Nukeproof Scout Review (2022 Gen 3 )
Pros and Cons
Pros:
Cons:
- Still a good value
- All parts swap over from previous scout (and other Nukeproof models)
- Excellent cable routing
- Not extremely modern or extremely outdated geometry
- Happy on most trails
- Threaded BB
- External Cable Routing (except for the dropper, of course)
Cons:
- Not as great a value as prior models
- Stiff riding frame
- Vanilla ride
- Could use a longer reach
- Not very playful
Who it's for:
- people looking for an all-rounder that's up for anything
- people who are on a tight budget but still want modern components
- people who want to get the most bang for their buck
- heavier riders who don't want a flexy frame
Who it's NOT for
- xc racers
- enduro shredders
- riders under 160 lbs due to its stiff ride
- people who are looking for a bike with a ride feel that really stands out from the crowd
My full thoughts on the 2022 Nukeproof Scout Hardtail
in november of last year pipedream announced the serious s5 and ever since then i've been trying to get my hands on one and we finally have one here to take a first look at today
i got to give a shout out to brian from smith creek cycle from british columbia he made this possible he's an importer of pipe dream to north america and he can supply canada united states he can help you build them up from parts or you can just order a frame through him this frame would not be here if it were not for him so thank you brian go check out his shop i've got a link to it in the description below so talk to him about your plans and he can help you get sorted to build one of these up all right enough talking let's take a look at what this thing looks like dang it reminds me of that cottage solaris max i had wow that is beautiful this is a steel frame it's ovalized vertically at the head tube and horizontally here that makes a ton of sense for how you'd want a frame to flex or not flex this paint is truly stunning oh this is cool they got a list of all the elements that went into this iron chromium magnesium man that yolk looks awesome oh pipe dream you think like i do when i started this channel i wanted a pipe dream moxie more than just about any bike i still haven't ridden one seriously i threw a leg over a buddies but we didn't have enough time to really put it through its paces i still think that's a fantastic bike on paper but man when i reached out to them they said well do you want a moxie or a sirius and i said oh don't make me choose but i want a serious this bike embodies everything that i'm always talking about it's meant for a 100 to 120 mil fork but it's got a 65 degree head angle so it looks like it could be great for bike packing xc or getting rowdy and their design philosophy fits right in with what i think bikes should be designed with their whole geometry is based around pointing a bike downhill because that's what we love to do most when we ride bikes you could make a bike with geometry suited for going uphill that's then sketchy on the downhill or you could make it really good at downhill and pretty good at the uphill and that's kind of what they're going for in their geometry and i fully support that this frame is ed coated so it's not going to rust on us i like it when companies do that man i've seen some 3 000 steel frames that don't have that option man these sparkles really really pop that's super fun kind of a dark blue black with some red sparkle green sparkle blue sparkle this thing's gonna pop in the sunshine i haven't been this excited about a bike in a long time oh man fully external cable routing i love how we're seeing aggressive low travel hardtails made out of steel that aren't extremely heavy things like the cottage solaris max things like the stanton sherpa things like this pipe dream sirius things like the stiff squatch and the sour crumble there are some rowdy bikes that don't rely on a 150ml fork to get rowdy and i love that and pipedream keeps their c-tube shorter than just about anyone and they encourage you to size based on reach that's what i've been saying from day one but unfortunately a lot of companies have such long seat tubes that you're limited to sizing because the sea tube salon you can't run the dropper size you want their bikes fit anyone from four foot eleven to six foot two this frame is made out of 4130 chromoly it's been butted and heat treated we've got sliding dropouts you could make a single speed missile out of this thing you can adjust the chainstay to suit the nature of what you want the bike to do anyway this is everything that's right about hardtails today is short seat tube slack head angle steep seat angle long reach nice low bottom bracket this thing should weigh like an xc or trail bike and descend like an enduro bike without the sketchiness of the fork dive i am so excited i have really high expectations it's going to be hard for this bike to meet my expectations but we'll see that's what this channel is all about finding out if these awesome things on paper match my enthusiasm in real life a lot of people are worried about sliding dropout hardware being one more moving part and things to break i have never had a slider move once it is a little bit heavier though so when we're comparing weight you're gonna have a little bit heavier frame on something with sliding dropouts and for me the target for steel hardtails if you can get them under six pounds with rowdy geometry that's a light bike so it's a uk brand that manufactures their bikes in taiwan and i'm okay with that seeing the quality that i've seen come out of taiwan lately i like seeing post mount disc brakes on the sliding dropout
