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It sounds like your experiences mirror our own, which is great to hear! As we said in the sub-heading, "A blend all its own for a ride that many will love." Or even our concluding remark, "That said, there's a bit of preference and body type at play there. For riders that fit this bike's geometry, we highly recommend the Banshee Titan as a do-more big adventure bike." Andrea said it best in the video though, "Oh my gosh, I love this bike!"

Most of this was filmed in the Auburn/Forest Hill trail network.

That is an interesting question, Brian. In our discussions with Pivot, we somewhat broached this topic. Pivot has its reasons for wanting a softer setup on the bikes, primarily is that in its testing, Pivot found the softer setup to appeal to more of the average rider. In discussing more aggressive riders, (such as Casey) in steep terrain, they agreed that going with the FOX setup was a better idea. Our tuning was done in conjunction with Pivot. It took Vital so long to do a follow-up because we (1) worked with Pivot to ensure proper setup and (2) Casey...

Not sure what is confusing but happy to help clear up anything. The rider's suspension settings were are all listed in the review and are based off FOX's tuning guide, just as they were for the other three bikes in this test that used FOX suspension. Perhaps where the waters get muddy is that Pivot recommends running it softer than FOX recommends and we already felt that was too soft. We were taken aback at the struggles in (only) the steep, gnarly terrain. To that end, we felt compelled to revisit and revise our review with further testing and tuning...

Roger that, sounds like you have your setup dialed. For our crew, we were having the opposite issue with the Firebird - too much weight on the front in steep bits. For us, we needed to move in the other direction.

In short, no. We had various springs for the bike and swapped them out for every rider. Our suspension tuning was done through consultation with Pivot. The bike was set up correctly.

Our testers rode the ZEB without spacers and progressively added them to suit the terrain we were in. This is what felt best to them.