Viewing 34 posts - 1 through 34 (of 34 total)
  • FS bikes: alive, flat, connected, lifeless – what does it mean?
  • eyerideit
    Free Member

    Some bikes are ‘lifeless others’ give ‘great feedback’, make you ‘feel connected’ to the trail – I’m not sure what this means. Could someone explain please?

    njee20
    Free Member

    Very little!

    Journalist speak!

    billytinkle
    Free Member

    My bike makes me feel ‘connected to the trail’ every time it spits me off!

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    mikewsmith
    Free Member

    lifeless = better than I am
    lots of feedback = pushed to limits of skill
    takes everything out = riding like a pussy

    mostly a crock o’ ****

    Gunz
    Free Member

    To be fair some journalistic license has to be tolerated otherwise all reviews would basically be, ‘I rode this bike and it went faster the harder I pedalled and slowed down when I applied the brakes’.
    Saying that I have no idea what the phrases you mention actually translate as in terms of riding.

    duirdh
    Free Member

    Are you just poor at English comprehension ? There are probably classes available for adults at your local college to help.

    stilltortoise
    Free Member

    “Feel connected” = I’ve set the suspension up wrong and can feel every lump and bump jarring through my entire body

    “Lifeless” = I’m feeling a bit hungover and can’t turn the pedals fast enough for this to be fun

    “Great feedback” is another way of saying “feel connected”. See above

    soobalias
    Free Member

    i read an online review of my FS from Bikeradar, originally from MBUK the other day.
    turns out its a winner at BS Bingo – can you guess what it is?

    “aspirational, angles, geometry, fearless.

    self-correcting stability, super-steep, kite tail stabilising effect, progressive and controlled,
    race tune, pack down, square-edged blocks.

    firm carving platform, no wallow, single seismic hits, lightweight build, acceleration, generous cockpit,

    super-wide bars, surfing, slides, flex, skinny, push hard, plough head on, longer wheelbase, snap and slice, slow speed technical sections.

    asymmetric, chunky, Maxle axle, heavily machined, stiffened laterally wooden, constipated.”

    mikewsmith
    Free Member

    also reminds me of angle bingo..

    with it’s (magic number) head and seat angle it makes it perfect for posing in the (insert location) where sad gits get out their spirit level apps to measure bikes….

    ride it you say I just look at the numbers…

    ojom
    Free Member

    You just need to make sure the one you pick has ‘cut n paste’ in it’s description

    kudos100
    Free Member

    Nothing. It’s a load a bollocks made up by magazine writers who talk out of their arses, bike *cough* radar.

    corroded
    Free Member

    snap and slice

    That must be the new ‘cut and paste’. Fact is, it’s hard to review an average bike in 300 words without resorting to a little nonsense.

    toys19
    Free Member

    The words are just a reflection of the mood the reviewer is in.

    mikewsmith
    Free Member

    snap and slice
    That must be the new ‘cut and paste’.

    Thought it was the new cut and shut…

    buzz-lightyear
    Free Member

    Lifeless: plods despite best efforts to pedal hard; blunders straight downhill resisting all attempts to push it around, hop over and steer around stuff.

    A definition of my riding style!

    ojom
    Free Member

    Hey as long as it dispatches the square edge hits with aplomb it will be fine.

    RustySpanner
    Full Member

    So which adjectives are acceptable to the fundamentalists when describing the feel of a bike?

    thebikechain – Member

    Hey as long as it dispatches the square edge hits with aplomb it will be fine.

    Where DID that come from? 🙂

    jameso
    Full Member

    I had a bottle of red last week where I was getting notes of chocolate, kent strawberries and later, fresh hay, with a deep peppery follow through.

    )

    Retrodirect
    Free Member

    I’m getting a hint of the last train to Aberdeen.

    jameso
    Full Member

    Trying to describe bikes in the detail some testers can notice must be difficult, esp in print. I make a lot of hand gestures when trying to describe why / what I want a bike to do. So descriptive stuff like poppy or tail-happy makes sense really. One of bikeradar’s testers does it pretty well imo, I just read it as I think it’s intended.

    eyerideit
    Free Member

    There’s a thread running at the moment BIKEvBIKE and there’s a bit of that talk going on in it.

