High Stack Suspension Setup?

I found balance is super important in a high rise setup, but you are on the right track with softer front and slightly firmer rear. I found I can run less LSC in the fork.

What you need to look out for on a long wheelbase high stack setup is porpoising in chunk. This is where having that F/R balance is important. A long Rear centre will amplify things a bit.

once you get it dialled, it's a magic feeling. You stand tall, turn with your hips and have a strong leg based body position that absorbs big hits better. I'm a big fan of it.

I run a fairly high stack setup for my height, and have always trended towards a softer fork setup.  I feel like those 2 things go well together.  But after you get the right fork & stack height setup, you do definitely need to rebalance the rear so that it's not causing things to see-saw.

@brash can you describe what you mean by porpoising? That’s not like prairie-dogging is it?

As an Aussie I have no idea wtf a prairie dog is lol, but in the words of another fine american, Ricky Carmichael, it's "huckabucking"

basically getting tossed forward and back in an uncontrolled manner

Porpoising is a rapid, repetitive bouncing or oscillating motion that occurs when a vehicle—most notably a Formula 1 car or a motorboat—moves up and down at high speeds

Prairie dogging is typically when you have the front end of a turd about to hang out. 😁

Will echo what those have said here. Bit softer on the fork, and a bit firmer on the rear. 

Fork: soft to neutral on air spring, around 20-22% sag. LSC: start at 25% and go up/down as desired. HSC: 50% (this is on a Charger 3.1 damper where they want you to start at 50% and go from there)

Shock: spring: neutral to firm 28%-25% sag feels best to me. (these are progressive bikes 26 - 29%) LSC: start at 50% and possibly decrease. HSC: depends on the bike and terrain/drops. On my Cascade Link + overshocked 150mm 5010 I have HSC at 75%-100%, on the 53lb 170mm Bullit I have it at 50%.

For tokens I always start with no tokens and only put a token in if I'm bottoming hard, but take with a grain of salt as I run Cascade Links on all my bikes.

 To me, the feeling of the rear kicking up in a chunky section or a turn and the softness of the fork being there to "catch" it is unmatched. I've found that bar roll plays a huge factor in setting up a bike for high stack too. 

Bar roll was the piece I was missing to get a high stack set up to work for me. And address front to rear balance in corners as reaches have grown.

Wish I figured that out about 8 years ago.

In addition to fork pressure, I would also think about stem length and bar roll. Ensuring you're still weighting the front is key, and making small adjustments to each of these areas is likely better than just lowering your fork pressure a bunch. I know a lot of people run 35mm stems, whereas I run 50mm and my bars "mid" or maybe a tiny bit forward. If you run a short stem, try one that's a bit longer.

Another setup style that I prefer is running a mid / firm fork but removing all but 1 volume spacer. I still find support by running a fair amount of HSC and faster rebound, but the linear movement through my travel is predictable and works well with my firmer spring rate coil. For reference, I ride a Madonna.

I agree. A longer stem is beneficial to get weight on the front. My bars are also rolled forward quite a bit and high rise bars are sensitive to bar roll.

Suspension wise I went back from soft to a firmer setup with around 16-17% sag and a lot of compression. I found that I can be more aggressive with the high cockpit and can push my wheel into the ground more. One of the main reasons for that is also the reduced reach I'm riding currently. High stack with a slightly shorter reach works pretty well for me.

In the back I also went up in spring rate, but everything else is pretty much the same. 

I think the fork setting mostly depends on the chainstay length (or the front-to-rear center ratio) your riding. 

The porpoise and prairie-dog references in this thread made me chuckle.

I may be misinterpreting but listening to the Bikes: Unaffiliated pod yesterday it sounded to me like Lars was recommending almost the opposite to Jason, at least for a dual 29" setup and for his particular bike (V2 Sentinel), in that more sag in the rear with a taller cockpit might be better "...so you're in the bike more...", compared to the softer fork / stiffer rear end setup that this thread and Jason (and myself) seemed to be trending towards. Would be curious to hear more opinions @ride

This is interesting. I'm currently experimenting with and refining the setup of a new to me bike that I've been testing for a bit, and one thing I haven't been able to dial in is that the front feels TOO tall, even with nearly all the spacers removed and a 50mm stem. I flipped from a linear to progressive shock mount, which based on this bike design is softer off the top with more ramp through the travel, and it seems to exaggerate the feeling that I have too tall of stack and turning the bike in flatter corners is not confidence inspiring. I feel like I'm more "in the bike" but that wasn't an issue before and now I feel like I'm doing a "wheelie' for lack of a better term.

