Loki87

@hardyk: tiz-cycling.io

@drakefan705: That´s why i chose the pirate life. Harrrr!

It's kinda crazy to me how that sentiment has held on in the scene until this day, while almost nobody realized why at some point we wanted to use lower bars. Back in the day, with ridiculously steep head angles and rather high stack numbers on bikes, paired with super short chainstays, we needed the low front to generate front end grip. Now that all these things are gone and slack head angles have lowered the front ends significantly it only makes sense for us to return to higher rise bars in order to preserve a good riding posture on the bike. But for some reason this idea of "low front = fast" has embedded itself deeply into the collective minds of gravity riders. Or maybe it's just because most dislike the unconventional look. Either way, you're right. High rise bars is where it's at.

I guess this is a moto thing? My moto experience is very limited, but from what I remember, the rearward bias is entirely different from a mtb. I too think Dak is doing it right, but with modern mtb geo, the bike automatically puts pressure on the front wheel when it's properly driven through the bottom bracket by the rider. And with no motor powering the rear wheel, I don't see the rear needing more traction than the front. Or did I misinterpret your idea about more aggressive rear tread? That said, I too am curious if this trend will catch on with other riders eventually. Maybe not to the same extreme as Dak likes it, but I can easily see more racers use a 40 to 50mm riser. I can also see the higher bars be a game changer for all the high pivots being in use now, allowing the rider to maintain proper posture more easily on a bike with rather drastically changing geometry under compression. My last experience with a proper HP design was way back on the Balfa BB7, but I still remember that it felt absolute dogshit with a low front end and kinda moto with a higher rise bar. Less pitching the upper body forward and allowed for the bike to be driven more through the bottom bracket/rear. Dak is for sure cooking something here.

@jptothetree: been preaching it for years. Front ends are too dang low. At least if your bike primarily goes down hill. Especially with new Geometrie, with long reach and long chainstays, there is no need to create front end pressure by artificially placing the riders upper body weight over the front wheel. It was always a bad solution to a problem created by insificiently advanced geometry. We finally have the geo, now we need to learn that higher front ends are the way to properly utilizing it.

There's about a 10% variation in these springs, so may have been either really.

Samuel L. Traction as a front tire and a Mudderfucker as a rear tire

@erborow: yeah, the HP Wilson was a great concept. This new Canyon seems too good to be true. If the numbers check out, it's surely my next bike.

He´s wrenching for Mille Jonset afaik.

Yeah, it´s basically a mix of a Darkmatter and Devinci Wilson. That said, the Wilson is pretty much the perfect dh bike imho. A high pivot version should be interesting, even if just for the idler, because pedal kickback is about the only fault i can find on that bike.