What’s best?
Reliable ?
External cable .
Like the look of KS , but read about them sticking down?

Thanks Jonelli

I’m waiting for the Reverb B1 to be available before replacing mine.

Current Reverb seems to work well enough but if the update is the improvement claimed, that’ll do me nicely.The external cable one is available June or July, I think, so not ideal if you need one immediately.

I’ve a Thomson at the moment (about 2.5 years old) and it’s never been 100% so I’d struggle to recommend it.

Very happy with my command post. The three positions work well and make it easy to set up a good riding position. Been reliable too.

What’s best?
Reliable ?
External cable .
Like the look of KS , but read about them sticking down?

You may be wasting your time, but from what I can gather these are the standard form STW answers

Best – whichever the poster has.

Reliable – probably one of the super heavy / agricultural ones that offer about 50mm of drop, the lighter longer travel ones seem to much of a muchness and you roll the dice, 2-3 year life span – you can increase that by having them serviced – but as most places want £80 to service something that only costs double that these days lots of people don’t bother and run them till they’re dead and buy a new one.

External cable. The KS one which has the cable mounted at the bottom rather than the top would make life a LOT easier.

I think in the end, the few poor souls who need a 27.2 aside end up with a Reverb, they work well enough and they’re actually usually the cheapest.

euain – Member
I’m waiting for the Reverb B1 to be available before replacing mine.

New reverbs are out and about, at least in stealth mode, my new one has the wee gold anodised logo at the top.

My Thompson is a couple of years old and has been faultless. Always thought it’s a better built thing compared to others I’ve seen including reverb, Specialized, ks, etc.

I have a ks lev and it sometimes sticks down and takes a few presses then returns back up. Also had it go down a couple times when I sat on it and hadnt even touched the button! So I would go for a reverb

Ive had a faultless Reverb in the past, am currently on a faultless Thompson.

Command Post gets a lot of love from its owners too.

Love my command post.

Cant fault my gravity dropper, 25 and 100mm drop, no bleeding required, strip, clean, regrease takes about 30 mins and happens once a year, 7yrs old now and all that has been replaced is the guide shims, still running original cable remote. Agricultural looking yes but then its fitted to an old filing cabinet so no worries there 😉

Got a reverb and KS Lev. Much prefer the lev for cable at the collar and the lever action. Much lighter than the Reverb. Also cable is easy to operate and replace.

Not a Thomson. Amazing when it works but that’s not its default state.
I’ve got a Reverb as a spare for when my Thomson goes back in for yet another cartridge under warranty.
I’d sell it but I can’t in good conscience dump it on someone who wouldn’t have a warranty and would have to pay to get it fixed again. And again. And again…

I have a command post, no issues as yet. 3 positions work well.

I have the newer IIRC Command Post (12ish positions) and that’s been faultless for the past 9 months.

Need a bigger one for my new frame so it will be going up for sale with the rest of my stuff later in the week.

I’ve got a reverb, and more recently a specialized command post.

I’d pick the command post every day over the reverb, because of the shift style lever. The reverb button is horribly bad. Not sure about reliability yet, but I bought it because I’d heard good things about the reliability

I had a Kindshock i950 for like 4 years, it was reliable with a self home service every 18 months or so, bar the standard cable niggles. I’d have bought another but they’re £££ now

Now have a command post IR, used it for a few months, very reliable and reassuringly ‘clunky’, stanchion needs cleaning and spraying with fork lube to spring back from the ‘cruiser’ (25mm drop) back to full position fully but other than (probably because it’s not under much pressure when dropped so slightly) but that it’s really nice.

You can get them super cheap too from peeps who get them on brand new Specialized bikes and sell them instantly for some reason.

http://9point8.ca

&

http://www.vecnum.net/bike-parts/adjustable-seatpost/moveloc-seatpost.html

Could be worth looking at.

Have had a Thomson for a couple of years now. Despite frequent intense neglect it continues to go up and down with its curiously appealing Star Trek swoosh

http://yepcomponents.com/

2 year’s faultless service from mine without attention or service.

Can’t fault any of the Reverb’s that I’ve had – used in all of the winter gloop, not serviced and they still go up and down.

I don’t mind the lever and find that it works well enough under the bars.

I’ve had 2 KSs and 3 Reverbs, tbh they’ve all been decent. I think the main wins…

Cable > hydraulic. Easier to maintain, easier to fix, and no significant downsides imo as long as you give it basic maintenance. I tore the cable off a KS in the alps, bodged it on the day so I could manually operate it, then replaced the cable later for £2. With a reverb I’d have been ****ed.
KS lever > Reverb lever. Not everyone agrees but I always think it says it all, that the reverb lever is best fitted upside down and on the wrong side, and even then it doesn’t play well with a lot of brakes. The thumb action is just plain poor imo. KS isn’t perfect but it can go in the right place on more bikes and that’s a fundamental difference. (I think people get obsessed with using teh lock-on clamp, which puts it in a pretty orrible place, but you don’t have to)
Reverb > KS on cost. I’d have got a Lev Integra but at the time you could more or less get 2 Reverbs for the price of a Lev.
Reverb > KS on travel. The 170mm Reverb is a real killer app imo.
KS > Reverb for parts. This one’s potentially quite big. A Reverb lever costs a fortune to repair. KS, the bits are sensibly priced. I lost a bit of the cable mech on my i950 due to a spannering error and I thought I was going to get dry bummed, it ended up costing me £1 😆 The chap was very apologetic about the £2.95 postage.

