When will it go full circle and we start getting slightly shorter front center marketed to improve agility (to the max).

That was my line of thinking too. My 2015 Specialized Enduro now apparently has an unfashionable 445 mm reach (size L). I’m 6’1″ and it doesn’t feel overly short to me. Actually it feels about right on its stock 60 mm stem. The bike it replaced was considerably shorter again, with a 90 mm stem, and that did feel a little bit twitchy on FoD downhills, especially before I had a dropper fitted!

The Canyon Neuron I’ve just ordered has a reach of 453 mm, so 8 mm longer than my Enduro and also has a 60 mm stem as standard. Wheelbase is also 7 mm longer than my Enduro. Head and seat angles are exactly the same. But, according to the bike media, the Neuron is a beginner friendly trail bike aimed firmly at the XC end of the spectrum with very conservative geometry. To be fair most reviewers do point out how good an all-rounder it is. But to read some reviews you would think it might struggle a bit on downhill sections of trail with that sort of geometry. Yeah, maybe it would struggle at warp speed on an EWS downhill course, but I’m not expecting any surprises around anything I would ride. It’s not like my shorter, taller 2015 Enduro has any issues on terrain at and well beyond the ragged edge of my own personal ability.

As for the travel increasing, I think a lot is down to better suspension kinematics – you try pedalling a 5 year old 160mm bike up hill vs a 2019 160mm bike and the differences will be vast. Therefore the regular trail bike is getting loger in travel.

Is travel really increasing though? I know EWS bikes have crept up to 170 mm, but they are being ridden seriously hard on serious terrain. Back in the real world of uk trail riding, I’ve been riding 5-6″ travel trail bikes for at least the last 15 years. So I don’t see any significant change in travel. For the last 5 years I’ve been pedalling a 160/155 mm Enduro up tight, techy singletrack and it works pretty well on the whole. But I can’t imagine wanting to move from that to a current 160 mm bike that was way longer and slacker. Conversely, it’s the 120-130 mm bikes that now interest me far more. So I will have less travel on my next bike, not more. The kinematics and damper tech can work both ways, with modern shorter travel bikes tending to use their limited travel ever more effectively. I would fully expect a modern 130 mm trail bike to be as good as an older enduro bike on demanding terrain. Not as good as a modern enduro bike of course, but almost certainly a better compromise for all-round trail use for 99% of uk riders.

I hear you guys and you raise some interesting counterpoints.

I read this sort of thinking a lot on here, but I don’t see how it’s true. Almost every trail I ride on a regular basis is much quicker and nicer to ride on a bike with modern geometry (in my case, a Mega with a 63.5 degree head angle). Surely 95% of UK riding can’t just be mincing around on blue trails or bridleways?

Maybe we need to define “trail” riding for this discussion. My local trail is Woburn Sands (lots of pedalling, tight, twisty, rooty woodland singletrack, short sharp climbs and a few short steep downs). Also ride Cannock, Swinley, Thetford, Chilterns, North and South Downs, FoD, Aston Hill, Welsh trail centres etc. I wouldn’t consider EWS level tracks or Alpine DH runs to count as “trail” riding.

If you guys are riding primarily on EWS worthy terrain, then of course a modern EWS bike with 170 mm travel is going to be the ideal weapon. I can also imagine that such bikes are okay to ride on more tame singletrack as per my definition above. But are they really the best solution or are we just falling for the marketing gnar?

Dialling it back slightly to modern “trail” bikes with say 140-150 mm travel, these clearly represent a better compromise for most ordinary mortals. But they still seem heavily biased toward the gnarly end of the spectrum, with generally more aggressive geometry than full-on enduro bikes of only a handful of years ago. Again I suspect EWS inspired marketing hype here.

Then we have a new generation of 120-130 mm “trail/XC” bikes, that to me seem most interesting as an average trail rider. They typically have geometry very similar to the previous generation of enduro bikes, but are considerably lighter and have an inch or so less travel.

Ultimately there’s a great bike for everyone in 2019, but I just can’t help thinking how the media seems to be pushing average trail riders more and more toward these slack, long, low EWS bikes.

It makes you wonder where we will be in another 4 or 5 years? Will the next generation of bikes get even longer, slacker, lower? Or have we finally reached the optimum basic geometry numbers? Or will we start to see some back-pedalling? I did raise an eyebrow at the seat stay length on the latest Spec Enduro.

