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How's the balance on the bike? If the back end is comparatively soft it can end up rocking your weight back and unloading the fork. Which makes it difficult to get full travel. The carpark bounce tests are very good at exposing if one end is soggy or too firm. Wind off your damping so it has less effect first.

I just had one, very brief ride on the Simons.Lab Zeta in my Intend Edge - thought I’d do a VERY brief ride report. I’m 170 lbs, on a Spec Stumpy 15 with CC link 27.5”. I had to up my air pressure quite a bit given the damper leg is no longer sealed. My recommended settings were HSC -4, LSC -4, HSR -4, LSR -9. My Edge steerer is unfortunately really short, so when I removed my Shockcraft Mezzer Stage 2 (which I LOVE), I had to lower my stem 12 mm, so that colors my review a bit...

Oil squish noise is the best part.

Here's another example of a damper that switches ports in/out for damping adjustment. This is from a Koni gas/hydraulic 4wd shock: I've played around with designs to try and fit it into a bike damper, but it's difficult to downsize. You can see @SIMONS.LAB have put a lot of work into that, moving the return path to another tube definitely helps.

The key difference is where the main restriction actually comes from. With something like the Charger 3, the flow path leading to the shim stack is restricted, so that restriction effectively sits in series with the shim stack. With the ZETA Tune Adjuster, the ports and the fluid paths leading to them are sized so that the shim stack itself remains the main restriction in the flow path. There are always open ports, and the ports themselves are non-restrictive until the flow reaches the shim stack opening. When additional ports are opened, they essentially add another flow path in parallel...

My statement about it being an ellipse is somewhat misleading; it's more of a stepped clamp that mimics changing the clamp shim in that it alters the slope of the force vs velocity damping curve. Hope the pictures help explain what I am describing. *EDIT: Yes, this is used in both forks and shocks for HSC adjustment.

Ended up going with the Shockcraft kit for my Norco Sight HP Good first ride but was uncontrolled in larger chunk >250mm steps, but felt good on smaller chatter and had decent HSR control on drops, suspect need to slow rebound 1 click Settings were -5 LSR -5 LSC 450lbs spring What settings did you end up on with the Shockcraft after dialing in with telemetry?

Öhlins has been going from strength to strength over the recent years, making incremental changes to many of their MTB products in the name of improving performance and reliability – each time accompanied by an unassuming iteration in the model number. The TTX air shocks were updated in 2025, gaining the “m.2” moniker but more importantly benefiting from a host of actual updates. We were keen to see how this latest evolution would perform on the trail, and after several months of testing we can now share our findings. Öhlins TTX1Air m.2 Highlights Highly adjustable TTX compression valve technology...

Yup, at this stage I feel like Fox adds HSC & HSR just to add a couple more lines to the spec sheet - the HSC effectively does nothing and while the HSR technically works, they are extremely sensitive to assembly tolerances, and IMO is not needed because a) LSR adjusters usually have a wide range anyway and b) rebound shim stacks are probably the single easiest valving option you can give to bike companies/service centres to cover rider weights outside of the stock tune. eg 1 tune could quite serviceably cover 150-280 psi or 300-550lb (as a general example)...

Agreed that the Shockcraft Bomber CR kit is more plug and play if you are in the spring rate range (300#-500#). In general terms the feel is more controlled and muted compared to the FF kit. Still very sensitive, but just less "free" feeling. Possibly the result of it being fully checked where the FF kit still has a bleed. The Fluid Focus kit includes a range of compression and rebound tunes, and is great if you want to experiment with tuning and open the shock up multiple times. In regards to rebound, I have tried to eliminate the top...

Shockcraft Bomber CR kit teaser. Converts all shims to 8mm ID with a new piston bolt for the base valve as well.

What a thorough testing protocol! I'm on Avy front and rear and really pleased with the service and performance so will be sticking with it; but will acknowledge that I don't have the time & $ to test all of these options. Not many people do, so we have to rely on various online comparisons/ opinion/ reviews/ etc. Thanks for doing it!