Santa Cruz launches the Tallboy 2

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Since its launch in 2009, the Tallboy has been Santa Cruz Bikes’ best selling model so far. It set the bar on how a 100mm 29er bike could be made to pedal well, yet still feel fun and playful on the descents and in singletrack. Santa Cruz then added the 130mm Tallboy LT to that a couple of years ago and showed that a longer travel 29er could also work really well.

2014 Santa Cruz Tallboy 2 - in black or white
Tallboy aluminium in zingy green
...or a metallic blue

After four years, it was time to take the lessons learned from the Tallboy and Tallboy LT and re-vamp the Tallboy. It still features 100mm of travel front and rear, but there are several tweaks that have been made to it. The VPP suspension has been moved and reconfigured to give a better pedalling response – and also to allow Santa Cruz to offer a small size for the first time on the Tallboy.

That's not going to be a cheap trailer to rear-end.

Both the carbon and the aluminium Tallboys have been loved-up and both are the first to feature the new lower VPP link which has been designed with UK riders in mind. The whole link can be removed (and was, in front of our eyes) with a couple of Allen keys, without needing to remove cranks or even the back wheel. The bearings are sealed on the outside with a metal, rather than the usual rubber lip seal, which is then covered with a one-way grease cover. The link is designed to be filled with grease, which then passes through the un-sealed inner side of the bearing and then out of the metal and one-way seals to keep grease in and the water out…

The screwdriver's just to show the seals off. Link can be removed with two Allen keys.

 

Grease ports angled out of harm's way now.

The weight of the Large carbon frame is 4.9lbs (in matt black) so the bike has lost a little over the previous model. It’s also gained some invisible structural improvements. Interestingly the carbon shock link is gone. The alloy link there now is lighter and way stronger, apparently. The frame now has a direct mount front mech and retains a 73mm threaded BB.

Here’s Rob Roskopp and crew explaining the new machine.

We had a chance to ride the new Tallboy C on a big loop around Braemar this week. Premier users can read some of Chipps’ initial thoughts on the bike.

Read Chipps’ initial thoughts

A brace of 'boys

And now a gallery of details for you:

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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.)

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