Riding Tomac's Carbon Trail Bike - First Look

Tomac chose Phoenix's infamous and unforgiving South Mountain to let Pinkbike have our first go on their new carbon trail bike, the Supermatic 120. Inside you can read all about the new machine and my initial impressions of how the bike handled the challenging terrain.

2011 Tomac Supermatic 120


In development for two years, Tomac has just released their Supermatic 120. The bike is designed to be an all out trail bike that can not only tackle burly terrain when going down, but get you to the top faster than a Spanish roadie with an IV bag for a CamelBak. Devised by Joel Smith, with development help from John Tomac, the Supermatic is not a plodding All-Mountain rig or a confused trail bike with raked out geometry, but a sharp handling trail bike that wants to go fast and faster - which is what you would expect given the bike's parents. John Tomac, a legend in the sport, was always a top competitor in both Downhill and Cross-Country at the highest level of competition, and is still fast enough to give the fastest pros fits. Joel Smith, owner of the Tomac brand, is out there right on John's rear wheel. Most everyone involved in the business is in it for the love of the game, but few can throw the hammer down like Joel. Somehow, I don't see these two coming up with a bike that works best when ridden slowly.

The Supermatic is built using 3K carbon fiber for both the front and rear triangles, as are a lot of today's high end bikes, but Tomac has taken to winding their own carbon weave that is specific to the Supermatic's needs. What's more, a different layup is used depending on the size of the frame. A large sized model may need a bit of extra material at certain spots in order for it to reach the desired level of stiffness or ride characteristics, while the small is able to do without. Even the direction of the weave will have an effect on how the frame will perform. The factory also uses a new manufacturing technique to bring the Supermatic 120 to life that involves EPS foam inserts and vacuum processing prior to heat molding, with the end goal being to eliminate voids in the carbon. The outcome of all that hocus-pocus is a frame that weighs a svelte 5 lbs on the button, including the Fox RP23 rear shock. Tomac has the utmost confidence in their lightweight offspring, ensuring that it exceeds EN standards by a full 100,000 cycles. This being the fourth carbon frame from Tomac, they have had plenty of time to learn what works and what doesn't. What may look like arbitrary tube shapes to the untrained eye, have actually been designed to perform a very specific task. Both the top and down tubes employ a subtle box section shape - for stiffness - that is hard to spot at first due to the tube's rounded sides - for torsional rigidity. More carbon is used at high stress areas, the head and down tube junction, as well as the B.B. area, for reasons that don't need explaining to anyone who has experienced a high speed head-on impact. You'll also find a full length seat tube and two water bottle mounts (on all frames except the small), a godsend for the diehards who refuse to wear a backpack.


The bike's designer, Joel Smith, has a long history of being one of the brighter minds when it comes to shock tuning, that being his occupation in a previous life. When it comes to getting his hands oily, Joel is right in there. He proudly boasted of spending four months evaluating shock tunes alone, something that is unheard of in the world of 'get it done and get it sold' mass produced performance bikes. It may seem excessive, but it is a competitive world at the sharp end of the pack. Utilizing John Tomac's feedback, as well as Joel himself, an incredible 26 different shock tunes were tested, 2 different eye to eye lengths, and 16 different combinations. All told, 30 different shocks were fitted to the back end of prototype Supermatics before the production version that I rode on South Mountain was decided upon. Not only does the Fox RP23 sport both custom rebound and compression shimming, but also a custom sized spacer to take up just the correct amount of volume in the shock's XV air can. Joel wanted, and feels that he has nailed, a low compression shock (using the lowest Boost Valve pressure that Fox allows) that does a better job of erasing small trail chatter than a stock tune would, while being progressive enough from the mid-stroke on to prevent excess travel use. In other words, absorb the small things but don't blow though the stroke on the bigger hits. This last point is especially important given the bike's intentions as a no holds barred trail bike - it will surely be pushed hard by a very aggressive group of riders.

While the shock tuning has been complicated in development, the suspension layout itself has been designed to be light, simple, and allow for as easy setup as possible. A bike that features drastically changing shock rates throughout the travel, or one that suffers from excessive chain growth, can be difficult to setup correctly, even for those in the know. The Supermatic's main pivot location has been chosen to allow for a minimal and constant amount of chain growth, no more at the end of the travel than at the beginning, that gives the rear axle a very traditional path. No funky vertical and then drastically rearward action to be found here. The same goes for the leverage rate - there is no trickery. No sharp changes and no funky falling or rising rates at weird points in the travel. What does all this rattling on actually mean? The pressure and damping changes that you make to the shock externally will have predictable and easy to understand results on the trail.


Joel knows full well that they are pint sized when compared to the giants of the sport. This would be a negative thing to a lot of people - bigger is better, right? Not at Tomac. Mr. Smith has no illusions of competing against the big brands when it comes to bikes for the masses, but he does want to blow the doors off of the competition's top end offerings. Being a small scale operation allows him to focus on what he wants, that being bikes for discerning riders, riders who have had enough saddle time to know exactly what they want in a bike, riders who's first concern is performance. You won't find any price point machines designed to compete with the price point offerings from the big guys while browsing the Tomac website, but if you look close, you may be able to spot the extra effort that sets his bikes apart from those same big brands who offer four hundred different models. Joel had this to say when asked about how the small Tomac brand is able to remain relevant against the heavy hitters in the industry:



It can sometimes feel as if companies are in some sort of heated competition to have the most acronyms attached to their latest bike. Does more X.Y.Z. or (insert cheesy word here)-link really translate to more speed, more reliability, and 'more better'? There are many frame features that bike companies would have you believe that you need on your next bike, but it just seems too easy for a designer to decide to include something simply because his competition does. This is especially true when it comes to geometry. Yes, a bike's geo can define its character, but is it wrong to spec a certain head angle or bottom bracket height solely because your competition does? When questioned about the choice of the Supermatic's 69 degree head angle, comparatively steep when lined up against some of its main competition, Joel opened up about how difficult is it to balance the 'need' with the pressure to outdo your competition on the spec sheet:





Riding the Supermatic 120
Phoenix's South Mountain is gnarly and unforgiving. I know a lot of riders say that about their local hill, but it really does apply to this place. There are about 60 miles of challenging trail within the 16,000 acre park, nearly all of them featuring rock strewn single track with ledges, a bit of exposure in places, and steep pitches in both directions that will have you cringing. While all of that may not sound like fun for the average rider, a funny thing happened while I was out there struggling to keep John Tomac and Joel in sight - I found flow despite the rough terrain. For such a serious place, I was amazed to discover how easily flow could be found. The rolling rocky trails encouraged pushing into backsides and airing over the roughest of bits. Coming from B.C.'s loam packed North West, South Mountain was certainly a shock to the system, but a blast nonetheless. I've been to many launches that have us testing bikes on terrain that puts me to sleep - there was no danger of that happening here! If a rider does happen to find himself off course and on his side, he'll be very lucky to avoid the ever present Cholla cactus. Our rides ranged across the entire slope, from lower trails criss crossing the base, to ridge lines high up on the mountain's 2690 foot summit that is home to an impressive array of radio antennas. Before I took myself out with a knee injury caused by some over zealous riding late on the second day, I was able to sample the Supermatic 120 on Javalina, Mormon, and the infamous National Trail that crosses South Mountain.


Two days on an unfamiliar bike does not make a test, no matter how challenging the terrain under it happens to be. What my time on South Mountain did do, besides leave me with some impressive open wounds, was give me a full-on introduction to Tomac's 120 mm trail bike and a good peek of what to possibly expect from the bike when I wrangle one up for a long term test.

Bike setup, more specifically suspension setup, is critical to gathering any useful information during the riding. And while this is important on any bike, it is the shorter travel machines where it can really make or break the appraisal. Look at it this way: a high end trail bike like the Supermatic has less travel and pointier geometry than its All-Mountain counterparts, but a lot of riders expect to be able to tackle the same terrain at the same speed and confidence level as on a longer legged machine. For this reason, the bike's 120 mm of travel has to be dialed, some people would say more so than even a downhill sled. I quickly realized early on on the first day that Joel is not your average company product man. I had taken some time in the morning to setup my own suspension pressures and damping adjustments to what I thought would be a good place to start. Just before heading out, Joel asked me what my settings were, and upon telling him, he insisted that I roll my bike over and let him make changes. Having had plenty of experience dialing in bikes, I wanted to resist, but Joel had the shock pump out before I could utter any retorts. Once the changes were made, a sticker with my personal settings was applied to the shock body so I would know where to return to if I screwed the setting up with my own efforts later in the day. Of course, Joel turned out to be entirely correct. Being not just a guy who works for Tomac, but the bike's creator from start to finish, from the four months spent on shock tuning to deciding where exactly to put the cable stops, it's no surprise that he had the setup procedure on lock down. This is where the difference really is; yes, the Supermatic 120 rode impressive, but there is clearly a lot of knowledge and passion behind the brand as well, which counts for a lot in many people's eyes.


And how did the bike ride? Given the serious terrain and that I was riding blind into some technical pitches, I had a lot of confidence in the Supermatic - that's always a good sign. To be honest, I was a bit unsettled when Joel let on that he chose a 69 degree head angle for the bike. I immediately jumped to the conclusion that it was a touch steep, no doubt a result of me being stuck in the "it has to be slack" B.C. mindset. I did my best to push those numbers out of my mind once out on the trail, and the bike proved to be more than capable of holding its own. Any slacker and I would have had trouble getting around a lot of the rather tight switchbacks and sharp corners - and I'm talking about going both up and down. This may not be the case once I have the Supermatic on my local trails that are quite a bit faster and more open, but I'll refrain from making that leap in judgment until I have trail time to back it up.

The Supermatic's rear suspension, strangely absent of any four letter acronyms or patent-pending stickers, did a great job of making me forget that the bike had a full inch less travel than my most recent test bike. That's an impressive feat when how rough the trails were is taken into account and also speaks volumes about Joel's time and effort put into getting the most out of the bike's 120 mm of travel. I found myself trying to remember points on the trail where I thought I may have needed more travel - there were none, or an instance when loss of traction had me second guessing a line choice - nope. In fact, the top end of the bike's travel was as forgiving as most 150 mm travel air sprung bikes, no doubt playing a part in the abundant traction. Most of the climbing was done with the RP23's Pro Pedal set to full open, and while the bike seemed to climb efficiently, I was too concentrated on scaling the short and steep inclines to pay attention to the bike's climbing capability, to be frank... something about being on my redline that made looking down at the shock difficult! Even with only two days on the bike, it was clear that the Supermatic's rear end is more composed than I had expected. Joel worked with perennial shredder, John Tomac, throughout the bike's evolution, so it shouldn't be a big surprise that the design and custom tuned shock performed so well:



Visit the Tomac website to see their entire lineup.
Photography by Sterling Lorence

My two days on the Supermatic were more taste than test, but it did give me an insight into what makes the carbon bike tick. Initial impressions are of a bike with very sorted rear suspension and a light, agile feel. But it's still early days and I'll have to submit the bike to a proper B.C. beat down before giving any more ride impressions. Stay tuned for a full length review of the Supermatic 120 this Spring.

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