Really nice despite the excess of chainrings! 😉
I think the new head and seat tubes were a wise business decision – I bet a fair proportion of Souls are sold to riders who’ve bought a mainstream full-sus but later decided they’d like a really nice hardtail instead and thus buy a frame and swap the components across – tapered forks now fit as do all the different dropper posts. I won’t be changing mine though!
My previous generation Soul weighs under 27lbs with a fairly burly build (though 1×10) – could easily knock off weight with less huge tyres, skinnier rims, shorter forks, no dropper post (folly IMHO!), etc…