So I’m soon going to be looking into replacing my hard tail with a full suss as I’m now confident I enjoy this as a hobby…

I’m not quite a DH champ but I’d like to be able to visit the local trail centre and most of my riding is XC.

I’m looking at the Spesh cambers as my 2 bikes are both Spesh but for £2000 on finance what would you guys suggest I should pass a look at? 120mm or 140mm forks?

look at the giants as well, their maestro suspension works very well and if you like the directness of pedaling your hardtail then they will feel good, without needing the hack of switching propedal on and off.

Anthem with 120mm will be good, but could also try a trance X

Damn I thought STW liked talking about spending other peoples money…I sure do.

TurnerGuy I do like the look of Giants full sussers but for some reason the mishmash group sets composing of SRAM and Shimano put me off…Convince me :p

I’m liking the look of the Giant Trance X2 with Fox forks and RP2 shock. The forks are 125mm travel, none of the others I can find are 120, only 100 🙁

Camber is nice but if I was going for a spesh it would be a stumpy evo extra £500 notes but well worth it. Failing that, would prob buy a transition bandit frame, save myself £700 notes and move all the bits from my ht on to it 🙂 awesome bikes from what I’ve seen

Edit yes I know neither are really xc, more ‘trail’ but either way you’ll have loads of fun on em!

but ride ’em first…

100mm can be surprising good if the fork is good enough.

I’d get one of these:

Titus El Guapo X9, Cane Creek DB shock, Reverb seatpost, double n bash, big bars, little stem, £1,999.99. They do the bike2work scheme, so if your employer does you’re sorted.

In black ano of course (no pics yet).

In reference to Giants, the Maestro is great. I had a Trance X2 which was brilliant, but I wanted something more burly and upgraded. Spot on for trail centre/XC riding though! I put a Pike in the front, wide bar and short stem and it worked better on the fun stuff. The geometry puts you quite up right which is comfy but not so good for descending with stock parts.

Have you considered a 29er? Not done so myself, but the Pro XC brigade seem to be going that way. Spesh have loads of them, so maybe find a spesh concept store and have a look!!

That Titus has a big fork O.O looks nice though and black ano it’ll brush sides with a Canyon design, which I like, alot. Seems well specced too with the dropper post 😮

Can’t buy frames etc and move stuff over as I can’t afford to spend that sort of money in 1 hit lol.

I’ve been looking at 29ers dantsw13 but I just can’t help but feel as though it’s gonna die off and people will stop producing 29″ wheels etc.

How about a nice classic Santa Cruz Superlight?

Under your budget and Stif do 36 months interest free.

Trek fuel ex8.

Done.

How about a nice classic Santa Cruz Superlight?

and get used to playing with the propedal.

ride them all – there are big differences between the suspension designs and different compromises, although the short link dw-link style ones (like Turner, Ibis, Giant) have less compromises imho.

It depends whether you like going uphill or just downhill as to whether those compromises are important.