If you're riding steeps all the time, then this is less of a concern and I'd agree that softer sag might help. I'll be switching back to linear with more LSC to see if I sit a littler higher in the rear.

It is super bike/terrain/rider dependent, but from my most recent experience with throwing together an old Cove Shocker to ride:
First day of park riding I spent some time bracket dialing in the suspension but found my riding position was a bit too hunched over even with 50mm rise, 800mm wide bars.
Next time I went up, I changed to some 75mm rise, 785mm width bars. I took a bunch of lsc out of the fork (old coil 40, so no air pressure change) added a click or two more of HSC and I think I sped up the rebound but cannot remember exactly. Rear shock I added 15-20psi for bottom out control (old coil DHX rc4), added some lsc and I think I left hsc/rebound alone.
I am usually a set and forget kind of rider but I was a bit surprised with how much a 25mm rise in bar height made the suspension/chassis balance feel. 

Just ask Fernando Alonso and his AMR26 F1 chassis. Porpoising disaster this year, it was so bad it was hurting his wrists 

F/R ratio is a bunch more critical than the suspension setup.

Slapping tall bars on your typical pivot or specialised size large/size xl geo will not end well.

Last year I was running a 20mm stem and 60mm riser with this set up:

Fork Dorado:
45/80psi 2 clicks HSC 10 LSC clicks

Rear Shock 275lb

Handlebar height off the ground: 113cm

Then I went to 0mm stem and 90mm riser

Went down to 35-40psi/80psi 1 HSC 0-2 LSC

Rear shock 300lb

Handlebar height off the ground: 115cm

I also tested 120mm riser with the same 0mm stem

35/70psi 0 HSC 0 LSC

Rear shock 325lbs

Handlebar height off the ground: 118cm

My 474mm chainstays work really well with last year's setup and even better with the 90mm riser x 0mm stem. I need longer chainstays to really make the 120mm risers work.

For another data point that seems a bit different from the raise and soften front approach:

Forbidden dreadnought v1 medium, cascade link, coil front and rear. No spring rate change throughout this process.

45mm stem, 35mm rise bars

I've never quite found an optimal set up with a neutral to slightly rolled back bar rise (not bar rise in line with fork level of rolled back, more like top of grips level with the ground). The front end has always felt too long in the sense that I had to ride with quite a bit of forward bias in most situations, but anything involving turning while the bike was deeply compressing produced a getting tossed out the front door feeling.

For me that showed up as making cornering initiation a bit demanding with a fine line between losing the front when you come off the front brake and overweighting the front immediately after. This was adaptable enough in a lot of situations - get the bike to rotate early, square the corner off and 2 wheel slide into the catch or err towards rearward body position on entry and use the front brake deeper into the corner to manage weight bias. But as speeds increase this became more of a problem, specifically in corners without hard braking before entry and/or without a berm to compress the front. Or chopped up steep and loose with minimally bermed corners but big enough holes scattered throughout to cause problems if you just plant yourself over the front. These were the quirks I was trying to address with my recent bar roll experiment.

Rolling the bars way forward to move my hands up and forward and adding a few mm of spacers under the stem to bring the reach back a bit ended up fixing all of it, plus some additional benefits. I can be more active on the bike since my hands aren't as heavy and I can drive harder with my feet. I am more comfortable braking harder because of this, which makes it easier to nail my braking points. The front wheel is easier to place with the improved leverage over the front end and less weight on my hands. The only compromise I've found is, well, you have a lot of leverage over the front end. This requires more precision in steering inputs but since I can do everything from a neutral stance now, that's a lot easier for me.

TLDR: Rolling the bars forward allowed me to simultaneously take weight off my hands and improve my ability to weight the front through my feet due to the more forward and more upright body position. This came with a lot of benefits and the compromises are easier to manage for me vs a neutral bar roll set up. Ymmv.