Reliability… TBH they’ve all been alright. Both my KSs were a little bit iffy from day one and needed serviced to fix them, after which they were great. The 150mm one which I still have, eventually needed a big repair but it’s very well used and Jungle sorted it quickly and surprisingly cheap- £75 for a “replace all the innards” service. Reverb, if you break it you tend to just get a new one. But how does that work out of warranty?

I’d buy either again. Just ordered a 170mm drop Reverb for the big bike.

I’ve had two reverbs and wouldn’t have another, primarily for Northwind’s reason of:

Cable > hydraulic. Easier to maintain, easier to fix

With a reverb I’d have been ****ed.

I snapped the lever off it once so was gubbed for the ride and my god bleeding a reverb was the worst workshop experience I’ve ever had.

I now have a Thomsonn (2nd hand from STW Classifieds) which so far has been faultless. It froze up in the depth of winter so took a few forced attempts to get it going, other than that has worked just as it should.

I’ve found bleeding a reverb to be simple enough tbh; it’s just not very bodgable so you can’t do a trailside fix, and every bike shop in the world has the parts you need to fix a broken cable.

(I remember at an SDA round at Glencoe, a chap had caught the hose on the chairlift and broken it, with the seat extended- so he had to ride all the way down the track with the seat up. He dealt with it by dismantling the post in the car and pouring all the internals into a bag. Not sure if it’s still the same with Stealths. They could really do with a manual override- but then, the newer KSs don’t have the manually pokable lever either I think)

is the fox d.o.s.s dropper OK? thinking of one to match my forks 😀

I’ve heard of a few people the giant dropper is good, not used one myself but looking at one. They are around £150 I think.

I’ve had reverbs and KS Levs.

I found the Lev easier to live with and had a slightly longer device life.

It wins for me because it’s fully user serviceable and frankly, the spare are ridiculously cheap. I’ve just serviced 2, including replacement of all the bushes for the grand total of 15 quid. Try that with over-priced reverb parts.

Got a Fox Doss and like it a lot

Had two KS and three reverbs thus far, all been spot on.

More or less agree with Northwind above, except the KS lever, it’s a useless thing which doesn’t extend below the bars at all, whether attached to grips or not. Much prefer the reverb, although a KS upgraded with the Southpaw lever is better again. I’ve found the reverb hydraulics more reliable than cables, which get sticky over time – but the cable is certainly an easier fix if it breaks.

The Reverb B1 is only out in Stealth and at about £300, the non-Stealth version is not gonna be much cheaper.

I needed one pronto so I’ve bought one of the outgoing non-stealth posts at £180, it has a two-year warranty anyway. Wonder if they’ll keep the old ones about for warranty or replace with the B1?

Wonder if they’ll keep the old ones about for warranty or replace with the B1?

Depends on stock. The old ones are out on most sizes/options now so B1s are going out.

Same as goodgrief above.

Got a Giant contact switch dropper on my Anthem, had it for years and despite a couple of minor issues and a bit of side to side play on the saddle its been great. Got a Crank Bros Kronolog on my Mondraker, its had two years of abuse and is now just begining to show signs of wear which I fear will proove terminal for it which is a shame as its been pretty good for me.

I have three, an X-Fusion HiLo, a Specialized Command Post and a Reverb.

Best of the bunch is the Command Post. In spite of only having three positions, it does an excellent job reliably and it has the added bonus of built in layback. Newer Command Posts come with more than three positions and a natty SRAMesque lever.

Next up is the Reverb. It would be awesome, if I hadn’t had to have bled it three times in the year I’ve owned it. The button is very fragile and the action is somewhat slow.

Lastly, we have the HiLo. No-one has had anything positive to say about them, they’re not terribly well sealed, they’re not easily user serviceable, they’re slow, the lever assembly is laughably Heath-Robinson, they wobble annoyingly and the saddle bolts are too soft. A bit toilet really.

My lev is ace. Inbetween the 2 times it went back to Germany for warranty repairs.

My 27.2 Thomson is ace though.

Do people not like the D.O.S.S? I’ve never seen one in the wild.

I’ve always had reverbs and once had a Lev. I need one now after getting a 31.6mm frame.

I did consider the D.O.S.S but I need stealth.

Depends on stock. The old ones are out on most sizes/options now so B1s are going out.

I was hoping/expecting this to be the case, makes buying the old one a safer bet.

MoseyMTB – Member
Do people not like the D.O.S.S? I’ve never seen one in the wild.

No infinite adjust, no stealth, no 150mm option, external cable at the top, massive remote, Fox pricing

Thank everybody for your help.

jonelli

I’d wait a few weeks if you are looking for s dropper, not 100% sure on release date but there is something coming soon that will be priced very competitively considering the pedigree of the manufacturer…