Late last year I was pretty lucky to be one of the first people to ride the Sonder Signal Ti, today I’ve discovered I’m not the first to ride the Signal steel hardtail but I’m still stoked!
Steel is real! It’s a fact we can’t ignore and it’s a feature of the UK mountain biking landscape that we don’t want to escape. For us Brits, there’s nothing better than ragging around the woods on a hooligan hardtail, and when it’s one made from steel and designed to tackle our trails and weather conditions, then that’s a recipe we can all really tuck in to.
UK based Sonder Bikes, the bicycle division of Alpkit, has a long history of making hardtails that suit our riding needs but with carbon, alloy and Titanium options already covered, it was only a matter of time a steel bike showed up.
Here we have a first spy photo of the Sonder Signal Steel hardtail. It’s so new and unexpected that we don’t know if that will be the actual name of this 29er trail bike or if it will be called something else. What we can see from this spy photo of the pre-production bike is that it features a low-slung top-tube for ample standover and a very minimalist design that shows off its svelte steel tubing.
At this stage, we don’t know what type of steel the new Sonder Signal will be made of, but it does appear to be running a 130-140mm travel fork, boasts a kinked downtube and a low stack height, perfect for an aggressive stance when taming the trail.
We’ve reached out to our contacts at Sonder who confirm that the bike is currently undergoing testing and they’re not certain if this steel bike’s geometry will match that of the Titanium version, but if it rides anywhere near as well, then we have something pretty special to look forward to.
Update: Sonder has now updated it’s Instagram account with more images of this copper beauty!