    As it’s not a ‘journo’ saying it I thought the average rider/laymen could tell.

    dispatches the square edge hits with aplomb

    Quote of the week.

    pootle
    Free Member

    So which adjectives are acceptable to the fundamentalists when describing the feel of a bike?

    I believe that in the modern vernacular one refers to the positive feel of a bike as being “well sick”.

    deanfbm
    Free Member

    Describing how a bike feels, to people that may have had the same sensations, people of an equal or greater standard, really difficult.

    Describing how a bike feels to someone who has never had those sensations before, someone who is a lot lower skill level wise, nigh on impossible.

    By skill level, i don’t mean what they can do, but how developed the whole bike rider communication and co-ordination is.

    Plus in all this talk, how do you even know the reviewer knows what they’re talking about or can even set-up or even ride the thing as intended.

    thisisnotaspoon
    Free Member

    I prefer Dirt’s reviews.

    We rode it down a hill, it’s dead fast. It’s faster downhill than (insert bike with slightly more travel from a few years ago). Ite pedals uphill better than (insert bike with slightly less travel from a few years ago).
    – paraphrase and extend to 3 pages.

    stilltortoise
    Free Member

    Reviews are meaningless unless you know how the reviewer likes to ride and how skilful/capable they are. I remember reading a review of the ASR5 by Steve Jones in Dirt. It sounded ACE, but when I had a demo I realised I was neither skillful nor fast enough to make the most of it [EDIT – or maybe it was just rubbish lol]

    Much like reading a review of a sports car. Do you really need to know how amazing something is at its limit if you’re never going to get anywhere near the limit?

    RustySpanner
    Full Member

    pootle – Member

    I believe that in the modern vernacular one refers to the positive feel of a bike as being “well sick”.

    Innit! 😀

    Northwind
    Full Member

    It’s all just attempts to put very subjective opinions into words- always going to get handwavey.

    TBh these days I’m pretty convinced that subjective “feel” is by far the most important thing about a bike, and that the objective “facts” don’t count for much at all. My Mmmbop and my Ti had identical geometry but they get a pretty different response from me. My Soul and my C456 were very different on paper but they had the same “feel” and so I found they rode the same way (the Soul was better at it mind). And so on.

    Some bikes feel like they want to go for a ride, and I can’t say why, I just know it when I jump on them. So they’re alive. Other bikes just feel like machines.

    plyphon
    Free Member

    Much like reading a review of a sports car. Do you really need to know how amazing something is at its limit if you’re never going to get anywhere near the limit?

    On this note I once saw an episode of Fifth Gear where Tiff Needell was discussing under-steer in a Kia Picanto

    Gunz
    Free Member

    Maybe we just have to be honest with ourselves and admit that most bikes in a handful of different categories are generally the same and all this wind and p##s is about justifying spending too much (not a holier than thou judgement as I ride a Ti hard tail when there’s probably no need to).

    mikewsmith
    Free Member

    I prefer Dirt’s reviews.

    We rode it down a hill, it’s dead fast.

    there are words in Dirt? I wondered what the fuzzy stuff round the pictures was…

    idiotdogbrain
    Free Member

    Alive = too much air in the shocks and/or not much rebound damping
    Flat = not enough air in shocks and/or too much rebound damping
    Connected/lifeless – see above
    😉

    boxfish
    Free Member

    Goes “boing-de-boing”

    BrickMan
    Full Member

    they have to write something different to what they wrote last week!

    Northwind
    Full Member

    mikewsmith – Member

    there are words in Dirt?

    If you look carefully, what looks like black blocks actually has text on it in very dark purple.

    (I had a rant at Dirt for their colour choices; they said there was no problem and everyone could read it. I gave one to my dad to see how he got on with a blue-text-on-purple section- he couldn’t even tell there was text)

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