I have to say your geometry database is a great tool for quickly comparing bikes. Much better than trawling through the manufacturer websites when trying to make your own shortlist. It really saved me a lot of time and effort.

So cheers for making the effort!

I’ve done 2 frames myself and the first one was pretty hard work, second one much better with experience. But it gives you an excuse to spend some quality time with your new toy! £80 is a reasonable amount to pay though if you are confident they will do a good job. If you do it yourself expect it to take all day and probably stress you out. Especially if you have OCD tendencies!

I personally wouldn’t ride anything bigger than my 2015 Spesh Enduro, which is about the same size and geometry as most current 130 mm trail bikes. So something along the lines of a Canyon Neuron, Yeti SB130 etc. might be a good compromise. Anything bigger is going to make the XC part of the ride more of a slog for marginal gain on the downhills.

Plentt that have £4-9K to spunk to win lots of races save about 1 second per race but look cool in the car park

Sure and you can apply that same logic to almost any piece of high-end sporting equipment. Golf clubs, skis, tennis rackets, whatever. But it’s still nice to have great gear if you can afford it, even if you are not winning competitions with it (which probably applies to 99% of people who actually buy high end gear).

A light bike and great brakes that work for small/weaker hands are important.

That was my experience too. I remember our girls struggled a little bit with the standard rim brakes on the Belter 16 on long steep descents. The Belter 20 has cable disc brakes and they are much better. Our eldest is now on a 24″ bike with proper Magura hydraulic discs and loves them.

That Hope modified Belter is awesome! I presume that’s a 20″ right?

There is a big difference IMO

Agreed and every category of bike seems to be getting more and more gnarly with every iteration. At some point there must be a limit to how long and slack the average rider on average trails would want to go and I suspect we’ve probably already reached or exceeded that limit in some cases. But the marketing and magazine reviews suggest we “need” this kind of geometry.

For example I looked at the Whyte S120, which is really pushing the limits of short travel geometry with a 480 mm reach, 65.5 deg head angle and 1227 mm wheelbase. That is huge compared to my 4 year old 160 mm Enduro, which is already overkill for most uk trail riding.

I’m all for progress, but this is starting to take the piss! Same thing happened to skis. Suddenly a few years back we all apparently needed 120 mm wide rockered clown boards to take on 2″ of powder at the side of the piste. You know the sort of freeride skis the likes of Seth Morrison were hucking down 45 deg Alaskan peaks less than a decade earlier. Then gradually a little common sense returned and ski widths settled at more versatile widths and geometries – which were then marketed as the second coming, lol.

So I’m wondering when something similar will happen to bikes. Most of us are not racing XC or Enduro and just want trail bikes perfect for blasting around typical uk singletrack. I know a few of those exist, but the marketing and reviewers do appear to be pushing us toward bikes that are way beyond what is optimal for the trails. Every bike I looked at above 130 mm travel looked more like an EWS rig than something I would want to pedal around the local singletrack. Any trail bike with a head angle above 67 deg is now frowned upon and often declared old-school or conservative. Whereas anything super long and slack is immediately praised for its “progressive” geometry. I guess I’m just not buying into it although I don’t want to see a return to the kind of geometry we had 15 years ago either!

Ooooo, Moshi, I’m south London but can pay postage? Could you pm some photos?

I’m in Buckingham, so a bit of a trek for you. Ideally I would prefer not to bother with postage because of the risk of damage, but might consider it if it doesn’t sell locally. I’ve noticed they usually go for around £175-200 on ebay in good condition.

Kids won’t appreciate a ‘good’ bike over a normal one

IME kids notice a lot more than we might think. Ours definitely appreciate “good” bikes and I wish I’d had something similar when I was a kid instead of the ridiculously heavy hand-me-downs that were way too big. Both our daughters ride a lot better than I did at their age and it’s not even expensive in the end because “good” bikes hold their value and go the distance. So it was a no-brainer for me, but each to their own.

Part of wonders why I even read bike reviews (I do it to look at bike porn). I have a modern 160mm trail bike that rarely gets ridden as it is more bike than most local trails need (near Malvern) and have found myself looking at a Canyon Lux that has what most reviewers would describe as old school.

I know what you mean. I didn’t even consider anything above the Neuron for general trail use

then i can’t really see the difference between a 160mm bike and a 130mm bike anymore?

