I – briefly – rode a Ragley Ti back to back with a Hummer, that was quite interesting given that it wasn’t really Ragley-friendly terrain. The Hummer felt very conventionally sweet and balanced and quite ‘ti like’, if that makes any sense. The Ragley was more of a blunt weapon sort of thing, kind of more solid up back and the steering definitely needed slightly more heft and it felt sort of longer and, strangely enough, slacker, but there was something intriguing about the Ragley, felt like there was a really interesting, slightly different bike in there itching to get out on the right terrain – steep things mostly. Reckon it’ll work well on steep, rocky, techy things, but probably pointless if your main riding is sweeet, smooth, singletracky stuff.
Hmmmm… you can tell I don’t test bikes for a living eh. On the steepness front, I’ve mainly been riding my Pace RC405 recently, with quite a lot of sag out back so the front is slacker than it would be. When I bust the brake hose – under BB routing – I was back on the Rockyvento for a few rides and was quite shocked by how twitchy it felt in comparison, though I did adapt to it, which is human and what generally happens. Anyway, I’d love to run a Ragley in the Peak for a few weeks and see what it did, I suspect it’d be really, really good on the techier things, but equally if you want ‘classic titanium’, it’s probably not the frame you need.