How would you define and describe plushness?

Would a soft suspension system of a mountain bike gives you the plushness?

Plushness means it absorbs the bumps without drama. Usually when people say this they are talking about small bumps.

Most people want their bike to:
- absorb small and large bumps
- pedal efficiently, including climbing and bursts of acceleration
- not bottom excessively on large bumps

It's the second thing that causes problems. It's easy to setup a plush bike but then you go to pedal and it's like walking on a trapoline. Pedalling is the whole reason we have lockout, pro pedal (and similar technologies), and climbing mode for forks. Those technologies are especially hard to balance with small bump compliance.

Plushness is travel, with correct sag settings. Find your ideal setup...and even a 80mm travel bike becomes efficient.

Good comments above! I measure plushness by the dust line on my shocks. There are times when I think the trail wan't so bad. Then I see that indeed my shocks have absorbed a ton of pounding. Then I feel that I have dialed in the SAG and I am enjoying as plush a ride as my equipment can provide.

Are you talking about the travel on the rear shock as well? I have a spring absorber, so I'm not sure how plushness I would get from it.

I have a XC bike and I do notice the front fork absorbed a lot of poundings and the sag plastic ring normally goes above 2/3 of the total length of the shock rod. The lock out is broken and damping speed has been at fastest position due to oil leak. Would these two functions could contribute to plushness if they are working properly. I have a 10 yrs old Rockshox SID, worth fix it?

Go full disc brakes, and shelve that old SID, which has way too much flex and stiction(lateral twisting). You'll spend and arm and leg getting that thing back up to snuff....

I have been looking around for a relatively new fork with full disc brakes. I think my current SID has 80mm travel. So I want to get something like 100 or 120mm. What do u think Fox fork? I would also like to have something that has 15mm thru-axle. Hence, a new front wheel set is in my mind.

I am going to post a new thread to talk about the wheel set.