IMHO some of them are getting ridiculously long and slack for the sort of tight twisty forest singletrack I mostly ride. The 130 mm bike I just ordered (Canyon Neuron) is considered pretty conservative (XC side of trail use) by “modern” 130 mm travel trail bike standards and yet even that is slightly longer and has the same head angle as my 2015 Enduro with 160 mm travel. 160 mm bikes I’m seeing now are a good 2″ longer in the same size frame and a good 2 deg slacker. With 800 mm bars I’d be hitting every other tree on them!

really kicking myself that I waited a few seconds too long and missed ot on a really good condition belter very close by yesterday! been outbid on another today…fingers crossed for another in 10 mins…

Where are you located? We have a pretty mint Belter 16 for sale now our youngest has recently moved onto the 20″

The net cost of buying a decent used Belter or Islabike is negligible once you eventually sell it on. Even if you buy new you can get about 2/3rds of your money back on re-sale.

Certainly isn’t going to make any difference to your mortgage, lol!

Its not in series, its just not concentric.

Go back to the example of f1 car wishbones, they’re springs in their own right, but there are additional springs and dampers. Although f1 is a bad example as they do infact rely on very stiff suspension and a big undamped tyre.

If you dont believe me, sketch out the trek system and replace the seatstay with a pivot and spring. The spring will compress (or stretch depending how you draw it) but its proportional to the travel. No different to the chainstays on a scalpel (or the seatstays on a salsa spearfish or going back a bit for Trek, the GF sugar).

Being an ex-F1 race engineer and designer I’m certainly happy to go back to the F1 wishbone example. In the F1 application I can confirm that the spring rate of the flexures is indeed negligible in the overall spring/damping system. The flexures are there solely to provide a lightweight frictionless joint. Without the conventional coil spring/damper the whole suspension would simply collapse into full bump. But in any case, all the flexing in the wishbones (however negligible) is fully damped by the shock.

So are you saying that the seat-stays on this trek are in effect rigid compared to the spring rate of the slider and therefore should be disregarded in the spring/damping? I’m not convinced they are and the seat stay “springs” are definitely acting in series with the spring/damper at the top and therefore undamped. Again as an F1 analogy it would be like fitting a flexible suspension pushrod, which you would most definitely avoid.

The chainstays on the Scalpel may provide some additional spring rate, but again they are there primarily as a pivot point and are fully damped by the shock.

I rode a bike with 63mm travel for ages, it doesn’t sound like much but it really does help iron out the bumps even if you don’t notice it.

I agree without a doubt. I was more speculating on how important sophisticated damping and axle path would actually be with limited travel. I had a Scalpel back in the day and I think it had about 50 mm travel, but it was still very noticeable on ride comfort.

Pre-internet we used to do most things badly, including car washing, but ignorance was bliss and nobody noticed. Swirl marks were nothing to be ashamed of and it was considered acceptable to use a sponge to wash your car and only 1 bucket with no grit guard*

*the 2-bucket method is now coming under internet scrutiny too! Is it really necessary after all the hype? See here:-

Bad news for bucket sales if true!

Well yeah, it’s effectively a single pivot full susser with springy seat stays instead of a rocker linkage.

I’m still struggling with the idea that the seat stays are providing the spring rate (or at least part of it) without being damped. A bit like fitting a spring in series between the shock eyelet and frame mount on a conventional shock. It’s not something you would ever consider doing.

I guess with only 60 mm travel the trade off in weight saving might be just about worth it. But I can’t imagine the suspension control is going to be as good as a bike with a conventional 4-bar rear. Or at least not as tune-able. Also looks like the shock might suffer from stiction due to the bending moment.

Be interesting to see how it rides.

Not sure you would get much extra flex in the stays vs what the shock moves? Even at full compression in the video the bend is only about as much as a hardtails stays are usually formed into an ‘hourglass’ shape. Just looks wierd as we dont normally see that bend side on.

Probably true, but whatever flex there is will be undamped.

Even the scalpel used the stays as a spring as there wasnt a pivot at the bb either. The reason it doesnt need a link is it’s using a strut bolted to the frame at both ends, kinda similar to yeti switch links, but bigger and with a damper built in.

With the Scalpel, the flexy chainstays are fully damped by the shock via the rigid seat stays and rocker. I suspect most of the spring rate is actually coming from the air shock too, although there will be some additional spring rate from the chainstays.

It looks like a lot of the flex is actually undamped as the springs (flexy seat stays) are in series with the shock rather than in parallel like in any conventional spring/damper suspension.

