Tyre question….thunder Burt or continental double fighter?

Apologies for a very subjective question, but I’m stuck on tyre choice for my current hardtail build. Bike is a Sonder signal hardtail running SID forks, intent is for a more XC bias (rather than trail) & I cant decide on tyres.

I want something with low rolling resistance (50% road) but will work ok on relatively dry fields, bridleways & some singletrack of course.

Ive got double fighters on my current HT & they are reasonable enough, I was going to get the same again for the new bike, but wondered if the thunder burts (or something else?) might be a better option.

Plan is to run tubeless btw.

Any pointers gratefully received.

I haven’t used the Continental … but I did run the TB’s tubeless front and rear on an xc bike that i used to do a 30km commute on (30% road, 50% gravel, 20% singletrack).

Rolling resistance – check! Super fast bastards when you’re on the dry stuff. Best mtb tyre i’ve used on the tar.

However on basically every other aspect they were ‘orrid.
– bugger to fit
– virtually no puncture protection. I once got self and bike covered in sealant on the way to work as it just didn’t stop (maybe the sealant’s fault).
– not much fun on singletrack at all if you’re going down any kind of steepness.

To be fair they climbed ok with the pressure dropped on dusty, dry surfaces.

For me the rolling resistance didn’t outweigh a well-inflated Ardent, which is what i’ve gone back to.

Continental Race King Protection. In my experience https://www.bicyclerollingresistance.com/mtb-reviews is about right.

I’ve a Double fighter III on my do it all bike. it’s OK. bit lardy, rolls as well as a treadless tyre should and has as much grip as you’d expect.
good on the road, good on hardpacked trail and fire road, crap on dusty trails, crap on damp trails, bit crap on gravelly trails.

if you can get hold of a double fighter II, that was much better. it had elongated low profile bars across the tread pattern which actually provided a bit of hook up out of the saddle.

2nd the Continental Race King. Even Race King rear, X King front if you want more grip without paying too much of a rolling resistance penalty.

Schwalbe Racing Ray front, new skool Racing Ralph rear is another great combo which I use for fast summer mile munching. This combo is also surprisingly good in mixed conditions.

I have used racing ralph as you describe in the past and thought they worked well

But I don’t have much relative data

nd the Continental Race King. Even Race King rear, X King front if you want more grip without paying too much of a rolling resistance penalty.

Schwalbe Racing Ray front, new skool Racing Ralph rear is another great combo which I use for fast summer mile munching. This combo is also surprisingly good in mixed conditions.

Yeah, I’ve got a Race King on the back and a Ralph on the front as the Ralph is almost as good rolling as the King but better grip I reckon.

Really interesting thanks. So Thunder Burts possibly a bit too much of a compromise & not as fast rolling or grippy as Continental Race King’s according to https://www.bicyclerollingresistance.com/mtb-reviews.

I’ve never had a problem with the Double Fighters (3’s btw), but they’ve had an easy life on the old bike.

Would be interesting to know how they compared Rolling resistance wise with the Race kings. Typically not on https://www.bicyclerollingresistance.com!

Haven’t used the conti but the Thunder Burt really surprised me- I mean, yes it’s ungodly fast and it grips better than you think and yes that’s still not very well… but the surprise was that I didn’t just flat it constantly. Because I can’t keep the air in a snakeskin rockrazor which weighed pretty much exactly twice as much, but the Burt somehow stood up to proper use, on the same bike. In the end, it just wasn’t enough tyre overall to stay on the bike as an allrounder even in summer, but it was bloody good.

I was looking for similar and went for Goodyear Peaks. I’ve had them on my Bigtop for a while and they are perfect, dry trail, road tyre. You’d have to hunt to find them cheap, but they’re worth it. I got for £18 the pair off ebay, which was quite a find.

Thunder burt is fast and I liked using it, but I’ve never worn the tread out on a tyre so fast. I got less than one summer out of it before the centre tread was worn enough that it didn’t do anything useful anymore.

Maxxis Aspen is my go to fast tyre for crossing country, pretty much as you describe. I’m more excited than I really should be about the new 2.4 I have waiting for things to dry up, the only fault of the older ones was the low volume. I’m not sure what wear would look like with that high amount of road, but my older one has done two or three summers and still looks fine. OH has had a 26″ one for maybe 5 years.