Just seen Cotic are doing a solaris in small in green for pre-order. Anyone know the details as they said they weren't making a small until they got the set up sorted. The dimensions aren't on the website.
I'll be interested to see how they get the playfulness they were hoping to maintain for a smaller rider - it seems that the packaging challenges of 29" wheels are difficult! In an ideal world it looks like a small should have shorter chainstays, a short ETT length, shorter headtube, maybe higher BB. But there's not much tyre clearance if you have a front mech and not much fork clearance, so I haven't the foggiest how you'd fulfil these goals whilst keeping a traditional diamond frame.
Giant XTC works very well in small size
I'll be writing a bit about this on the newsletter in the new year, but basically we ended up with a slacker head angle than the other sizes because the short stem required once all the other requirements were balanced up made the handling a bit of a handful with the head angle from the other sizes. Paul ended up with a 50mm stem on the bike and with the slacker head angle it has a nice feel, and it also allows us to shorten the top tube a little without running into fork clearance issues or a stupidly short front centre. It's still not as playful as the Soul, and we still maintain our original position that for shorter people 29er and 26er bikes are very different things. The key thing we've realised from talking to potential customers is that they're happy with the 29er compromise erring towards easy rolling and stability, so once we got a set up that felt good for Paul we've gone ahead. Kate Potter's got the other prototype, and coming from a more racey point of view she absolutely loves as it is very quick and confidence inspiring on rocky and downhill sections compared to her usual Soda.
Just make sure it's [i]not[/i] available in bright green... as otherwise it'll make me want to buy one. 😳 
Edit: Will there be a "mirror" small-sized 29er Simple as well?
- small Solaris will be in bright green
- small 29er Simple will also be in bright green
small 29er Simple will also be in bright green
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Great - thanks cy for the update. I was going to contact you guys in the new year as I dont quite know what size to go for as I am a 5'9" girl with a 33" inside leg but therefore short body, and the top tubes of the mediums in both the soul and solaris are quite a lot longer than my medium Nicolai and 17" rockhopper. I also need to decide whether to go 29er and fork out the extra cash on components or transfer bits from my blinged up rockhopper (with new forks as my Reba's are dead) and stay 26".
ahsat - looks like you've got the playful bike base covered with the Nicolai and if you need new forks anyway I'd go for it with the Solaris!
Aye, if the small works (I am sure it will) as the 604 mm top tube on the medium is going to be way to long, but I am going to have a shed load of seat post sticking out of it. My Nicolai seat tube is 475 mm (ok you need to allow for bit of sag), and I am assuming the Solaris small is going to be around 400 mm. I am going to have the same issue with the soul.ahsat - looks like you've got the playful bike base covered with the Nicolai and if you need new forks anyway I'd go for it with the Solaris!
Don't worry about seatpost - I have a medium frame and am a shade off 6'. I had to completely re-think sizing, having ridden bikes with 19" seattubes for 15 years but the reach/tt length is the important thing. Also, the frame is designed to be small and chuckable. I bought a 400mm seatpost!
You'll get on a small Cotic no problem. As oxymoron says, our frames are small, compact. I have a 36.5" inseam and ride the large (19") frames with enough seatpost insertion on a 400mm post. People with up to 33.5" inseams will have the same amount of seatpost in the frame as I do on a small (16") Cotic. The small Solaris has a 579mm top tube length, so it's only a little longer than the small Soul. As I said, it's also designed to use a very short stem, so don't be afraid of the top tube length.
Ok - great. Thanks cy. Both my current frames are 580 mm, I think with a 70 mm stem (at this point have to admit the man of the house sorts the bikes out), so that would be fine. And if its ok with that much seatpost - it sounds like a winner. Now if only we didnt have a wedding to pay for.....!