Bronson vs Nomad?

As I said earlier, the Nomad IMO doesn’t climb as well, but I think that’s more of a characteristic of the shock & SC’s desire to have a nice, supple initial stroke.

The shock doesn’t have as good a climb platform as, for example a Float X, which makes it feel like it’s harder work on the longer stuff. Shorter climbs I imagine there is very little in it.

For me at least, I think the shock would benefit from a slightly different tune, to lose some of that soft feel at the top of its travel,

I’m also not 100% sure despite being advertised as 165mm, if it actually is. But that’s a separate thing.

Took my new Nomad carbon in XL out last night, much better up and down than I expected. I did have the Carbon Cube Stereo 650b which was great but the Nomad is head and shoulders above it – definitely on the steeper downhill stuff. I was genuinely surprised at how much better it was…even allowing for the new bike/placebo effect.

I did get the Vivid Air shock as a free upgrade (big shout out to Ubyk, who were amazing). So far there is nothing I don’t like…not sure it would be great on a long XC ride with lots of flat drags but that isn’t what its for. I have ridden 1*10 for a while so no issues there.

The main difference was how planted it felt and how much time I felt I had on the descents, was very secure. The long top tube and short chain stays make it feel stable but the back end is easily maneuverable and no issues there.

The cube was great but the engineering and internal cable routing is a thing of beauty on the Nomad.

Only downside is the IS disc mount…needed to get an adaptor for it!

I thought about the Bronson but the slacker Nomad took it for me and although Bronson is probably more suited to the majority of my riding I prefer to lug a bit more travel around so I can hit the descents as hard as possible.

Taking in to account the notes above about new bike being the best ever…this really does feel amazing!

fuzzhead – yep you sum up my thoughts really, your meta weighs in at 34lbs ish, and not so long ago most 160mm bikes would be heading that way weight wise (certainly most if not all over 30lbs id imagine)

over the last year or so we’ve seen some incredibly light weigh 160mm machines out there, and for me as i like climbing, it would have to do that well enough, but i genuinely cant see it being any worse than a five at climbing (its probs 2lbs lighter in general build terms)

but also lets not forget its being designed really around ‘enduro’ so its has had the climb in mind as well as descending too, id certainly ride for 6 hours on a 28lb carbon nomad, i expect my current 150mm bike weighs more than that, so i dont see any downsides at all

maybe as hobnob says the tune maybe more DH orientated for a nice plush ride, but im sure a shock tune to stiffen it up a tad is a plausible option if it were needed, im only 11st so usually on anything multipivot i dont notice any pedal bob/wasted energy climbing at all, on the five i had before its another matter all together, the vpp system is an excellent climb platform in itself so again climbing wise its on a good start before the weight etc is taken in consideration

and whats more to the point that nomad just looks right too 😉

I think you secretly wish you had a Nomad over a Bronson
I’ve ridden both so in a good position to comment, have you?

You might be right 🙁 At the time I tested the Solo and Bronson… Bronson won hands down for me. I haven’t had a go on the Nomad yet… I’m too scared to. I’m telling myself the Bronson is the right choice for me and riding here in the UK and the one trip I make to the Mega. I have my DH bike for everything else.

I do love my Bronson though 🙂

I think you secretly wish you had a Nomad over a Bronson
I’ve ridden both so in a good position to comment, have you?
You might be right At the time I tested the Solo and Bronson… Bronson won hands down for me. I haven’t had a go on the Nomad yet… I’m too scared to. I’m telling myself the Bronson is the right choice for me and riding here in the UK and the one trip I make to the Mega. I have my DH bike for everything else.
I do love my Bronson though

Probably the right choice if you have a DH bike as well.

Both awesome bikes and if the Nomad hasn’t have been released I’d certainly be riding a Bronson now.

I ride a Bronson C as my only bike and the future step bro in law recently demo’d a nomad C so we hit our normal forest run and swapped around a bit as he was trying to decide between the two bikes. I love my Bronson and is the best bike I’ve owned, been running it constantly for around 7 months and I dont have itchy feet yet which makes a change for me. The nomad weighed about half a pound more than my bronson with the setup and having compared his now nomad to my bronson I sitll won by I think about half a pound. It climbs just as well as the bronson on our local loop, i expected it to feel enormous and cumbersome but it didnt. It descends just as well but definitely swallowed a lot more than the Bronson does. Whether this is good or not depends on how you like your bikes to feel and where you’re gonna ride them, jumpy and fun or fast and controlled really. For me the Bronson won as it has to cope with 100% of my riding where as SBIL has a hardtail for winter/local and a dh rig for the alps etc so it was a happy medium for him.