everything's post mount these days that's our standard so i love seeing more of that standardization and if i do need an adapter to run a bigger rotor it'll be the same adapter that i'd use on a fork and that's nice
so i just threw it on the scale and it came in at 6.31 pounds which isn't bad for sliding dropouts but it is a little bit heavier than the stanton sherpa and you're going to hear me talk about the sherpa a lot because that's my favorite steel hardtail and this is in very much the same realm it's got a longer reach it's got a shorter seat tube so i'm thinking this might be able to get a little more rowdy but we'll see and i want to give a huge shout out to brian he sent me a few parts that i've really been struggling to get for my builds and he made this possible so thank you brian if you guys have questions about pipe dream or a build or want to pick his brain or check out his other brands definitely reach out to him in the link in the description below and even if you just want to drop him a line for saying hey thanks for believing in hardtail party and making that review possible i really liked learning about that bike that would be awesome he didn't have to do that so thank you brian really appreciate it so brian's got a few parts he sent along with this that i haven't used before this is the newer one up dropper i had issues with the v1 but i love one up as a company i've just had bad luck with their droppers in the past look at that that goes all the way down so i'm excited to try this one out the other one i had issues with the cable coming out i love 1ups edc tool i use their bars exclusively on my personal bikes so i'm excited to see how this does it's a more affordable dropper now it's time to see which wheels will fit in this rear triangle this is something you can't find this info anywhere else on hard tails or any other bike so i'm super thrilled to be able to have lots of wheel sets to show you the options all right first up 27.5 by 30. oh my goodness clearance for days at least all the way back dang that looks so beefy all the way forward no problem at all we've got tons of clearance in here we got five mil over here we got five mil yes so check it out good clearance in there that looks really good slid all the way forward ooh we might be able to get a 29 by 30 in there let's try that next all right here we have my i can f 945 29 by 3.0 wheel this is a big ask oh i can get it close but it's going to rub when it flexes okay that's impressive not bad let's see with the 29 by 2.8 all right 29 by two eight with terra vale coronados oh yeah this is fitting i got a good feeling about this
yes that clears that clears with like almost a centimeter of clearance so forward all the way rubs a little oh this is exciting bravo pipe dream all right dropouts are about in the middle position and we're clearing with about three mil clearance on each side we got pretty good clearance in there it's such a big tire doesn't look like much but that's good clearance all right so that is exciting for me i know there aren't as many of you out there that love 29 by 3.0 but anytime we have the option to go bigger that's always great because it never hurts you to go smaller if you just want to run regular 29s so bravo pipe dream sweet all right i'm going to run 29 by 2.3 tires in here first we'll see how that does but let's get this thing built up this has a threaded bottom bracket we're running a praxis 30 mil bottom bracket because we're gonna run this with turbine cranks whenever you put aluminum and steel together you want to grease them because they can seize otherwise well i thought i had every bottom bracket tool on the planet but i don't i'm so frustrated with bottom bracket standards and just the freaking tool to install it i have five different bottom bracket sockets and now i need to take this down to my shop to get that on that's a bummer that's just life these days though but man i wish they would all get on the same page and use the same interface just got back from my local shop thunder mountain bikes they tried 10 different tools and none of them matched either this is what's wrong with the mountain bike industry right now is it's getting expensive for no reason for me to have to buy another 40 tool i don't even know which one to buy to make this work to put it on is just hurting your customer base there's no reason to do a proprietary spline count just do what shimano's using or do what sram's using or do what raceface is using and stick to it that just frustrates people anyway rant over this is installed we had to use an old-school single hook on there to pull it tight it's probably not quite up to torque but i'm sure it'll be just fine going with race face turbine cranks i love these cranks beefy 30 mil spindle did you know that fox suspension owns race face now that's pretty interesting it's been hard to get these cranks for a while because their merger took forever now i'm making my chainstay protector i just use mastic tape i draw these little triangles and i just lay them on top of each other gives it some nice ridges and a cool look and doesn't use a whole lot of the tape so i save a lot of that so i have a whole bunch of these triangles cut kind of my signature look on my bikes good way to keep your bike quiet and keep this paint looking great i've decided to keep as much as possible the same between this and
