Project LTHT- Singular Buzzard: Introduction- by Guitar Ted
With the onset of Winter it gets to be harder to find the right time, weather, and enough light to get rides in, so many of us turn to “projects” that we were too busy to get to during the riding season. We’re no different at Twenty Nine Inches. With Fall waning it was time to kick a new “project” bike into gear. This one was to be something inspired by a couple of other bikes we’ve had on test here of late.
Singular Cycles Buzzard Frame
One of those bikes is the Diamondback Mason HT we tested, (see here), and the other is the Trek Stache, (seen here). We also are looking hard in the direction of Niner Bikes’ ROSS 9, (seen here), and obviously, the three bikes mentioned all have similar characteristics: That being that they all are “all around” hard tails with less of a focus on XC and more on “play”. Of course, that is painting with a broad stroke. There are more specific things that are also drawing our attention to these bikes.
Many of those things are also part of our “Long Travel Hard Tail” project and they include Velocity USA’s new Dually wheels, a look at another “everyman’s” parts group in the Shimano SLX series of parts, and how using a 140mm travel fork for all sorts of riding might not be the craziest thing to do after all.
Stay tuned as we begin to roll out Project LTHT. In my next post, I will give you the lowdown on Singular Cycles Buzzard frame, and afterward a full build post will be coming with my thoughts on Shimano’s SLX group and the fantastic new Velocity Dually rims which are a whopping 45mm wide!
NOTE: Parts for Project LTHT were submitted to Twenty Nine Inches at no charge for test and review including the frame, fork, and drive train. We are not being paid, nor bribed by any of the companies who sent in parts for this project and we will strive to give our honest thoughts and opinions throughout.
Rad. Don’t let the cold slow down your typing – get out there and ride and report.
I’m looking forward to your musings about this bike project. Beautiful photograph by the way!
@Motivated: It wouldn’t be the cold that keeps me from riding, but snowed in trails. 😉
@Moondoggy: Thank you. It was included after being encouraged by Grannygear. Hard to take a bad image when the lighting is so spectacular, as it was on that ride.
Looking forward to hearing how the SLX (particularly the brakes) compares to XT. I want to upgrade my Elixir 5s at some point.
GT- on my screen only about a third of the top picture loads, am I the only one with this problem?
@Yogi: No problems here.
Can’t wait to hear how you like it!!
I’m pretty excited about your sussing out the different takes on this bike genre. In particular, I want to know if I can make the beer run/haul the kid to school/ride to work on one of these things without it feeling like a light downhiller’s sled. Of course, I still want to know how they act when riding extra-irresponsibly in the woods. Keep it up.