Thanks all, some really useful points made.

I’m quite taken my the blue/magenta of the Nomad and I’d be gutted if I can’t get a Tennis Yellow Bronson – the new Bronson colours are a bit hmmm…

Not that I’m superficial or anything 😉

Thing is, you don’t get owt for nowt.

To make a longer travel bike pedal well, you have to-

1) make it lighter, strength/stiffness could become an issue
2) give it a steep SA, for me if i want to get truly rad and not hold back, i need the seat out of the way like on my BMX, just cant get them as flat with a seat staying between my legs unless i get real far forward
3) something has to prevent the suspension squatting, this has to come from one of 2 places, the shock or the linkage design. Make the shock firmer at the beginning, you start losing the whole point of the extra travel and ending up with a bike that rides like a shorter travel one in the first place. If your “platform” is coming from the linkage, regardless of what magic linkage design you have, you start to compromise on wheel paths, hence pedal feedback and brake squat, the leverage rate too, in laymans terms you’re making a bigger travel bike worse at what it’s meant to be good for.

PS if you’re going to start sweating over angles and comparative SC lengths etc, the static figures only tell a small part of the story, either ignore it, bliss in ignorance, or really go for it understanding the angles once the bike is sagged/being ridden.

the Nomad is too slack for my liking, on UK trails. But each to his own.

https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/F3npN3SFndQsE1DQzO1TJ2KZCLaapjN8ta34p7zoBNw=w552-h414-p-no

Mine last night

looking good there timbo678, nice bike 🙂

in laymans terms you’re making a bigger travel bike worse at what it’s meant to be good for

I kind of have that impression too but the average punter seems to be happy. I also can’t get my head around how a bike can be well suited to both a pro who runs 10% sag riding at considerably faster speeds and nastier terrain and a average Joe run 25-30% sag and considerably slower on more mellow terrain. The compromise seems to be for the average Joe while the Pro gets the great pedaling characteristics (10% sag on any length travel will pedal great) but they are still smashing everything on the way down and making full use of the travel left in reserve… whereas the average Joe is mincing and wallowing through everything… or the bike is designed for the average Joe to make a bigger travel bike worse at what it’s meant to be good for as you say. God I’m so confused 😀 The marketing and pretty colours seem to have people convinced you can have it all… but I do agree that logically you can’t have everything without compromise. I just can’t work out where the compromise lies and for who! Depends on priorities I guess

Mine last night

That does look rather awesome 😀

timbo678 – Member
https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/F3npN3SFndQsE1DQzO1TJ2KZCLaapjN8ta34p7zoBNw=w552-h414-p-no

Mine last night

That does look great. I went for the blue but still love the stealth look.

Mine last night

Nice! 😀

a pro who runs 10% sag

Really? In what discipline? I know they tend to run a lot stiffer compression damping but I’d have though minimal sag would just mess up geometry and traction.

There was a good round up on Pinkbike of Pro set up at the end of last season… can’t find it quickly but I’ll have a look

Is that a 1×10 set up, smart move and probably saved some cash too? What front ring did you go for and did you do the dinner plate back cog?

PS if you’re going to start sweating over angles and comparative SC lengths etc, the static figures only tell a small part of the story, either ignore it, bliss in ignorance, or really go for it understanding the angles once the bike is sagged/being ridden.

As much as I may not agree with your short Vs long travel points, this, along with actually riding them both is probably the most important thing. You can dissect the numbers until the cows come home, but only swinging a leg over can confirm a like or dislike for a bike.

FWIW, I like mine – it’s not perfect, but it’s not far off. I race DH on it, I race Enduro, i’ll go & take in most of the fun stuff on the North Downs on it tomorrow, it’s off to France to race the Mega in a week, and then i’m off to Whistler for 2 weeks riding, including racing the EWS when out there. There arn’t many bikes that I can do all of that on (that wouldn’t come back in more than one piece).

Is that above Nomad a large or XL? I’m guessing large but not always easy to tell having such a sloping top tube.

Yay!!! Santacruz have finally brought out a long travel trail bike where you can get your weight over the bars (when the going gets really steep and loose) without going over them!!!
Plus they’ve actually got the weight of the carbon Nomad frame down to that of an alu Liteville 301!! 😀

Is that above Nomad a large or XL? I’m guessing large but not always easy to tell having such a sloping top tube.

Mine is a large. I could have gone either L/XL, but I didn’t want the 48+ inch wheelbase of an XL.

