Please stop girding your loins for it is here: the six hundred and seventy ninth edition of Fresh Goods Friday!
Do you have a favourite bike colour? Now, we don’t mean the actual colour per se. We mean the Official Name given to the bike colour. Duke Blue? Hunter Green? Fizzy Orange? Angel Delight? Pop your favourite colour name in the comments!
On with the show…
Kona Process X CR
- Price: £5,499
- From: Kona
A big pink bike. It’s ‘gloss metallic dusty rose’ officially. With chocolate and bronze decals no less. And I [Benji] think it looks fabulous. Up to 162mm rear travel (we say ‘up to’ because the adjustable chain stay length must have an effect on actual wheel travel too, no?). Up front there’s a 170mm travel Fox 38 Performance Grip fork.
Build kit. Shimano SLX drivetrain. Shimano Deore brakes with 203mm rotors. The 200mm travel TranzX +RAD Internal dropper (the ‘+RAD’ means it can adjusted 30mm in 5mm increments, no-tools required) is paired to a nice Shimano dropper remote. Wheels are DT Swiss 370 hubs laced on to WTB KOM Trail i30 rims. The tyres of the bike industry ‘Standard Issue’ Maxxis Assegai and Minion DHR II combo. Kona themselves describe the suspension as “ultra-squishy”. We shall see. It certainly seems very much on the squishy end of the spectrum.
This XL size’s geometry: short 450mm seat tube, long 525mm reach, slack 63.5° head angle, 77.9° effective seat angle (claimed), 30mm BB drop, 435 or 450mm chain stay length. It can also be mulleted if you wanted to (there’s a set of flip chips in the rocker for doing so).
La Sportiva Miura Climbing Shoes
- Price: £150.00
- From: Lyon
It’s been like Christmas in the Sanny household of late – a real feast of Fresh Goods have landed on his doorstep so where to start? How about something totally unrelated to biking but which we know a lot of readers will be interested in as they climb as well as bike…
With a design that is two decades old, these are the definition of old faithful in the La Sportiva range. Only slightly tweaked in that time, Sanny’s rediscovered love of bouldering saw him reluctantly admit that his old Miura’s might need replaced having completely worn out the toe rubber on his old shoes. You would think he was from Yorkshire given his fiscal prudence! Sized down a full shoe size, Sanny reckons these are just the ticket. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it!
La Sportiva TX5 Low GTX Approach Shoes
- Price: £180.00
- From: Lyon
If you are in the market for a technical approach shoe that is waterproof, grippy and stiff without being unyielding, these might just be the very dab. Featuring a Vibram Mega Grip sole, a full wrap around rand and a Gore Tex liner, Sanny has already put them through their paces when he and his daughter tackled Striding Edge and Swirral Edge on Helvellyn. Suffice to say he was impressed enough that he is now talking about opening his wallet and buying the full length boot version too. Crivens!
Magura MT7 Pro Brakes
- Price: £188.49 per end
- From: Magura
Having just taken delivery of a Pivot Shuttle SL E bike on long term test (more on that next week), Sanny is looking to explore upgrade options on it as part of a series of five articles he is going to pen on what it is like to live with an E bike and use it as your only bike. Enter stage left Magura’s MT7 Pro Brakes. Running on mineral oil, the MT7 features an ergonomic one finger lever design, tool free adjustment and a 4 piston caliper design in a post mount design. Weighing a scant 255 grams, these fall into the light but powerful category of disc brakes and were Benji’s brake of choice when he tested them recently.
Magura MDR-P 6 Bolt Rotors
- Price: £47.50 per disc
- From: Magura
180mm amd 203mm brake plates. Designed to offer maximum heat resistance and stability, these 6 bolt rotors are designed to work with E bikes and feature an interlocking inner and outer ring design. All good stuff as you would expect and they look pretty darn cool too.
Magura HC3 & HCW Levers
- Price: £60.00 per end HC3, £34.00 per end HC4
- From: Magura
Magura HC3 first. Designed in conjunction with everyone’s favourite Scotsman who appears to be made of rubber bands, Danny Macaskill, the HC3 is an after market lever that is compatible with MT6, 7 and 8 brakes from 2015 onwards. Designed as a one finger brake, the lever can be adjusted to tune braking power to just the way you like it.
Magura HCW Lever. Although not as adjustable as the HC3, these little beauties designed in conjunction with Loic Bruni, offer stacks of power in the shape of a wide lever designed for the larger handed / shovel pawed rider.