the stanton sherpa because they're very similar bikes and i want to compare them back to back now i'm running a 1up carbon bar with the 35 mil rise and i like to run a little bit higher rise bars when i'm running 120 mil forks because the axle crown is lower which makes the effective stack lower i do like short travel bikes but it does come at a cost the in that the stack is usually pretty low because it doesn't have all that suspension making up for the stack i don't know if that makes sense but that's why i run riser bars 35 mil rise with short forks like 120 mil forks oh that looks great on there here's a pro tip if you're building up a bike don't cut your steer tube until you've experimented with stem height yet i know this looks a little weird having a spacer there but i want to be able to experiment with stem heights so don't just go off looks a lot of people will just cut their steer tube at whatever requires no spacers and being able to adjust your bar height and stem height makes a huge difference so don't let vanity win over adjustability right now we're running a 9.8 stout stem they're one of my partners another canadian company i know a lot of you canadian dudes like to support canadian companies that's good up front we're running paul clamper cable actuated disc brakes they're heavy so they're going to make the weight overall weight of this bike go up i love these things they're my favorite brakes and they're what i run on all my personal bikes oh they feel so good so solid for our derailer i'm reusing a micro shift advanced x that's what i run on every single build of mine unless i have wheels that i have to run with a different driver but man this drivetrain has been really good for me it's inexpensive i've broken one man you cannot beat the price of these things super thrilled with it and it shifts great personally i like it as much as shimano xt almost as much as sram gx and above and the whole drivetrain is cheaper than an xt cassette and way cheaper than a gx cassette these wheels are the nuke proof horizon they are fantastic wheels especially for the price they're not the lightest wheels i have but they have a great ride feel and man they have held up to some serious riding oh and they have really good engagement too all right here it is the pipe dream serious it's all built up that was a pretty straightforward build nothing was crazy one thing that i'm not crazy about is the routing on the bottom of the down tube if you ever put a shuttle pad on your truck and put it over there it gets smashed a little more i wish it was on top and out of the way but now we're nitpicking i also would have put it in this side since everyone runs their dropper on the left side i'd have it come in there and go in the side here instead of the other side if that's the only flaw i can find that's impressive this bike is beautiful i love the lines i love the curves i love this tire clearance i love sliding dropouts any guesses on the weight 29.7 i'm using the one up dropper that's a little bit heavier than the fall lines that i normally run i've got my paul clampers on there these nuke proof wheels are a little bit heavy these tires are heavy everything else is pretty light though they're still a little bit heavier than i thought it would be i cannot wait to throw a leg over this thing i haven't been this excited for a bike for a long time we need to talk about the geometry of this bike because it really sets it apart from a lot of things in the field their geo chart is measured with a 120 mil fork at sag so it's got a 65 degree head angle at sag which is probably closer to a 64 degree head angle that's impressive for a 120 mil travel bike now remember this can be run from 0 to 120 mil travel you can put a 130 mil on it it's going to raise the bottom bracket slack in the seat tube and slacking the head angle even more i think 120s been a real sweet spot for me on the bikes like this i could get 130 and get a little bit more out of it i think but these light forks that you can get in 100 to 120 mil travel really keep these bikes peppy and lively and you can pick up the front real easy it just gives it a fun kind of dancy feeling being that light if you want to turn it into a charger i'm sure you could turn this into a low travel enduro shred machine with a big 130 mil fork like a helm or a pike this is the longish size which is their smallest size i like that they don't use the small medium large extra large because a lot of people just say oh i'm always a large and everything i should get the large instead it encourages you to look at the geometry chart and pick based