First Look: Lone Bicycles Parabellum

After over a year of waiting we finally get hold of a Lone Bicycles Parabellum for some winter shredding.

Cast your minds back to Eurobike, no not Eurobike 2019 but 2018, and you will probably remember a bicycle from a French brand that showed off a clever bike design that allowed the BB to be raised and lowered so that you can choose to run either 27.5in or 29in wheels.

That bike originally called the Beretta due to the look of the CNC machined eccentric bottom bracket, is the brainchild of French mountain biker Romain Olmos, the same clever mind behind the HXR Easyshift chainset.

Since our first introduction to Lone Bicycles, their first bike has had a name change to the Parabellum, but the design and unique features remain untouched, and now the bike is on sale and available to order.

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When designing the Parabellum, Romain found himself at a point where the industry seemed to be adopting new standards faster than the change in UK weather conditions so to combat this he designed his bike to “f@$k all standards”.

So if you decided to buy a frame alone you can use a metric shock or an imperial shock. You can run 27.5in wheels or 29in wheels, and if you find that the wheels you have aren’t Boost you don’t have to worry as HXR, Romain’s component company, makes Boost adapters for standard wheels.

If this wasn’t all refreshing enough then you might want to take a look at that bottom bracket area.

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The first thing that you’ll notice is that the rear suspension rotates around the BB. In theory, this would mean there isn’t any chain growth and you could potentially build the Parabellum as a single speed.

But look again and you see that the BB is mounted in an eccentric CNC alloy component like those found on a tandem. Whereas on a tandem the eccentric BB is designed for adjusting chain tension, on the Parabellum it’s here so that the BB height can be adjusted.

This means you can adjust the BB if you switch from 27.5in to 29er wheels without radically changing the geometry, OR, you could fine-tune the geo to just how you like your bike with just a few twists and turns.

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As well as adjustments to the BB height, the Lone Parabellum has sliding dropouts for chainstay length adjustment, and as mentioned above you can run either a metric or imperial rear shock and that changes rear suspension travel from 159mm to 163mm.

If you look at the Parabellum we have to test you should have noticed that our bike is in a mullet mode, with a 27.5in rear wheel and a 29in front wheel. That’s just how versatile this frame can be, but for a well-rounded review, Lone has sent over a complete set of 29in and 27.5in wheels to fit to the bike so that we can test it with matched and mismatched wheels too.

Speaking of the build, we’ve been treated to DVO suspension front and rear, Mavic wheels, Schwalbe tyres, and an HXR Easyshift chainset. We’ve tested the Easyshift in the past, it basically features a freewheel on the crank arm so that the chainring spins instead of the cassette while coasting. The pawls in the hub are replaced with solid parts to prevent the cassette turning, an upgrade that Mavic does allow and won’t void your warranty for. With this configuration you’re able to change gear without pedalling, pretty cool don’t you think?

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More unique components come from BOX for the rear mech and shifter. Magura provide MT7 brakes, Production Privee the stem and the bar is another HXR own component.

We’re pretty excited to test the Lone Bicycles Parabellum and will be hitting the dirt on this French Fancy in the coming days, but if you have any questions about this bike feel free to ask in the comments below or visit the Lone Bicycles website here.

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