All

Sixfinity does look nice, but when I've tested 6-bar layouts in linkage, I can never find significant benefits over 4-bar that outweigh the added complexity. I don't have the experience someone like DW does, so he definitely has some tricks up his sleeve that can make such a suspension design worth it!

To say it plainly, yes. That's why you've been seeing the chainstays on nearly every production DH bike settle on a midpivot. They'll all calculate the rider's CG differently, but nearly everyone is chasing high AR numbers at the moment, and the easiest way to do that is to change where the chainstay mounts. In that graph the bike reaches the 100% AR mark at around 40-50% travel, so it'll pack down a bit at sag, until it goes past that 100%, where it will want to stand up a little. This basically means the bike is experiencing a form...

It sounds like we have the same trail preferences. I live in Idaho and love fast, rough, and loose trails. Silver bike park, Big Sky, Angle Fire, and Whistler are my favorite places to ride. I'm 6'1", 180lbs with a 34.5" inseam. My legs are long enough I don't have any issue with clearance, but I do use all of the clearance on both mullet or 29er occasionally buzzing the tire on either wheel size. I've been riding strictly 29ers for the past 6yrs and just set up my first mullet DH bike, a Zerode G3 last season. My previous...

Studbeefpile describes the difference the best. Mullet opens up more options in corners, by this I mean you can slash, do a nice arc, or change it halfway thru the corner. Full 29r like my XL Spire does not like to slash, so if the radius is too tight for the arc I chose, the only option is to hit the brakes in order to exit the corner still headed the the right direction on the trail. While on of my Mullets (XL Supreme V5 and Decoy SN) I can just lean the bike over a bit more, combined with...

27.5" rider here (yup that still exists 😆). I've been able to experiment 2 variants of the same bike (Commencal DH v4 mullet vs 29") back to back in Vallnord a few years back. I can say that the cornering speed/feel is really the most noticeable trait I've experienced ! I'm far from having a high level in DH but I really liked the feeling with the mullet, it's like inviting you to really lean and charge through every corner. I've not felt a big difference in the chunk to be honest, but it might have to do with the...

Here's a little copy/paste from a mullet-related thread on another site: If you're interested in people who know A TON about designing and riding bikes talking about mixed wheels vs full 29" then you should listen to Santa Cruz's podcast called The Roller Door. They have a few episodes with Kiran MacKinnon in which they talk about the differences, ideas, experiments, etcc. Here's a link to one of the podcast episodes: https://podcasts.apple.com/au/podcast/out-to-lunch-kiran-mackinnon-on-m… They have a few other episodes that specifically mention some thoughts and have a discussion around mixed wheels but I think this one is a good one to...