on reach so this at sag has a 445 mil reach which is in a sweet spot it's longer than the sherpa and the sherpa i felt a little bit cramped on it's interesting pipe dream actually recommends for someone my height five six to go up to a long the next size up i was a little bit nervous to commit to that but we'll see how it rides i think i could have gotten away with it with how slack and rowdy this thing is i think a long might have worked out too we'll see on the ride review seat angle is 77.5 degrees that's got to be effective i don't think it's that steep right here so this has really steep seat angle long reach slack head angle low bottom bracket just like i like it the bb drop is 64 millimeters that's going to feel nice and planted that is it at sag so it'll be a little higher at static if you're comparing to other bikes and the stays go from 425 to 441 millimeters that gives you a ton of options if you like the long chain stay planted feel push it back if you like the playful short jibby feel pull it forward now the one geo number on this bike that has worried me since i first heard about it was the stack the stack is really low it's under 600 mil in fact it's 584 mil that's a low stack that's an attack racy position it's lower than the stanton sherpa it's lower than the bc podsole it's lower than almost any other bike i've ridden i don't love short stacks but i have an open mind talking to brian he mentioned a lot of people are worried about the stack when they see the geo numbers but then when they ride it nobody mentions that so we're gonna find out i've also got that 35 mil riser bar that'll help pull it up a little bit we'll see what it feels like it may be one of those things where on paper it looks terrible and on real life it just comes alive and works with everything remember that geometry charts are a starting point and it's important to look at them but a lot of bikes don't ride like you think they would just looking at their geometry so nothing beats a true test ride where you can throw a leg over it these bikes are hard to test ride most great hardtails are because they're made by small manufacturers in fact it's taken me 10 months to get this in to test ride one of these so the chances of you being able test ride are slim but if you ever get a chance throw a leg over one if you can't get a test ride like most people pay attention to the reviews listen to what i say about it listen to how i compare it to other bikes it'll give you an idea if you need more advice and you want more info to pick my brain on how this compares to every other bike i've written become a patron today i offer my bike consultation service through patreon it's how i support this channel and it's how i make these videos possible so that i can get more and more reviews coming in i am thrilled with this bike on paper i cannot wait to get it out on the trail and let you know what i think about it if you enjoyed this video and this style and my content make sure you give it a thumbs up and subscribe so you're notified when my ride review drops thanks for watching there's a party in the mountains and you're invited.
i got to give a shout out to brian from smith creek cycle from british columbia he made this possible he's an importer of pipe dream to north america and he can supply canada united states he can help you build them up from parts or you can just order a frame through him this frame would not be here if it were not for him so thank you brian go check out his shop i've got a link to it in the description below so talk to him about your plans and he can help you get sorted to build one of these up all right enough talking let's take a look at what this thing looks like dang it reminds me of that cottage solaris max i had wow that is beautiful this is a steel frame it's ovalized vertically at the head tube and horizontally here that makes a ton of sense for how you'd want a frame to flex or not flex this paint is truly stunning oh this is cool they got a list of all the elements that went into this iron chromium magnesium man that yolk looks awesome oh pipe dream you think like i do when i started this channel i wanted a pipe dream moxie more than just about any bike i still haven't ridden one seriously i threw a leg over a buddies but we didn't have enough time to really put it through its paces i still think that's a fantastic bike on paper but man when i reached out to them they said well do you want a moxie or a sirius and i said oh don't make me choose but i want a serious this bike embodies everything that i'm always talking about it's meant for a 100 to 120 mil fork but it's got a 65 degree head angle so it looks like it could be great for bike packing xc or getting rowdy and their design philosophy fits right in with what i think bikes should be designed with their whole geometry is based around pointing a bike downhill because that's what we love to do most when we ride bikes you could make a bike with geometry suited for going uphill that's then sketchy on the downhill or you could make it really good at downhill and pretty good at the uphill and that's kind of what they're going for in their geometry and i fully support that this frame is ed coated so