Previous flex stay designs like the older Cannondale Scalpel still had the shock in parallel via a small rocker and the flexures in the chain stays were only providing the kinematic joint – similar to flexures in place of spherical joints on F1 wishbones.

Thanks chief, that’s a cool link for engineering nerds like me!

So that’s 2 frames and a rear triangle for £400 – 5 years on from my original purchase. No way you would have got that from other brands with absolutely zero hassle.

That’s great, but I don’t see how giving an extra £4k to SC up front (based on 2019 pricing for an equivalent build) would make any subsequent cheap crash replacement frames seem like amazing value overall. I’d almost feel obliged to deliberately damage my frame just to get my money’s worth, lol.

I don’t see Canyon as a “budget” brand either. To me they are a premium brand (at least at the top end of their model range) with a direct sales model that saves the customer a small fortune over retail. Same goes for YT. The only potential downside I can see is a lack of customer service, but I can easily compensate for that with £4k to throw at any issues that may arise.

@greyspoke – just to be clear I wasn’t picking on Oranges and I don’t even know how little or much anti-rise they actually have under braking. I was just talking in general about the potential pros and cons of anti-rise in any mtb suspension system. My gut feeling as a mechanical engineer is that you wouldn’t want too much brake-induced suspension compression as it would be inconsistent unless you were super smooth on the brakes. I can easily imagine this causing issues over multiple braking bumps, especially for an average rider.

All assuming you pay full RRP, which you will on a Canyon, but really shouldn’t on a SC, despite what SC say.

Well I managed to get £300 off my Canyon in the end of season sales on a brand new model Neuron CF. Only discount I could get off an SC was on discontinued models and/or some credit at our local dealer. Nothing to make any significant difference to the saving with Canyon.

It’s pretty much impossible to put a rational case forward for choosing an SC over a Canyon in terms of value for money at a given performance level. But of course most people choose bikes with their heart rather than their head. Which is very lucky for the likes of SC! For this reason my wife actually rides a Juliana and loves it. It’s a very nice bike indeed (even a really nice colour!), but the component build is woefully cheap for a £4k+ bike. Although in fairness she did actually get a discount as it was a cancelled custom order sitting around at end of season.

Be interesting to see what she thinks of my new Canyon when it arrives next week. Same price point, but the build kit is massively better. The SC frame would have to be light years better to justify the difference and I just don’t see that being the case. Especially as her’s is the budget “C” frame at that price point. The premium layup was another grand or so more.

Factory spec Fox 36 and DPX2 are the current industry benchmark that everyone is raving about, so I don’t think you can go wrong there.

Ohlins are a high end brand too, but more associated with motorbikes and high performance car dampers than bikes, where they are more of a niche/something a bit different.

Personally I would choose Fox every day. They seem to have the market nailed for this application.

If you lock the brake, the rear wheel will move upwards as its angular rotating energy is transferred to the spring. But that will happen on a downslope, when contact force is reducing, which is when you want your suspension to be doing the opposite – extending. When you hit the next bump, the suspension will not be in a good position to absorb it.

But do you really want the back end to be freely extending when you are braking hard down a steep slope? Obviously it does extend due to the forward weight transfer, while the fork dives for the same reason. But in an ideal world you would probably want the bike to stay more or less flat. Hence why anti-dive / anti-rise geometries exist, both in bikes and cars alike. It’s all a question of degree and finding the right balance and compromise. For example too much anti-squat/dive in a car suspension tends to make the ride feel harsh and insensitive, but too little makes the body pitch like a boat (previous generation Volvo XC60 comes to mind).

I’ve never ridden an Orange, but it sounds like the back end has tons of rear anti-rise. Possibly just too much for some tastes, while others might like it?

I agree, more like 2-5 age group.

I would have thought the Neuron is more comparable with the Habit and the Spectral more comparable with the Jekyll.

So you probably need to decide what size wheels and travel you prefer as a starting point.

Oh and it doesn’t help that current SC paint jobs are truly horrific, lol! For £7k I’d want custom paint options for sure. Orbea have that one nailed.

Belter and Isla are the front runners I think.

I agree for a first pedal bike. What swung me to the Belter was…. the belt. No oil on the clothes, no need for a chain guard, zero maintenance. I had no reservations buying the 20″ version either. Both have been brilliant for us and the girls are now both really strong riders.

