Was riding with a chum who has a fair bit of DH experience under his belt, after a bit of advice and fettling he persuaded me to run my rebound lower than I usually have it set on my RP23.

I’ve read that it was good to have rebound as high as you could control, in fact a few clicks lower made the bike more compliant and track better. Less twangy off of kickers, more active in berms (therefore more grippy) and a little more surefooted over roots etc.

I wonder who else here could benefit from turning their’s down a notch or two?

Had some good progress on the jumps today and the baked dust is making the berms more fun to ride 😀

Sorry, cant work out if you increased or decreased the rebound?i.e. slower or faster?

It would have been slower as he described it as less twangy over jumps etc.

That’s increased rebound damping. If you decreased it to zero you would have an undamped spring. It’s good to a point,your suspension still needs to extend quick enough to stay in contact with the ground and return to the sag point between hits.

I run my rebound pretty slow both front and rear. I find it very twitchy and unstable when they come back quickly in quick descents.

I always run mine slower on the back but faster on the front and thought that was pretty standard.

The benefits of increased rebound damping should be improved grip, and less unwanted feedack from the bike to the rider. However slow it down too much and the shock might start to “pack down” (ie it’s unable to return fully between hits. as Rorschach said) I good conditions I’ll slow the rebound a little.

If you need more support in the berms / approaching kickers you need to increase your compression damping a bit. Assuming you sag is correct in the first place.

Depends how fast you typically ride.

Basically just fanny about with it- there’s such a thing as a wrong shock setup IMO but no such thing as one right one.

I normally tweak mine as my riding changes and depending on where I am. Some trails wont tolerate a fast rebound (mostly jumpy ones which tend to kick the back up)

There is a reason they mount a dial on the outside so keep playing with it till it feels right.

Yup, as noted I was talking about increasing damping (decreasing the rebound of the back end).

I quite like a more lively feel on the singletrack, but for yesterday’s jumps and mini DH it felt better to slow things down a little. The test will be to see how it fares on other trails. Just need the weather to pull it’s finger out!

And yes, good point about the shock ‘packing up’, eyes are peeled for that.

Slower is nicer as you say, especially on smooth flowing jumpy / bermy turns – providing that the trails are smooth. On rocky descents / multiple hits it needs to be a bit faster.