Picked up a few copies of Privateer recently. An issue from 2012 had some interesting articles. Reading about Whyte designing their new full susser around the time when 29er were gaining traction ( sorry 🙄) over 26 and the thought processes and head scratching that was going on regarding which way things were going. The same year I bought a Ti Kona and I asked them if they would be making a 26 version 🙄
But an interview with Tony Ellsworth made me wonder what happened to them? He came across somewhat opinionated, his way was the only way. He didn’t trust Carbon or the Chinese. Doing a bit of digging it just seems his attitude meant he got left behind if I read it right and I just wonder if any of his bikes were that successful? The magazine itself seemed to price itself out of existence as well? Digital killed it I guess? Same model as Cranked, is that still going?

Ellesworth bikes is still going, he’s using carbon fibre now I think. I agree with you that he’s opinionated, but life would be dull without those sorts of people, and after all, it’s his company.  Miss Privateeer, it was pretty good. Cranked is still going, but it’s pricey, buy it occasionally as a treat, but always feel slightly guilty about buying a magazine that costs more than a paperback book.

nickc so I guess Ellsworth doesn’t have a distributor in the UK? Agreed about the price of Cranked 🙄

The lighter Ellsworths were a bit fragile I recall. Also his “instant center tracking” theory was based on some fundamental misconceptions and got debunked, I am not sure he ever acknowledged that. One good(?) thing that came out of it was allegedly Trek’s concentric rear pivot and axle (“Active Braking Pivot”). They wanted to place the Horst pivot really close to the axle but the Ellsworth patents got in the way. I think I read that in one of the mainstream UK mags.

I always remember lusting after an Ellsworth back in the day. Freeborn cycles of Horsham had them in stock (possibly imported them at one time) and whenever in there would always be drooling. Plus looking at the Marzocchi posters with scantily clad ladies on them.

Could never afford one, as i was probably in my mid teens around that point. But did manage to bag a Santa Cruz chameleon at the time.

What a time to be alive!

but always feel slightly guilty about buying a magazine that costs more than a paperback book.

Yeah but @nickc I’m normally in it, so surely that’s worth the cover price on it’s own? No? Okay then 🙂

My (and Nick’s) mate Nige loved his Ellsworth Truth. Right up to the point where the chainstay snapped at the very top of that amazing trail in Moab that ends up on the Jeep track after about another hour of descending. Nige got to descend it in the bus!

v7mfp couldn’t afford one, do you mean the Marzocchi Ladies? 😂😂😂😂😂

Yeah but  @nickc I’m normally in it, so surely that’s worth the cover price on it’s own? No? Okay then 🙂

Oh sure….I’s totally why I buy it. Seriously though, partner and I had a count up of our Amazon/kindle/Waterstones habit, pubs subs to various magazines and whatever, and the monthly total is more or less the same as the Xmas grocery shop. I don’t have time to read everything I get now, let alone another MTB magazine.

I kinda admire the guys like Tony Ellesworth and Brent Foes, whenever I wonder what happened to those guys, there they are, still plowing their own furrow, not giving a crap what the industry is generally tying it’s self in knots over. Just getting on with building bikes.

That hideous swingarm/pivot thing they used to have… the logo was nice, kind of original… they’ve changed both and I guess the swingarm looks slightly better
https://ellsworthbikes.com/product/rogue_sixty/

Also his “instant center tracking” theory was based on some fundamental misconceptions and got debunked

er…really. ICT was a particular version of a floating pivot point, or VPP. His just prioritised peddling efficiency. The ICT patented design also featured on iconic bikes like the Turner 5 spot which many owners recall very fondly… I owned the Epiphany and it remains one of the nicest riding bikes I’ve ever owned, mostly because of the characteristics of ICT. Have not ridden another suspension system that quite combines the balance of sharp pedal response and bump plushness, factors that are often opposing- and it managed to do that without any shock trickery at all. Mine didn’t even have a propedal lever or lockout and it never felt the need for it…thats how good it was. It was an amazing climber on technical terrain and a good descender too, handling balance spot on. My modern SC VPP is shite in comparison.

The shot-peened then anodised frame finishing was super durable and looked amazing, a cut above what other manufacturers were doing at the time or since. Frames were light (maybe too light for some people) and relatively affordable by todays pricing. Its weird that Ellsworth went quiet, a bit like Turner where it’s more about market forces of mass carbon production and cost issues of small makers competing with huge operations – certainly not for any lack of respect for the quality of the product and finely honed ride that so many riders appreciated.

Would have another in a heartbeat..same goes for Turner…there’s just something nice about these kind of thought through detailed products verses mass market jelly mould crud, a touch more soul perhaps.

DezB that Rogue seems to tick all the right on trend boxes at a reasonable price? Guess theres no UK distributor?

er…really. ICT was a particular version of a floating pivot point, or VPP. His just prioritised peddling efficiency. The ICT patented design also featured on iconic bikes like the Turner 5 spot which many owners recall very fondly… I owned the Epiphany and it remains one of the nicest riding bikes I’ve ever owned, mostly because of the characteristics of ICT. Have not ridden another suspension system that quite combines the balance of sharp pedal response and bump plushness, factors that are often opposing- and it managed to do that without any shock trickery at all. Mine didn’t even have a propedal lever or lockout and it never felt the need for it…thats how good it was. It was an amazing climber on technical terrain and a good descender too, handling balance spot on. My modern SC VPP is shite in comparison.

I might be getting my MTB history mixed up but it was Horst Leitner and Dave Turner that jointly developed it, but somehow Horst got the patent which was sold to specialized who labeled it FSR. Quite how they managed to eventually stop Dave Turner use it and not Tony Ellsworth I’m not sure. I suspect something to do with Elsworth having the pivot butted right up against the dropout in the same way Giant and Lapierre have avoided it by putting the pivot a few inches ahead and below the dropout.

I think “Debunked” is the wrong word. With different people coming up with different theories about instant centers and virtual pivots and where they should be, and in Ellsworths case this was right out in front of the bike somewhere. So I’ve no doubt someone on the internet somewhere has “debunked” this because it doesn’t fit in which whatever Dave Weagle has said is best via the medium of whatever system he’s licencing to someone now. You could and would tweak those pivot locations to give whatever shaped graphs you like though.

As for where they went, didn’t he refuse to come to the party on modern geometry. It’s probably kinda hard to sell a 6″ travel enduro bike with 90’s XC geometry.

As for where they went, didn’t he refuse to come to the party on modern geometry. It’s probably kinda hard to sell a 6″ travel enduro bike with 90’s XC geometry.

I think it’s fair to say that after the mid noughties, and he caved into making bike out of CF that his designs became somewhat “singular?” Some of them do have a “melted in the sun” look to them that I think it’s fair to say, don’t appeal to everyone.

Tony Ellsworth was controversial. Josh Bender got them a lot of publicity.

Their lifetime warranty (thanks Freeborn!) was good.

My Isis (that name has not aged well!) had a cracked swing arm which was replaced, a cracked front end which was replaced (with a Joker)

My Joker frame still got a load of interest when I put it on the vintage for sale group with crack in the seat post clamp slot. Some people love them.

My memory is hazy on it but think it went something like: Specialized patent the specific location of the Horst link pivot as FSR, while Ellsworth grabbed the patent for there ICT design that while utilising a Horst Link was different and unique enough. While Turner had to end up paying for both FSR and ICT patents which became cost prohibitive…the dull realities of big money, lawyers and court cases behind just being able to pedal away on a bike and think, ooh that feels good.

The issue not whether the bikes work or not. The issue was Ellsworth’s technical explanations of why they worked, which did not make any technical sense. The instant centre is not relevant to pedalling performance, the virtual pivot point is. So by focussing solely on the instant centre he was rather digging himself into a hole.

The virtual pivot point can be derived from the instant centre but will not generally be in the same place.

Intrigued, can you point me towards an explanation of how the Virtual Pivot Point can differ from the Instant Centre, I thought this was the same thing..but willing to be educated.

I have an Ellsworth Flight as my turbo trainer bike – ‘cos I crashed it and the head tube cracked… It was bloody light though!!!

Same model as Cranked, is that still going?

Yep only magazine I have bought in years (sorry stw really should give you another go to) the no reviews alone shows the philosophy of it.

The virtual pivot point can be derived from the instant centre but will not generally be in the same place.

I thought they were just different names for the same thing, the point at which the the suspension was pivoting arround at any point in it’s path.

Specialized, Turner, Ellsowrth etc have it forward and moving backwards and down to keep it roughly in line with the chain as the suspension compresses.

Giant Maestro, DW etc were broadly similar to that, they differ in how the rear triangle itself rotates which affects braking differently.

VPP, and Nicolai’s version of horst link move it down and forwards.

If anyone wants a copy of Privateer, this lot have been sat under my desk getting in the way for a while now. Let me know.

We randomly started to receive a subscription copy of Privateer out of the blue for about a year. The only explanation I could think is we went on a Retrobike group ride in the Lakes around the time Privateer was sponsoring them.

I’d say it was probably the best mtb mag we ever had – lots of interesting stuff to read and almost nothing pushed by adverts / manufacturers. Hence the price. Hence it died….

The only mag I’ve enjoyed as much was an edition of Dirt devoted to hardtails. Guess I just like weird non-mainstream bikes and a magazine that caters for that will never be viable.

Rode an Elsworth once at Mabie – it was OK apart from a bit of knee bashing on the rocker.

I’d say it was probably the best mtb mag we ever had – lots of interesting stuff to read and almost nothing pushed by adverts / manufacturers. Hence the price. Hence it died

The price isn’t why it died.

Cranked launched to fill the gap that Privateer left. Six years later, it’s still growing. That’s because we learnt from Privateer’s (non price-related) mistakes 🙂

I still have a 2011 Ellsworth Epiphany. It remains one of the most responsive light trail bikes I’ve ever ridden. I won’t ever sell it…

thisisnotaspoon
Full Member

As for where they went, didn’t he refuse to come to the party on modern geometry. It’s probably kinda hard to sell a 6″ travel enduro bike with 90’s XC geometry.

Big bit of this, yep. So much of the range was short, steep and tall- even the dh bikes. I mean, they weren’t alone in this to be fair, lots of US manufacturers stayed on the short steep bus for a long long time but Ellsworth just seemed that bit further back in time.

I thought they were just different names for the same thing, the point at which the the suspension was pivoting arround at any point in it’s path.

Well many in mtb land do use the terms interchangeably, but in strict geometrical(?) terminology they are different. The instant centre of a thing is the point about which the thing can be thought of as momentarily rotating. If you throw a stick through the air it will be rotating about its cg and its cg will be moving in an arc. The IC is the point about which every part of the stick appears to be rotating, in the sense that the movement of that part is exactly at right angles to the line between that part and the IC. In the stick situation, the IC will move about a lot as the stick flies. The IC is important in car suspension as it affects how the camber of the wheel changes as the suspension compresses. But in a bike rear suspension, this is not relevant and the wheel is at right angles (relative to the suspension arms) to how it is in a car with wishbone or McPherson strut suspension. If you believe in “brake jack” (see below), the IC is relevant to that.

So a point (such as an axle when you view suspension side on) cannot have an instant centre. A suspension member, such as the rear triangle of a “two short links” type of suspension or the “seatstay” of a Horst type can.

You get the virtual pivot point or vpp* from the instant centre by plotting the instant centre for points along the suspension movement. For each point you draw a line from the axle to the IC, extending it if needed. The intersection point(s) of all those lines shows you the vpp and how it moves about during the suspension travel. (Other ways of calculating the vpp are available.)

It it pretty clear from the wording of Ellsworth’s patent that he is confusing the two, see when he criticises other designs for example. The patent description is nowhere near a complete mechanical analysis of how suspension and pedalling force interact, it is impossible to follow the logic, hence the criticism. The fact that he ended up with a system with a pleasant pivot point height is largely a result of where he puts the Horst pivot (so near the axle that the thing behaves almost identically to a single pivot) and main pivot, and has bugger all to do with the instant centre. On the plus side, his instant centre obssession also led him to put the upper link/ rocker arm almost horizontal, which would be beneficial in terms of reducing “brake jack” (if you believe in that). But there, he gets it the wrong way round, saying that braking forces on simple swingarm designs will extend the suspension whereas in fact they tend to compress it (it wasn’t just him, many folk shared this view at that time).

*The VPP logo is a Santa Cruz trade mark.

Thanks for the explanation. I can see that Ellsworth marketing claims were dodgy, but whether by design or chance he did arrive at a system that rode incredibly well in the real world. I see they don’t call the system that anymore, its ‘Active’ Centre Tracking now. Are you saying it’s a case of the bike industry misusing the terminology then because some quick inexpert googling shows things like below, from the pointy headed German Engineering types from Rotwild…are they technically incorrect too?

Rotwild Virtual Pivot Point

from their site

“Description of the virtual pivot point – four-pivot-point system based on the Horst link
The virtual pivot point describes a point that moves through the compression process, also known as the instant centre of rotation. During the course of the compression, the rear axle performs a complex, compound rotation as well as a horizontal and vertical shift (rotational and translational movement). This path can be represented as a rotational movement as a function of time at every point of the rear axle via the virtual pivot point.”

Thanks @greyspoke, that’s the first description of virtual pivot point and instant centres that I’ve actually fully understood. Makes perfect sense to me now you’ve described it, cheers!

My memory is hazy on it but think it went something like: Specialized patent the specific location of the Horst link pivot as FSR, while Ellsworth grabbed the patent for there ICT design that while utilising a Horst Link was different and unique enough. While Turner had to end up paying for both FSR and ICT patents which became cost prohibitive…the dull realities of big money, lawyers and court cases behind just being able to pedal away on a bike and think, ooh that feels good.

Horst Leitner filed the Horst link patent (clue in the name), and later sold it to specialized, by the late 90s various companies were already using similar suspension layouts and by the mid 00s most had either begun paying specialized for an “FSR” licence or found an alternative (examples being Turner and Intense).
Ellsworth’s patent was far more focused on the interaction between pedaling and suspension, Leitner’s was describing the suspension arrangement specific to a bicycle, with less focus on the drivetrain.

My opinion is that both are basically just describing a 4 bar suspension system, Leitner having filed his 6 years earlier and having it on the market in the form of AMP bikes should have meant Ellsworth’s shouldn’t really have been granted due to prior art (like I said IMO). Not that Ellsworth really had the resources to defend his patent, I think specialized saw him as an annoyance but too small to pick the legal fight with, (although IIRC he did licence ICT to Devince at one point in the early 00s?). Anyway it would appear both patents are recently expired anyway.

TBH I’ve never really been an Ellsworth fan they were either cartoonishly overbuilt looking with massive rocker links and various gussets (yet apparently still prone to cracking), or they looked a bit like they’d been left under a heat lamp after he discovered the joys of hydroformed tubing, but that’s just personal tastes…

*The VPP logo is a Santa Cruz trade mark.

Yep, but didn’t they jointly buy the IP and patent from outland with intense?

These were always prettier, absolute classic. Note the great big ICT logo..

also found this from ‘Bike198’ Turner history, what a load of complication:

“David Turner was there, working with Horst Lietner of AMP Research when the Horst Link (HL) was 1st drawn up in ‘90 and continued to use it on all his 4 Bar frames even after the rights were sold to Specialized who then licensed it to all takers in ‘00. A few years later, he licensed ICT (Instant Center Tracking) from Ellsworth Bicycles in order to (in short) continue to use the HL and a flat profile rocker. There were no changes to the Turner line due to this agreement the frames in production at the time, Nitrous, Flux, 5 Spot and RFX were all infringing in their Turner designed form. The ICT patents had been applied for and granted after Turner had created and showed the some of the earliest flatter rocker bikes with the 1997 Afterburner downhill bike and the 1998 model year RFX, first introduced at the Interbike show in 1997 with 5” of travel and a flatish rocker profile later used on the lighter tubed bike known as the 5 Spot.”

turner history

@endoverend re the Rottwild quote

“Description of the virtual pivot point – four-pivot-point system based on the Horst link
The virtual pivot point describes a point that moves through the compression process, also known as the instant centre of rotation. During the course of the compression, the rear axle performs a complex, compound rotation as well as a horizontal and vertical shift (rotational and translational movement). This path can be represented as a rotational movement as a function of time at every point of the rear axle via the virtual pivot point.”

The axle centreline (a point viewed from side on) moves along a curved two-dimensional path. The idea of a curved path is simple enough, the words “complex, compound rotation” obscure rather than explain it. However for a suspension member, those words makes a bit more sense as the thing is both moving as a whole and rotating, and the instant centre does indeed describe how it does that. So they are either conflating vpp and instant centre, or making a horlicks of describing a curved axle path. This may be technical people struggling with language, or a translation issue, or it may be that they actually don’t fully understand what they are talking about.

The vpp tells you not only the direction of travel of the axle at a particular point in its movement, but the curvature of its path at that point. Another useful concept is the “virtual swingarm” – an imaginary swingarm pivoted at the vpp and connecting to the axle. The angle of the virtual swingarm tells you the direction of movement, its length tells you the curvature of the axle path at that point. In fact imagining a virtual swingarm is one way of defining what a virtual pivot point is. The position of the instant centre tells you the direction of travel, but nothing about the curvature of the path.

Given this, the instant centre is useful because the direction the axle moves in at a point is what determines the amount of anti- or pro-squat at that point (together with other aspects of the bike that do not change as the suspension moves such as bb height, wheel size and the gear you are in). The position of the vpp gives you a better idea of how that changes through the travel (and as I noted above, if you draw in the lines to the instant centre at points in the travel, you are plotting the vpp).

Ellsworth thought the actual position of the instant centre (as opposed to simply the angle of the line from the axle to it) was important, for reasons technically minded people have been unable to follow.

Didn’t Ellsworth get bought out by some big shopping company like Walmart or some big outdoors company ?

Despite all the science, I think bikes sell on marketing. Thats not based on science, its based on creating an image and followers who worship it. Often if it looks good it will sell well.

Look at Orange for example, bloody simple, looks right sells well.

Ellsworth sold bikes because they were light, had that nice annodised finish and were quite niche, i wanted a Truth, tried it and liked them, but then talked myself into buying an ID, which was just not a good frame in terms of geometry and feel.

It was the same for lots of things back in those days, Turner sold well because they again looked nice, had great feedback from mags and users, and again were niche.

For me a lot of these style frames were let down by the rear shock being quite basic compared to what we have today in terms of tuneability through valving and shimming, as well as so much spring and dial in tweaks. That’s why i think the likes of pretty similar 4bar/horst designs still do well today, a slight issue with pivot placement (for say better anti-dive or whatever) can be dialed back in with the shock a lot easier.

Anyway it would appear both patents are recently expired anyway.

The Horst one has.

https://patents.google.com/patent/US6471230B2/en

2019-03-02: Anticipated expiration
Status: Expired – Fee Related

Never spotted that Turner used the ICT patent…