POC Elicit Sunglasses w/ Clarity & Clear Lenses
- Price: £180 and £80
- From: POC Sports
Lighter than the lightest light thing that has ever been light is an apt description for these 23 gram sunglasses from Swedish safety masters, POC. Featuring a frame free design and wraparound styling that follows the current trend for big and bold eyewear, these are just the ticket if you want to channel your inner Peters and Lee (ask yer Mum!)
Works Components Reach Adjust Headset
- Price: from £69.99
- From: Works Components
It is here! At last! The final* part of Benji’s Orange Switch 6 project – AKA the Pink Pig. What is this headset? And why does it look like it has melted slightly? Well, it’s a reach adjust headset. So the middle of it of is not in the middle of it. It’s offset. By a whopping not-very-much-but-hey 5mm. This should take the reach of the XL Orange Switch 6 frame up to 509mm. Which will quite clearly be absolutely vital in the grand scheme of things. Insert eyeroll emoji here.
*apart from all those bits that I will have forgotten to factor in
My Wrexham Story by Paul Mullin
- Price: £10.99
- From: Penguin
We are nothing if not a broad church at Singletrackworld. Here is a paperback about a soccerballist. “The memoir from Wrexham super striker, Paul Mullin – as seen in Welcome to Wrexham, a Disney+ documentary series by Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney. Here for the first time, Mullin tells his own story: his roots in Liverpool, the highs and lows of English football’s promotion race, lessons learnt from his young son’s Autism diagnosis, and what happens when Hollywood comes knocking at your door.”
Pearl Izumi Amfib Lobster Gel Gloves
- Price: £76.50
- From: pearlizumi.eu
A new addition to Hannah’s claw-set: Primaloft insulated lobster glove with synthetic leather palm and gel padding. Touch screen compatible lobster claw. AmFIB Softshell outer fabric – we’ll be finding out how waterproof it is.
Fohn Adventure Paddleboards
- Price: £150.00
- From: wiggle.co.uk
Hannah caved in to bargain pressure and bought two Fohn paddleboard sets. With the help of the Forum, she also found an OUTLET10 code that took another 10% off the price – see if that still works if you try and buy one. She’s gone for an ‘Adventure’ model in 11′ and 10’6″ lengths. She has no idea what she’s doing or whether she should have bought the ‘Fusion’ model. And as she unpacked these (mahoosive) bags she remembered she’s quite scared of deep water.
SQ Lab saddles
- Price: €159.99
- From: SQ-Lab
There’s been a sudden rush of Q-Lab saddles in the office, with Benji & Ross’ SQ Lab 6OX Infinergy Ergowave Active 2.1 Saddle review going out this week and another saddle about to appear in the upcoming December issue of the magazine.
So what do we have here? There are two saddles – one for mountain (and e-) biking and another ostensibly for gravel riding, where presumably the more forward position does differing things to your sitbones. Both saddles some with adjustable elastomers that allow the saddle to rock side to side with your pelvis.
The 611 Ergowave Active 2.1 features a dipped, but still flat, nose, a raised rear section for seated power and it comes in four different widths. Meanwhile, the 614 Ergowave Active 2.1 is a halfway house between SQ-Labs mountain bike saddles, like the 611, and its road riding saddles. It offers a slimmer shape than the mountain bike saddles, but still comes in five widths to accommodate nearly every rider. Like the mountain bike saddles, there’s scuff protection at the rear and shoulders of the saddle to protect against both off-road tumbles and your local roadie café walls…
Thread Of The Week
Congratulations this week go to redmex for this offally good forum posting:
The winning TOTW in FGF gets a prize. So @redmex please email editorial@singletrackworld.com for your random prize (it will probably be a Singletrack Forum Bottle Opener). Don’t forget to include your postal address, as it really speeds up delivery logistics like. K thx bye!
The Megasack is coming!
- Price: £0.00
- From: December 1st
Yep, it’s that time of year again.
It’s Singletrack’s long running, weekly roundup of all of the new products that have been sent in to the magazine.
They’re sent in by bike companies and marketing agencies
They’re featured and then some are reviewed down the line in either Singletrack Magazine or in online reviews and photoshoots.
They’re usually sent back after review, or kept on long-term test bikes. But no one ever asks for shorts and shoes back. Trust us on that. Once we were asked to return some brake pads.
Nothing. Nil. Zero. Diddlysquat. Sod all. Just send all ‘next big things’ to us at – Fresh Goods Friday, Singletrack Magazine, Lockside Mill, Dale Street, Todmorden. OL14 5PX. Please note that if you require the products back after they have featured then you are responsible for arranging collection at your cost. While it is our policy to feature everything we receive in FGF if we decide your product is not suitable for publication we won’t do it. Publication is at our discretion. Whether a product goes on for publication as a review is at editorial discretion. Beer, coffee & spirits will ALWAYS be tested.
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