Hey there,
When it comes to DK Boards, what I've found is that it all comes down to personal preference. Especialy about the channels, because on DK there is a lot of weight put on your knee which is near the middle of the board on the rail, this pretty much guarentees that the rail will cut into the wave giving you a good edge as long as your knee is positioned right, and that only comes with riding DK a lot.
Now why I say personal preference is that when you have a board that is designed just for DK it usually doesn't work well for prone, because of the smaller nose and wider wide point, the board is sort of egg shaped compared to the almost rectangular shape of a prone board, but on the other hand you can transfer on a prone board, but you will lose a bit of extra performance that a DK board gives you.
On a prone board those channels will help to eleviate the missing components of a DK board, but on the DK board you may not even notice the difference between having the channels or not.
Now when you've made up your mind or need a little extra info between boards, you can just drop me a line at
[email protected] and I'll get some more advice for you from some other DK specialists on their preference of boards and why.
Cheers
Derek