it's not going to rust on us i like it when companies do that man i've seen some 3 000 steel frames that don't have that option man these sparkles really really pop that's super fun kind of a dark blue black with some red sparkle green sparkle blue sparkle this thing's gonna pop in the sunshine i haven't been this excited about a bike in a long time oh man fully external cable routing i love how we're seeing aggressive low travel hardtails made out of steel that aren't extremely heavy things like the cottage solaris max things like the stanton sherpa things like this pipe dream sirius things like the stiff squatch and the sour crumble there are some rowdy bikes that don't rely on a 150ml fork to get rowdy and i love that and pipedream keeps their c-tube shorter than just about anyone and they encourage you to size based on reach that's what i've been saying from day one but unfortunately a lot of companies have such long seat tubes that you're limited to sizing because the sea tube salon you can't run the dropper size you want their bikes fit anyone from four foot eleven to six foot two this frame is made out of 4130 chromoly it's been butted and heat treated we've got sliding dropouts you could make a single speed missile out of this thing you can adjust the chainstay to suit the nature of what you want the bike to do anyway this is everything that's right about hardtails today is short seat tube slack head angle steep seat angle long reach nice low bottom bracket this thing should weigh like an xc or trail bike and descend like an enduro bike without the sketchiness of the fork dive i am so excited i have really high expectations it's going to be hard for this bike to meet my expectations but we'll see that's what this channel is all about finding out if these awesome things on paper match my enthusiasm in real life a lot of people are worried about sliding dropout hardware being one more moving part and things to break i have never had a slider move once it is a little bit heavier though so when we're comparing weight you're gonna have a little bit heavier frame on something with sliding dropouts and for me the target for steel hardtails if you can get them under six pounds with rowdy geometry that's a light bike so it's a uk brand that manufactures their bikes in taiwan and i'm okay with that seeing the quality that i've seen come out of taiwan lately i like seeing post mount disc brakes on the sliding dropout
everything's post mount these days that's our standard so i love seeing more of that standardization and if i do need an adapter to run a bigger rotor it'll be the same adapter that i'd use on a fork and that's nice
so i just threw it on the scale and it came in at 6.31 pounds which isn't bad for sliding dropouts but it is a little bit heavier than the stanton sherpa and you're going to hear me talk about the sherpa a lot because that's my favorite steel hardtail and this is in very much the same realm it's got a longer reach it's got a shorter seat tube so i'm thinking this might be able to get a little more rowdy but we'll see and i want to give a huge shout out to brian he sent me a few parts that i've really been struggling to get for my builds and he made this possible so thank you brian if you guys have questions about pipe dream or a build or want to pick his brain or check out his other brands definitely reach out to him in the link in the description below and even if you just want to drop him a line for saying hey thanks for believing in hardtail party and making that review possible i really liked learning about that bike that would be awesome he didn't have to do that so thank you brian really appreciate it so brian's got a few parts he sent along with this that i haven't used before this is the newer one up dropper i had issues with the v1 but i love one up as a company i've just had bad luck with their droppers in the past look at that that goes all the way down so i'm excited to try this one out the other one i had issues with the cable coming out i love 1ups edc tool i use their bars exclusively on my personal bikes so i'm excited to see how this does it's a more affordable dropper now it's time to see which wheels will fit in this rear triangle this is something you can't find this info anywhere else on hard tails or any other bike so i'm super thrilled to be able to have lots of wheel sets to show you the options all right first up 27.5 by 30. oh my goodness clearance for days at least all the way back dang that looks so beefy all the way forward no problem at all we've got tons of clearance in here we got five mil over here we got five mil yes so check it out good clearance in there that looks really good slid all the way forward ooh we might be able to get a 29 by 30 in there let's try that next all right here we have my i can f 945 29 by 3.0 wheel this is a big ask oh i can get it close but it's going to rub when it flexes okay that's impressive not bad let's see with the 29 by 2.8 all right 29 by two eight with terra vale coronados oh yeah this is fitting i got a good feeling about this
