I’ve just gone from Bos Kirk to a Monarch Plus, have to say I’ve been very impress so far.
It took a lot of faffing and fine tuning to get the Bos set up but just jumped on the Monarch with minimal setup faff and felt almost as good as the Kirk out of the box.
As above, does depend on bike to a degree – some volume spacers which will hopefully bring it up to the performance of the Bos, not having as many settings to fiddle with has been refreshing too.
That’s kinda the appeal of the Monarch. Not much to faff with, works fairly well out the box on most bikes, certainly difficult to get a truly terrible setup anyway.
Of the 3 monarch shocks I’ve owned, all three have had a horrible step around 15% of travel that no one seems able to explain.
It’s to do with when the negative and the positive chambers of the shock pressures equalise. It’s somewhere around the 15-20% travel mark, and you’re right, it does “feel” horrible. The reality is though that out on the trail, you’re sagged further than this into the travel anyway, and you never actually feel this step except for when pushing the bike up and down when you’re stationary. It doesn’t detract from the ride in my experience at least.
I was tempted to get some avalanche guts fitted to it but I’ll not do that if I can’t be certain the basic chassis isn’t flawed.
I was tempted too, but… It’s £200 fitted, and your RS warranty is then null and void. I’ve heard good things about it, but wasn’t going to get it done to a shock that’s barely worth more than the price of the service 2nd hand and is still in warranty.
Just moved on from my Monarch plus to a Fox Float x2.
Just done the same. Early days yet, and a LOT more to faff with to get the right setup (a single click on each adjuster can make a noticable difference, and there’s 24 clicks on each of 4 adjusters!), but it’s a fantastic piece of kit. Also helps that I picked it up new off a guy for a stupid price. He’d sent his back to Mojo for warranty, got bored of waiting, and bought a PUSH ElevenSix in the meantime. Mojo sent him a brand new 2017 shock with climb switch, and he let me have it for a price I don’t want to repeat!