Those Spectrals must be cheap*. My Bronson CC V2 (they were only just released) was £4100, XT and Pikes.

I would consider that a reasonable price, but a quick look today suggests that you only get NX and a Yari for £4.5k on a Carbon Bronson, which is not doing it for me at all.

However, I was actually looking at the new Tallboy for a short travel 29er and they are a cool £7,300 with X01, top end Pike and Performance level Fox shock, own brand carbon wheels. So instead I took my chances with a new Canyon Neuron for £4,200 with X01 and full Fox Factory spec shock, fork and dropper, top end DTSwiss carbon wheels. Really no skimping at all on build. You can get almost the same spec with Reynolds carbon wheels and Performance Elite Fox suspension for only £3,100!

So the saving really is in the order of £3-4k. So even if the Canyon frame was a complete piece of junk (which I very much doubt it is), I could literally just throw it away and buy an SC frame to replace it and still not be out of pocket overall!

The only other manufacturers that really compete with the likes of Canyon/YT in value for money are Whyte and Orbea. Both of those are still more expensive like-for-like spec, but by a more reasonable amount considering you can buy from a local dealer.

I hope they’re good, I’ve just bitten the bullet on a Neuron CF in the sale! Their bikes always seem very well regarded, but their customer service less so. But can’t argue with the direct pricing and our LBS has not exactly been great – they made a complete balls of a major service on my Enduro last year. For me that was the last straw with local retailers, so decided to give Canyon a go this time. Even if the service is rubbish, at least I’m not paying through the nose for it!

The suspension will (as far as I can see) be operating completely normally, just at an offset in the travel compared to where it would be with no brake jack

I do see where you are coming from, it’s a bit like having a pre-load except in reverse. I think in reality most suspension systems tend to stiffen through their compression stroke, so that offset will tend to put the suspension into a stiffer part of its curve. I expect very few (decent) modern bikes would have a linear rate and even less a falling rate. Most are progressive rising rate. As you say it’s balanced against extension from weight transfer, so it is all about balance of forces, riding style and simple personal preference.

I have never understood the basis for the “stiffening”. The spring rate hasn’t changed, so suspension “jacked” by x mm will respond to a bump of y mm in the same way as if it wasn’t.

There may be an effect to do with locking the brakes and how the sudden transfer of angular momentum from the wheel to the suspension jacks it up further, then unlocking the brakes and repeating, gives rise to a lumpy feeling?

Most suspension designs (but not all) have a progressive spring rate through their travel. Plus you lose sensitivity if the back end is trying to compress while you are hitting a load of braking bumps, hence skipping over rather than following the terrain more precisely up and down. On the plus side however, it does help to counteract the forward weight transfer under braking. As ever there is always a compromise to be had. Personally I like my rear suspension to be as active as possible on the brakes and use my own body mass to compensate for the weight transfer. So I’m not a big fan of excessive anti-rise.

Well buy one that comes with X01 and a Lyrik then.

£7,800 for a Bronson in that spec. F*** that!

Seriously I don’t mind spending big money on bikes and great customer service is always appreciated, but SC and some of the other “high end” brands are really taking the piss. So yeah, this time around I’m taking my chances with Canyon, but not expecting too much in the way of customer service if I should smash it to pieces!

Out of interest, after all the hassle and wasted time with Canyon, did they actually sort out the broken frame for you?

the vitus 16 looks nice. 7.2Kg with kenda tyres and £180 new on wiggle and CRC

That’s still pretty heavy for a 16″ bike. Especially coming from a 12″ super lightweight balance bike. It’s actually very close to the weight of our 20″ Belter (8 kg), which feels a lot heavier than the 16″ version (5.5 kg) when you pick them up. Not saying it would be a major issue, but IMHO weight is king for little girls! Our 6 year old went from the 16 to 20 this summer and at first she really baulked at the 2.5 kg weight difference. It sounds like nothing, but look at how much weight weenies bang on about saving that kind of weight off a 14 kg (30 lb) trail bike!

recently I sold a bunch of old football shirts I had in a storage box. One particular Swansea City shirt sold for £127!!! I got around £500 for all 10 of them.

Maybe I shouldn’t have just thrown away a dozen or more F1 team shirts then…..

I’m “only” 83kg and find the Henge very comfortable. Also the hardest wearing seat I think I’ve ever had. Previous experience was with WTB Pure, which I got on with too, but they never seemed to wear quite as well, although I did crash more on those!