Hello Vital MTB Visitor,
We’re conducting a survey and would appreciate your input. Your answers will help Vital and the MTB industry better understand what riders like you want. Survey results will be used to recognize top brands. Make your voice heard!
Five lucky people will be selected at random to win a Vital MTB t-shirt.
Thanks in advance,
The Vital MTB Crew
I have a bud with a similar SST - Lyrik and Vivid coil. He loves it and did the BC bike race on it last year.
I also coach with the local high school xc team mostly to teach proper descending, but the kids either ride 50%+ sag with the rebound all the way closed, or zero sag and adjustments all over the place. When I raced in high school I paid great attention to my suspension, but some don't have a feeling for it.
It's totally fine and understandable to ask if the bike suits what you - its a reasonable question that only becomes an issue when other start complaining that Santa Cruz didn't design their bike especially for them. You can be disappointed, but it needs some perspective too
I want to preface this by saying I'm not trying to pick a fight or anything, but it seems to me that people complaining that the bike wasn't made for them is partially what lead to the V6 Tallboy the way it is. It's become part of the homogenous mass of Horst link bikes. I remember times when people complained about a new bike coming out and it not being Horst link, like the g3 Kona Process. Or it's like every time a bike comes out and people complain that the chainstays aren't long enough, or the stack isn't high enough, like come on get with the program here. Maybe as someone who is 6 feet tall I want short chainstays, or I want a single pivot with a higher anti rise, or I just want something that is a bit unique in how the suspension works. If I wanted a bike with 440+ stays, about 65ish % anti rise, etc..., there are already tons of great bikes out there that fit that, but people who don't want that are pretty quickly losing the bikes they like. I don't really think it's fair to dismiss the dislike of the new tallboy as people complaining the bike wasn't made for them, when so many bikes are becoming almost the exact same as the one from the next brand over.
I'm done ranting now.
I am not seeing how the last 4 pages of this thread have anything to do with rumors or innovation.
Mayb the thread should be retitled, something like “tech rumors and innovation… and bitching about it.”
I do think VPP has something special. I ride a V3 Bullit and a Cascade link Patrol back to back. Similar progression and travel and the suspension feels totally different.
VPP feels like when you pump the bike pushes back and rewards you with forward momentum. I also like the falling anti rise rather than flat 60% that the crab Santa Cruz’s and Transitions have. (Can a not flat anti rise can be achieved in crab link?) I’ve daily driven 4 crab link bikes: Norco, Spesh, Transition (current Patrol and…yes V1 Sentinel) They’re all good but the suspension never wows you like VPP does. I feel the same with the 2 Ripmos I had.
I committed ebike seppuku of buying a Shimano motor V3 Bullit in 2025. (also have a Cascade 5010 for analog bike comparison)
Took me a while to start guzzling the Santa Cruz kool aid it’s just the old Santa Cruz kool aid.
SST is damned brilliant too
To bring it back to tech stuff, the new Scott Spark we saw at Korea will have a shock cover to seal the frame, but currently the flight attendant shocks don't fit in one.
https://www.vitalmtb.com/forums/hub/kinematics
Thanks for the helpful post about rumors and innovation.
I’m dying of thirst over here
This weekend we have both Enduro(whatever is left of it) and DH in Loudenvielle, I'm sure we will have something to talk about!
Softest prediction of the year by me is that this is the final puff of factory EDR racing and we see next to nothing interesting tech wise
Dan Booker the latest rider to announce he is stepping away from Enduro. Just when you thought it couldn’t get any worse. Should be a walkover for the Yeti team.
This 100%.
I have a mate who got into riding 18mths ago. He's the kind of guy that is all about the intricacies of Tomas Haake's polyrythmic drumming and any other complex undertakings, but as soon as I try and explain to him that he needs to spend a couple of hours one day bracketing his setup and his riding will improve immensely his eyes glaze over.
Forbidden also messing around with the e-bike without a motor to test out some DH stuff with Laurie.
'The bike Laurie rode during the week was an early proof-of-concept acoustic DH build using a Dreadnought E front triangle and a number of custom parts. It was built to get the gravity project moving in the real world, giving the team something to ride, change, measure, and question while putting early ideas underneath a rider who can give accurate feedback at speed.'
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yLJAPe6Hl3s
Why not ride the already available Supernought? Or are they totally moving away from that suspension platform for long travel too?
Thinking of myself, I don't know that I'm that consistent of a rider yet. I'm similar to your friend in that I'm a musician and someone who isn't afraid to dive into the details of anything.
I've been riding 3 years and I find myself a little too inconsistent in my riding to imagine bracketing to be a super useful practice. I feel like I'll get more out of trusting my bike and just learning to ride it better.
If I were to guess, one of the things your friend and I might also have in common is that we personally take the responsibility of accomplishing the things we do in our lives. If I'm not executing a guitar part well, I can work on things to play the part better. If my fork is set up decently enough, then I can ride it better. I'm not held back by my bike, I'm held back by my ability to ride the bike. I'm not held back by the length of the guitar neck or the amount of echo in the sound, I'm held back by my ability to execute the part. Your friend's eyes glaze over because asking a machine to help him ride better is akin to asking a drum to hit itself better.
That said, I've put some time into bracketing stuff and making some tweaks. I'm not sure that my idea of "better" is actually better or if I've just messed things up differently...but the settings are different from the factory recommendations and I got there by following a process that SHOULD improve things. Did the equipment improve or did I improve across the repeated rides down the same trail? Hard to say!
I think the issue is not being able to establish what the problem is because your riding isn’t consistent enough and therefore you don’t actually know what you are trying to fix. No one wants to try to problem solve a problem that they can’t even read. You shooting in the dark, unsure about the validity of potential solutions, and potentially don’t understand the complicated relationship between all the systems so you might actually end up fucking something up terribly. It’s not surprise many people don’t want to tinker.
It's the same suspension platform, just no shock tunnel.
Bracketing with a new rider would be rough.. I usually just try to get a little feedback based on what they feel and look at what the fork a shock are telling me.. Make changes based on that and tell them to ride some more.. Repeat the next time you see them.. At that point, you are really trying to fine tune a set-up like you would with a more skilled and experienced rider, you are just trying to get them into a decent starting point that at least feels comfortable for them..
The current platform (supernought) would be an upside-down 4-bar, whereas this is more traditional 4-bar.
OneUp Rims? On Caleb Holonkos Bike
Sure looks like it. Seems a little weird for PON to be backing this when their existing wheel brand (Reserve) seems to have made huge headway in the in both aftermarket and OE spec in the last few years. Maybe the One Up wheels are supposed to be a more budget oriented product?
Not to mention a simple issue like “front end harshness” could be caused by countless different things, some of which aren’t even the suspension
I remember hearing that OneUp is going to be the MTB wheel brand, Reserve the gravel/road brand. OneUp already has hubs in their lineup.
I forgot to share the rumour of OneUp coming out with wheels (had it on good authority that OneUp was going to move into the rim space... so this checks out). OneUp stuff is often pretty good and comes with solid warranty policies/customer support, so it'll be interesting to see how these pan out. Pretty hefty rim profile, that's for sure.
Any approx date for the release? I'm slowly shopping for wheels for my Transition smuggler and would consider that option since they often have very good price/reliability ratio
Wonder If they've changed the seals or done anything to address the drag, They take ages to 'break-in' and are quite sluggish.
I bought 4 sets when I built my new wheels for the season and It was very noticable on the climbs.
Post a reply to: 2026 MTB Tech Rumors and Innovation - Longer and Slacker