Cane Creek Double Barrel Shock
Price: £549.99 with steel spring, +£175 for Ti spring
From: Extra, www.extrauk.co.uk
Tested: 12 months
This shock comes out of a collaboration between Cane Creek and Ohlins Racing, the Swedish suspension gurus who have cut their teeth on the likes of Supercross and GP bikes to produce a handmade (every single one is made by just one man, called Paul, and individually numbered), fully adjustable, high performance, piece of mountain bike engineering. The Double Barrel name comes from the two tubes that constantly circulate oil between each other and through the independent rebound and compression circuits, leading to a more controlled ride. Both rebound and compression have high and low speed damping adjustment, giving a potentially mind-boggling scope for getting things wrong.
Thankfully the manual is well written and clear, providing a base setting from which to work from, and to read about exactly what each adjustment does. In fact, even if you have just a passing interest in how suspension works you should download the manual and have a read. Adjusting the shock is easy to do, but best done with a bit of patience and the manual to hand.
In the past I’ve struggled with coil shocks, they either moved around too much when pedalling or when I adjusted them to be vaguely useful uphill felt awful going down, there seemed to be too much compromise to get a good all round set-up. The Double Barrel is different. Climbing there is barely any rider induced compression and feels like a well set up air shock. This is partly down to the ability to adjust the low speed compression and rebound damping, which pedalling has an effect on, but the shock itself has a firm feel to it though with a smooth transition into the high speed damping when you hit a bump at speed. The back end of the bike really feels like it is truly hugging the ground, not vaguely following it, meaning you are more in control and can put more power down.
The level of control that can be eked out of this shock is unbelievable, multiple high-speed hits, drops, climbing, it does it all without fuss. Obviously it’s only as good as its set-up, but it’s worth spending time getting it right as the dividends are massive.
Overall: If I had the money and wanted what is probably the best all-mountain shock in the world, this would be it. I cry myself to sleep knowing I can never afford it though.
Sim
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Could someone buy it please? I’ll take it off you in 6 months for £35 posted, promise.
JEEPERS! That is an awful lot of money for a tube filled with oil. You’d have to get the Ti spring too.
Considering the cost and sophistication of this damper, the review is pathetic. Is that the best you could come up with.
Considering the cost and sophistication of this damper, your reply is too short. Rude yes, but short.
considering how short the rude message is, is that the best you can come up with.
i used to run the british ohlins service for motorbikes so worked gp bikes and superbikes,, most people had normal two way dampers,, and would still get confused, and most with 4 way adjustables could and would get lost,,
do we realy need this and how many actualy understand it,,
but can i order 2 for my singlespeed whyte preston as i think the low speed compression would help the fork dive under braking,,
so if anyone from ohlins or cane creek is reading this just send me a pair and i’ll do a review for you,,,,
the main difference between coil and air shocks,,
air shocks are normaly rising rate especialy towards the last bit of the stroke when the rate rises dramaticly,, whereas a coil spring , unless designed to be rising rate is normaly single rate ,
if your bike doesnt have a rising rate suspension system and you have single rate coil shock it can blow through the travel on big hits,, so you put a stronger spring on to stop it using all it’s travel so quickly but loose the sensitivity you require for the smaller stuff,
solution an air shock low intial spring rate goingup as the stroke increases,, but the air shock can have the drawback of lots of internal friction lots of seals often with minimal lubrication going backwards and forwards,,
but you can get dual rate and rising rate springs , dual rate has two spring rates ( surprised) made by having a soft intial spring the goes coil bound before pushing a stronger spring
or a rising rate spring either wound from taper wire or with gaps that get bigger between each coil,, this works by the smallest gap goes coilbound so the effective wire length is shorter so the spring rate increases, the the next gap goes coilbound and so on,
the rate curves can be tuned giving different rising rate curves all at a cost ,,,,,,,,,
opps got a bit carried away
you had this shock for twelve months and thats all you could say,,, ok just send it to me ,, i can run it on a shock dyno give you a set of damping curves and if it fits on my bike i will give you more feedback in a couple of weeks ,,
Don’t worry TLR will along in a minute….
I’ve been saying for a while that it would be interesting to have Ohlins involved in the woderful world of mountain bikes.
I was too lazy to log in earlier to post a similar comment.
How many people on FS or even hardtails know how to set up their shocks? You can make such a mess of the damping if you don’t know what you’re doing and there are so many variables when riding off road you’d be “fiddling” every two minutes to dfind the “optimum”.
If more people actually started by settign the sag correctly that would be a great start
“I cry myself to sleep knowing I can never afford it though.
Sim”
then why not phone extra and ask for one import price plus vat.
surely the good review is worth that?
In fairness to Sim, this is just a reprint of the mag’s review of a few years’ back, which always tend to be on the short side.
surely the “its expensive and fancy” conclusion is enough for 99% of the kit whores on here though?
i’m here 🙂
ade ward has it however…but the CCDB does indeed demand a massive amount of set up input / ride / tweak / analysis…
i like that sort of thing – so it works for me …
heihei well spotted so why have we got a repeat of the magazine review from last year?? And while we’re on the subject of reviews why did i not look at this month’s long – term test bike “review” of the ORANGE BLOOD BEFORE i bought the magazine?
oh well no package yet ,, maybe you dont want a proper test on this then,,,,
two one for each end of my whyte preston SS would be good