I have just been looking at the specs on the Canyon Spectrals. Particularly between the Al 7.0 ex and the AL 5.0.

I am swaying towards the 7.0, one of the main differences is that the 7 is comes with a ROCKSHOX PIKE RC SOLO AIR and a MONARCH RT DEBONAIR shock, where as the 5.0 has a FOX 34 FLOAT CTD FIT4 PERFORMANCE fork and a FOX FLOAT PERFORMANCE EVOL shock. The only other significant difference to me is the drive train is Sram rather than Shimano. I have no experience in using Sram, but I am willing to give it a go.

Is there any real world difference between the forks and shocks, is it worth the £500 extra to go for a pike and monarch?

If only Canyon would sell bikes with RS and Shimano. I went down the fox/shimano route, and sold the fox to buy pikes.

Cheers NoBeer,

I think that is what I will do, eventually. Haven’t got a cat in hell’s chance of persuading the missus to let me buy new forks for a new bike though!

I’d go with the pikes then, and just drip feed some cash into a wee fund for a whole new XT 10 speed grouppo once the SRAM kit wears out.

Edit – You may be surprised by how much you’d get for the fox forks!

There must be a significant other difference than forks/shock as the ‘value’ is about the same. Much Different wheels maybe, big drivetrain upgrades?

I would do what nobeer did. Shimano gears are better, RS forks are better, particularly compared to the “performance” Fox forks. I think what you’ll find is that you can sell your Fox forks on ebay for about the same as you’ll be able to buy a set of Pikes from alltricks.fr or one of the German retailer so the net spend is zero, ish.

However, I think you’re comparing the Spectral 5.0 to the Spectral Race 7.0- the “Race” version of the Spectral has more travel up front and a longer frame for a given size. So they’re actually quite different. The longer frame and increased travel will be better for more technical riding if that’s what you do. It’s also a pound lighter because it has posher wheels. If that’s more important to you I’d just buy the 7.0 and swap to Shimano XT when the Sram stuff breaks.