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Old Santa Cruzs make little sense in retrospect, but not progressive by any means. They were regressive for the first bit of travel and then progressive for the last half. Total amount for progression for the old Nomads was around 12% over full travel for example. The strange thing is the regressive top of travel made the progression in the last half of travel 20%. This all made it hard to get a shock tune that felt good.

There is that aspect to it, but I'd say that is less noticeable compared to the spring force differential between top and bottom of travel. As our resident robot/trail paver mentioned, rebound speed, assuming the wheel is unsupported, is largely determined by the position of the spring. The higher the spring force the faster the rebound. If you are deep in travel and have a bunch of volume spacers you're at a very high rebound speed compared to the top of travel due to the large differential in spring force. One thing about HSR and LSR is when the wheel...

I've never understood why someone would want to run small amounts of sag (not including the case of only riding jumps). Provided our local trails are pretty root infested so how well a bike can track is critical. Bikes with low sag amounts just don't track well any way you take it.

It depends on shock stroke too. Personally I like 35% for 65 mm stroke shocks. For 55 mm stroke shocks I'd say coils aren't really the best choice. Bottom out resistance is proportional to shock stroke squared so you lose a lot of bottom out resistance with the shorter shock. If I was going to do a frame around a 55 mm coild I'd want to be on a spring about 200 lbs heavier than what I ride on a 65 mm stroke shock so progression would have to be through the roof to keep sag in line.

That sounds like someone was over-springing their bike with the stock link and then over-sprung it with our link. Part of the idea is to be able to run around 30% sag and have good bottom out resistance. Lack of sag and/or lack of progression is what will make a bike feel harsh off the top.

The Yeti links are the only ones with a 7 mm BB drop. These two particular link keep the geo the same as stock. The reason the Yeti links make the bike sit lower is that it was necessary to get the leverage curve we wanted. While that BB drop might not be for everyone, even with it the bike still sits a hair higher than the new Stumpjumper Evo so it's not crazy low.