yes that clears that clears with like almost a centimeter of clearance so forward all the way rubs a little oh this is exciting bravo pipe dream all right dropouts are about in the middle position and we're clearing with about three mil clearance on each side we got pretty good clearance in there it's such a big tire doesn't look like much but that's good clearance all right so that is exciting for me i know there aren't as many of you out there that love 29 by 3.0 but anytime we have the option to go bigger that's always great because it never hurts you to go smaller if you just want to run regular 29s so bravo pipe dream sweet all right i'm going to run 29 by 2.3 tires in here first we'll see how that does but let's get this thing built up this has a threaded bottom bracket we're running a praxis 30 mil bottom bracket because we're gonna run this with turbine cranks whenever you put aluminum and steel together you want to grease them because they can seize otherwise well i thought i had every bottom bracket tool on the planet but i don't i'm so frustrated with bottom bracket standards and just the freaking tool to install it i have five different bottom bracket sockets and now i need to take this down to my shop to get that on that's a bummer that's just life these days though but man i wish they would all get on the same page and use the same interface just got back from my local shop thunder mountain bikes they tried 10 different tools and none of them matched either this is what's wrong with the mountain bike industry right now is it's getting expensive for no reason for me to have to buy another 40 tool i don't even know which one to buy to make this work to put it on is just hurting your customer base there's no reason to do a proprietary spline count just do what shimano's using or do what sram's using or do what raceface is using and stick to it that just frustrates people anyway rant over this is installed we had to use an old-school single hook on there to pull it tight it's probably not quite up to torque but i'm sure it'll be just fine going with race face turbine cranks i love these cranks beefy 30 mil spindle did you know that fox suspension owns race face now that's pretty interesting it's been hard to get these cranks for a while because their merger took forever now i'm making my chainstay protector i just use mastic tape i draw these little triangles and i just lay them on top of each other gives it some nice ridges and a cool look and doesn't use a whole lot of the tape so i save a lot of that so i have a whole bunch of these triangles cut kind of my signature look on my bikes good way to keep your bike quiet and keep this paint looking great i've decided to keep as much as possible the same between this and
the stanton sherpa because they're very similar bikes and i want to compare them back to back now i'm running a 1up carbon bar with the 35 mil rise and i like to run a little bit higher rise bars when i'm running 120 mil forks because the axle crown is lower which makes the effective stack lower i do like short travel bikes but it does come at a cost the in that the stack is usually pretty low because it doesn't have all that suspension making up for the stack i don't know if that makes sense but that's why i run riser bars 35 mil rise with short forks like 120 mil forks oh that looks great on there here's a pro tip if you're building up a bike don't cut your steer tube until you've experimented with stem height yet i know this looks a little weird having a spacer there but i want to be able to experiment with stem heights so don't just go off looks a lot of people will just cut their steer tube at whatever requires no spacers and being able to adjust your bar height and stem height makes a huge difference so don't let vanity win over adjustability right now we're running a 9.8 stout stem they're one of my partners another canadian company i know a lot of you canadian dudes like to support canadian companies that's good up front we're running paul clamper cable actuated disc brakes they're heavy so they're going to make the weight overall weight of this bike go up i love these things they're my favorite brakes and they're what i run on all my personal bikes oh they feel so good so solid for our derailer i'm reusing a micro shift advanced x that's what i run on every single build of mine unless i have wheels that i have to run with a different driver but man this drivetrain has been really good for me it's inexpensive i've broken one man you cannot beat the price of these things super thrilled with it and it shifts great personally i like it as much as shimano xt almost as much as sram gx and above and the whole drivetrain is cheaper than an xt cassette and way cheaper than a gx cassette these wheels are the nuke proof horizon they are fantastic wheels especially for the price they're not the lightest wheels i have but they have a great ride feel and man they have held up to some serious riding oh and they have really good engagement too all right here it is the pipe dream serious it's all built up that was a pretty straightforward build nothing was crazy one thing that i'm not crazy about is the routing on the bottom of the down tube if you ever put a shuttle pad on your truck and put it over there it gets smashed a little more i wish it was on top and out of the