Thanks for comments all, mine is the XL in reference to the above

Hob Nob, nice ride 🙂

Cheers Hob Nob – just found my next bike – that looks lovely!

Well, if we are getting all show and tell…

image[/url] by tomhoward379[/url], on Flickr

Hob nob and tomhoward, i don’t care how they ride, but they are things of absolute beauty.

Money well spent on looks alone 🙂

@ Hob Nob & tomhoward – what rims/wheels do each of you have and did you spec them on the bike?

I couldn’t bear paying £6k+ for a bike ala Stif’s offerings and it coming specced with WTB rims

The on,y thing new on mine was the frame. Everything else I had anyway.

My wheels are DT Swiss 240s built onto E13 TRS+ rims with DT Revolution spokes. No carbon rims for me, I want them to last, and if I break them, they arn’t crazy money to re-rim.

Enve M70Thirty on hope pro 2 40t. From, erm, Stif…

Worth noting that you still get hope hubs as standard, the wheel upgrade is just the rims.

Cheers guys – anyone in Derbyshire and fancies letting me try one 😉

Are you guys both running the Vivid?

I am yeah. Really impressed with it so far, had planned to stick a CCDBAcs on there but there really isn’t any need and I’m sure there’s a phrase concerning fixing things that aren’t broken…

Mine has the Monarch Debonair on it.

Vivid for me, free upgrade which was nice! Very impressed

😯
You have got to be freaking kidding me. I’ve never seen such a beautiful bike.

So, my 2c on this.

Mate of mine has a nomad. I have a bronson. Both carbon, both 650b, both size ‘large’.

The nomad, I got on and went ‘christ, this needs a longer stem’ as the front end feels to flop over past 30-40 degrees turn. That said, nail it downhill and lean into things and that’s just not an issue in the slightest. There’s noticably more pedal bob than on my bronson but also it’s noticably more composed when you’re being an idiot bombing downhill.
My mate says the bronson feels like a bmx compared to his nomad and I can see why. It’s a lot more flickable and feels more compact but this just makes it more fun for me. The bronson climbs considerably better than the nomad though and markedly improved on the downhill with swapping the stock shock for something like a float X or CCDB.

They’re both ‘too much bike’ for either me, or the UK in general and I couldn’t care less about that as I walk away with a smile on my face. I prefer the bronson as it’s more capable as an all-rounder, my mate prefers the nomad as he can pay way less attention bombing downhill (though saying that did cut his knee up a treat in swinley on the blue route last weekend). Your choice will depend on what you enjoy doing.

Thanks gardron – as I’m currently riding a slack 160mm bike with beautifully plush Marzocchi suspension the idea of having something more flickable is very appealing 🙂

Good point about swapping the stock shock – I’ve never got on with RP2/23, they tend to always get swapped out. If I do go for a Bronson after my demo, a CCDBa is on the spec list 🙂

Those black Nomads are very lovely

So, my 2c on this.

Mate of mine has a nomad. I have a bronson. Both carbon, both 650b, both size ‘large’.

The nomad, I got on and went ‘christ, this needs a longer stem’ as the front end feels to flop over past 30-40 degrees turn. That said, nail it downhill and lean into things and that’s just not an issue in the slightest. There’s noticably more pedal bob than on my bronson but also it’s noticably more composed when you’re being an idiot bombing downhill.
My mate says the bronson feels like a bmx compared to his nomad and I can see why. It’s a lot more flickable and feels more compact but this just makes it more fun for me. The bronson climbs considerably better than the nomad though and markedly improved on the downhill with swapping the stock shock for something like a float X or CCDB.

They’re both ‘too much bike’ for either me, or the UK in general and I couldn’t care less about that as I walk away with a smile on my face. I prefer the bronson as it’s more capable as an all-rounder, my mate prefers the nomad as he can pay way less attention bombing downhill (though saying that did cut his knee up a treat in swinley on the blue route last weekend). Your choice will depend on what you enjoy doing.

You have a Bronson and prefer it to your mates Nomad – he has a Nomad and prefers it to your Bronson? Wow STW shocker!

Despite TheArtistFormerlyKnownAsSTR’s pointless comment, you’ve nailed it Gardon, its all about what you want most from your bike.

Both bikes are awesome and will do anything but nomad is more downhill orientated

I am sure Santa Cruz have sneaked the price up on the nomad. When I ordered mine I am sure the rrp was £2799 but the UK website now says £2849.

Can any one confirm if this has gone up? Or was I imagining the £2799?

Mine was £2,799

http://www.ubyk.co.uk/santa-cruz-nomad-275-frame/18318