Sea Otter 2012: DT Swiss

DT Swiss had a few things to show us this morning. There’s a newly designed rear shock, a whole new wheelset family and a couple of other bits here and there.

First up, the X-313 rear shock is an attempt to make DT’s shock offerings a little more contemporary. There’s a three position adjuster now – instead of the previous lockout or not, there’s now a further platform option.

White shock anyone? Very James Bond.

The DT Swiss XMM fork offers 120mm of travel, but now comes with a 15mm bolt-thru, and a tapered full carbon crown and steerer.

29er fork sensibly gains 15mm dropouts.

Lots of carbon wrangling involved in that steerer and crown then.

A new offering from DT Swiss is the whole Spline family of wheels. Eagle eyed readers will notice that is uses straight pull spokes and this gives a low profile rim and pretty neat look. The wheels will come in 26, 27.5 and 29in, and all at three different levels – there’s a 240 top end level, a DT350 level and a 370 level with the two pawl hub. They’ll all come with centre lock and a mix of axle choices (though no 20mm)

Top end 29er wheel will weigh around 1520g, while the 26in one will be 1450g

Comes with DT Swiss straight pull spokes, as you might expect.

Chipps Chippendale

Singletrackworld's Editor At Large

With 23 years as Editor of Singletrack World Magazine, Chipps is the longest-running mountain bike magazine editor in the world. He started in the bike trade in 1990 and became a full time mountain bike journalist at the start of 1994. Over the last 30 years as a bike writer and photographer, he has seen mountain bike culture flourish, strengthen and diversify and bike technology go from rigid steel frames to fully suspended carbon fibre (and sometimes back to rigid steel as well.)