freeride or XC frame?
 

I'm looking to build a bike and I'm not sure what type of frame to buy. I mostly ride singletrack with some technical steep uphill and downhill. I also do a good amount of climbing. Should I look strickly for a XC frame or could a freeride frame also work as well.

Thanks!!

Basically I'm asking can I buy an freeride frame and use it for XC riding.

Sure. It's of course not going to be as light and if you were to compare your performance and ride times on a pure XC (smooth rolling and only slightly technical) terrain then of course you would see that you'd probably do better with a pure XC bike. But a FR bike or a XC/light-FR bike is probably more versatile and unless you're racing, I don't see that it really matters.

will going uphill be alot harder on a freeride frame or will the difference be very minimal?

I will have to say that it depends a lot on the length and steepness. With some of today's pure FR type bikes, it can be about doubly hard on most of the common hills I've seen but if you get something closer to XC geometry and weight, you can simply train around the penalties and the difference will be negligable. What you might actually want is a bike that's constantly being labelled "all-mountain". And although I'm a fan of Specialized, I'm just using their models as an example. You might want to check out something like the Specialized Enduro (closer to freeride), FSRxc (closer to XC) or Stumpjumper FSR (even more XC). Something like the Demo series is on the opposite end of the spectrum towards the freeride side. I would label the FSRxc and Stumpjumper FSR as XC/light-freeride.

Uphill on a freeride bike will be harder, but if you build a good freeride bike, its also a lot more fun to go down that same hill!

AMEN!!!

Some FR bikes are beefy and not a Beast to pedal up hill at all... its just dependant on your suspension and geometry... check this bike out, sounds perfect for you...

http://specialized.com/bc/SBCBkModel.jsp?spid=9687

-Jacob