follows the lines of the boat well and has very neat feet to attach to the deck. However, I do wonder if the narrow feet are the source of its surprising side-to-side flexibility.

To explain, the feet on the ND tower are solid inserts into the tower tube which are the same diameter thereas. That's what makes it look so neat and enables it fit nicely in front of the screen where there is surprisingly little reasonably flat land on which to mount any tower feet. On the X5, the feet mount on the curve of the gunwhale and there is one large fixing bolt. From what I can see of the 205 tower, it looks identical in that respect.

With only modest sideways force exerted on the X5 tower it flexes considerably. Some of that movement comes from the tubing itself, some from the feet moving slightly on the deck. The one I saw may be a poor installation (I doubt it, it was a factory/dealer install) but I would question the ability of a single bolt attachment to hold the feet any more securely/rigidly than they are on the one I examined. I believe what I have seen/experienced is typical.

There are those who will argue that the degree of flex you will see from that tower is perfectly acceptable. That may be so. However, ask wingnut for his expoerience of a flexible tower and see what he says Exclamation

IMO, with this tower his problem would be the same (if not worse) than that he already has in that I believe this tower would flex horrible in chop if/when loaded down with speaker, lights etc. If you don't intend to fit such paraphernalia, it will be much less of a problem to you (if at all).

To be fair, if I was based in the US I would probably have purchased the ND tower. One of the reasons I didn't is that I'm based in the UK and with the shipping costs, duty and taxes etc, this make the import of such a tower damned expensive (like over $4000 all in). I'm sure you'd agree you wouldn't want to invest that that sort of money in a tower and not get it 100% right.

Personally, if you like the looks of any particular tower, I would strongly recommend examining one installed on a boat before making the commitment. That way you can be 100% sure it's what you want and you are happy with it before making the commitment.

One of the merits of MT is that if you don't like it you can ship it back for a refund. Sounds great but if you decide any tower is too flexible or you just don't like it post install you've got a bunch of holes in your boat that may not match up with you next installation. Sure, you can check out the cosmetic appearance by just positioning it on your boat without drilling any holes. However, you won't know how rigid it is until you've bolted it down and used it.

IMO, you only fit a tower to your boat once and it has to be the right one for you personally.

And D O double G, I notice you also feel like a pariah for even mentioning an alternative to Monster on this site Crying or Very sad

All credit to you for answering the original question with some alternatives and being prepared to take the flak Smile

lumpy · Criminal Joined: 25 Jul 2003 Posts: 99

I have one of the new Big Air towers, yes they also make the very popular Wake Wing.

I was all set to do the Monster, when I saw the pic's of the '04 Big Air, much more laid back design and it was $855 to my door. The installation was not the best experience, lots of drilling through stainless steel, but in the end was well worth it. I've got maybe 25 hours on it, not a sqeak or rattle one. I am very happy with it.

But honestly after talking with Bill from Monster, I would not hestiate to buy his product or support his company.

DiyGuy · Soul Rider Joined: 26 Dec 2003 Posts: 460

MrBlean,

This is amazing - You continue to beleive that this site is tainted with nothing but Monster Tower owners. I, as well as any other reasonable prudent person, when viewing tower options simply can't overlook the MT as a realistic alternative both in terms of price and looks. Just because you don't like it, certainly has not swayed hundreds of others from buying it, and coincidently they like it!

Do you think for a minute, that the mainstream aftermarket tower makers would be advertising "new lower price" or the newer take off's from MT's lower pricing, if MT didn't create a revolution in high quality, low priced wakeboard accessories?

And, what you said above, you didn't even likely realize it, but maybe one reason MT is such a success is folks CAN go to MT's website and actually look at many boats and slightly different installations on quite a few different make/model boats. They can then visualize what it may look like on their boat. Furthering the success of MT is sucess breed success. Every new owner who posts a positive remark, only solidifies the decision making process to go with MT, assuming of course they like the looks as well, and because they can't find any major supporting comments from any of the others (yet).

Nobody denies that other aftermarket towers don't look nice, they do. But until people can visualize what it may look like on their boat, the ease of installation and how strong and how well they hold up, they are likely hindered in making that leap to buy a new entrant in the market. Perhaps when the others can get as many customers with positive comments and a web site to show various installations, then others may share the success as MonsterTower has.

Further, I think it is reasonable to assume that every single reader of this board recognizes your engineering view point as being paramout to any other consideration.

The only assessment is the agreement that one certainly needs to be satisified with the looks of an accessory on their boat. In the absence of any other explanation, I am certain 99.9% of the other readers of this forum recognize your extensive engineering opinions, but do not consider themselves "Monster Tower" junkies, despite your unconvincing argument to the contrary.

Mike.H · Posted: Jul 22, 2004 1:53 pm Post subject:

Wingnut2u, its a good strong tower, no swaying( in water).....well for us it only swayed on the freeway cause it was bumpy, but not enough to think it was gonna break or anything.

Fishmaster · Posted: Jul 22, 2004 10:02 pm Post subject:

First huge thanks to anyone throwin props to us.

Second - were a blonde, there are hot brunettes and red heads out there. Get the tower you like and enjoy. Maybe were the brunette or red head, not sure, but you get the picture.

Third - towers is not a huge market of billionaires - its still baically a bunch of wakeboarders doing the best they can in a market they love and everyone is out to make happy customers. Ive seen nearly every tower built and there is not much junk out there so get what you like and enjoy.

Post some pics or details of how your pylon is rotating. If you have not invested in the right board, rope and ballast yet then that's the priority you should have right now.

MrBlean · Posted: Jul 22, 2004 11:28 pm Post subject: