Of course the biggest issue, even if they were proven to make a decent difference, would be convincing most MTB riders to actually strap more weight to their bikes rather than remove it!
I think we all know how it goes by now. Within a year or two some dumbed-down version will be a must-have feature on pretty much any mountain bike you can buy. Journalists will rave about the buttery smooth progression they engender in suspension systems and how they cannot now imagine riding without a TMD, the abbreviation will become ubiquitous. People on here will swear blind that they have no idea how they ever managed to ride down a bumpy fire-road without one.
Next aftermarket companies will offer eye-wateringly expensive TMD upgrades that will quickly be superceded by the STMD – Specialized Tuned Mass Damper – 2.0, all your old forks, frames, shocks will be declared obsolete by the same journalists who believe that a £7k power-assisted enduro rig now means there’s no future for human-powered bikes, because, why would you?
A couple of years later, t˙he whole thing will have been forgotten about in favour of the next high-tec, eeee-lectronic, very expensive performance gizmo component, and the tuned mass damper will be consigned to the passing fad trash-bucket of history. People will look back, shake their heads, and ask ‘what the fluffkins was that alll about then?’
