Originally Posted by
MudvilleStomper
It's the same tubing they use for all their other non-premium frames.
Yes but the overall thickness and the butting profile is going to be vastly different than their other frames. There's no way their designers are going to spec a 650bx60 knobbie bike with the same tubing as a 700cx40 cross bike. The butted sections are most likely going to be shorter and optimized to maintain good ride feel on singletrack and rougher gravel. On smooth roads this translates to a stiff, dead feeling.
Although I suppose it's possible their other frames are so overbuilt that there might be no changes needed for this frame. That would be pretty unusual and indicative of an extremely poor designer.
I love drop bar mountain bikes. They ride so well on really rough stuff and are a vastly different kind of fun than a flat bar bike.
You won't be finessing gnarly trails on a drop-bar, that's for sure.
Sure you could. With the right stem and handlebars my drop-bar MTB is 95% of the bike my flat bar MTB is. Most of the time I don't have the fitness or mental focus to miss that last 5% anyway.
It's all about getting the right combo. Stems need to be as close to 0 length as possible and drops need to be flared. The main issue is that there are extremely few riders riding modern drop bar MTBs so no one is talking from a point of experience. It makes sense, a modern drop bar MTB build is going to run at least $700-$1000 over the already high cost of a good MTB. I built mine using second hand and 9 speed parts and it's still very expensive for a bike I only ride a couple dozen times a year. It's a lot of fun and really an under developed niche, IMO.