way but now we're nitpicking i also would have put it in this side since everyone runs their dropper on the left side i'd have it come in there and go in the side here instead of the other side if that's the only flaw i can find that's impressive this bike is beautiful i love the lines i love the curves i love this tire clearance i love sliding dropouts any guesses on the weight 29.7 i'm using the one up dropper that's a little bit heavier than the fall lines that i normally run i've got my paul clampers on there these nuke proof wheels are a little bit heavy these tires are heavy everything else is pretty light though they're still a little bit heavier than i thought it would be i cannot wait to throw a leg over this thing i haven't been this excited for a bike for a long time we need to talk about the geometry of this bike because it really sets it apart from a lot of things in the field their geo chart is measured with a 120 mil fork at sag so it's got a 65 degree head angle at sag which is probably closer to a 64 degree head angle that's impressive for a 120 mil travel bike now remember this can be run from 0 to 120 mil travel you can put a 130 mil on it it's going to raise the bottom bracket slack in the seat tube and slacking the head angle even more i think 120s been a real sweet spot for me on the bikes like this i could get 130 and get a little bit more out of it i think but these light forks that you can get in 100 to 120 mil travel really keep these bikes peppy and lively and you can pick up the front real easy it just gives it a fun kind of dancy feeling being that light if you want to turn it into a charger i'm sure you could turn this into a low travel enduro shred machine with a big 130 mil fork like a helm or a pike this is the longish size which is their smallest size i like that they don't use the small medium large extra large because a lot of people just say oh i'm always a large and everything i should get the large instead it encourages you to look at the geometry chart and pick based on reach so this at sag has a 445 mil reach which is in a sweet spot it's longer than the sherpa and the sherpa i felt a little bit cramped on it's interesting pipe dream actually recommends for someone my height five six to go up to a long the next size up i was a little bit nervous to commit to that but we'll see how it rides i think i could have gotten away with it with how slack and rowdy this thing is i think a long might have worked out too we'll see on the ride review seat angle is 77.5 degrees that's got to be effective i don't think it's that steep right here so this has really steep seat angle long reach slack head angle low bottom bracket just like i like it the bb drop is 64 millimeters that's going to feel nice and planted that is it at sag so it'll be a little higher at static if you're comparing to other bikes and the stays go from 425 to 441 millimeters that gives you a ton of options if you like the long chain stay planted feel push it back if you like the playful short jibby feel pull it forward now the one geo number on this bike that has worried me since i first heard about it was the stack the stack is really low it's under 600 mil in fact it's 584 mil that's a low stack that's an attack racy position it's lower than the stanton sherpa it's lower than the bc podsole it's lower than almost any other bike i've ridden i don't love short stacks but i have an open mind talking to brian he mentioned a lot of people are worried about the stack when they see the geo numbers but then when they ride it nobody mentions that so we're gonna find out i've also got that 35 mil riser bar that'll help pull it up a little bit we'll see what it feels like it may be one of those things where on paper it looks terrible and on real life it just comes alive and works with everything remember that geometry charts are a starting point and it's important to look at them but a lot of bikes don't ride like you think they would just looking at their geometry so nothing beats a true test ride where you can throw a leg over it these bikes are hard to test ride most great hardtails are because they're made by small manufacturers in fact it's taken me 10 months to get this in to test ride one of these so the chances of you being able test ride are slim but if you ever get a chance throw a leg over one if you can't get a test ride like most people pay attention to the reviews listen to what i say about it listen to how i compare it to other bikes it'll give you an idea if you need more advice and you want more info to pick my brain on how this compares to every other bike i've written become a patron today i offer my bike consultation service through patreon it's how i support this channel and it's how i make these videos possible so that i can get more and more reviews coming in i am thrilled with this bike on paper i cannot wait to get it out on the trail and let you know what i think about it if you enjoyed this video and this style and my content make sure you give it a thumbs up and subscribe so you're notified when my ride review drops thanks for watching there's a party in the mountains and you're invited.
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