Henry Quinney & Matt Beer Join Pinkbike's Technical Editorial Team

 all that sweet, sweet trailforks money is at least going somewhere

 @adrennan: just wait until PB ads a premium paywall

 @haen: you could say.... that would be pretty beta of them...

 @adrennan: isn't traiforks a separate entity to pb just under the pinkbike umbrella? I would Imagine that even if tf makes a large profit they would still be different budget to pinkbike. (look at me commenting like I was in the budget meeting.)

 @haen: You nailed it.

 GMBN, as a social media presence, can die in a fire. Independently of the people, who are great, it has never produced anything worthwhile for watching or reading.

 @adrennan: Well said

 @HankDamage: well said. It’s about adverts, product placement and clearly aimed at the kids who can’t do enough paper rounds to buy anything

 "Youtube personality"! Why doesn't PB say he worked at GMBN?

 @HankDamage: 90% of their content is bad, but if you can't enjoy watching Blake build a sidecar DJ bike and then take Neil on a mad adventure through the bike park like Wallace and Gromit, you probably take bikes too seriously.

 Anyone whose that militant about cable routing is worth listening to.

 @HankDamage: Every time I see Ashton on his (adaptive) bike it makes me happy

 @NickMcB: LOL

 @HankDamage: they tell you to to do it wrong. Then show how to do it right but then explain it wrong again

 @haen: just wait until you have to sign up for Levy’s onlyfans for the “good stuff”

 Double post.

 A former DH World Cupper who can write is a good hire for Pinkbike.

 @DoubleCrownAddict: an upvoted comment? You’re loosing your touch.

 @Unrealityshow: Ha, almost like it's unreality. Maybe there's hope he actually learn to ride switchbacks and stop the neutering crusade...

 @Unrealityshow: I think he was being sarcastic or something.

 Same here, was sad when he left. There's something about his voice and narration that just works perfectly.

 100% Definitely love getting into detailed tech convos with the guy. He is going to bring some real insight and depth to his tech reviews. Very intelligent, and detail orientated human being... And all around nice guy.

 Listening to beers opinion has got me into alot of trouble though

 @endurogan: Keep it to bikes and you should be just fine

 @endurogan: usually involves trying to chew an arm off in the morning to get out

 @dsphotography @sickmansick @jomacba cheers guys!

 Good hire with Beer, PB! Not many bike reviewers are half as good as Matt on a bike, and I'll expect that his writing is less flowery and more to-the-point than most given the engineering background.

 His brilliantly dry sense of humour didn't come across well at GMBN, but has absolutely shone through in the articles he's written on PB.

 @ROOTminus1: I think the way he developed on GMBN was really interesting. If you watch his early videos he was really nervous and self conscious, always sipping at water to combat the dry mouth. By the end he had made it is bitch and was producing quality laid back content. He was my favourite presenter by the time he left I think. No, Blake has a lot of banter. They’re both really good. Doddy’s enthusiasm and knowledge are also unparalleled... the Don is cool too. To be fair I like them all.

 @jaame: yeah he was criminally underutilised at GMBN.

 ...ONE corner....

 Haha thanks Leon!

 Yep he's been freelancing for us the past few months, but we're making it official now and he's headed to Squamish.

 @brianpark: Didn’t Henry fail his probation period with that internal routing wrongness?

 @Rubber-Buccaneer: he passed the trial of poking the hornets' nest.

 Looking forward to more controversial stuff from him!

 @brianpark: I think him and Levy should be allowed to literally fight over internal routing. It would be great for clicks and the fairest way to determine a winner. If a round three is needed I'm picturing that scene from Kickboxer where they wrap their hands and then glue glass and other stuff to it. Loser has to spend a year reviewing e-city bikes.

 @snl1200: it's easy. Just post something that people disagree with and get clicks. I probably account for half of the clicks lmao

 “People want McDonald’s and Pornography” is now etched into my memory

 He's already written several articles on here since he left GMBN. Go find them; they're a treat.

 Depends...video or article? Discuss.

 yes b'y

 Hell yea! Great win for NL

 Hah, maybe we hired Matt Beer but secretly hired Nick Beer to be the Stig?

Definitely nice to add another racer to the mix. we've now got quite a few people who have raced at the world cup level: Sarah (XC), Alicia (EWS), Christina (EWS), and Cathro too of course.

 @brianpark: next hire should be someone from an engineering background at a large bike company. They can have a section on each review where they explain the technical elements but also call out the marketing bullshit vs actual benefits.

 @Mini-Pinner: I’m not sure they are allowed to call out the marketing bs. PB is part of the bike industry marketing bs. That’s what funds it

 @Mini-Pinner: Matt has some engineering schooling, and Dan Roberts is literally an engineer from a large bike company who has several series here that explain the technical elements of bikes.

www.pinkbike.com/news/tags/behind-the-numbers
www.pinkbike.com/news/tags/enginerding

 @Mini-Pinner: I hear you, but it seems like a paltry thing to do with so many years of study and work experience. I think a 'real' engineer acting in the boundaries of their profession and not just shooting from the hip would say again and again 'I haven't seen those data" "I'm not sure how they measured that/made that comparison" "they haven't shared those data" "it's possible but I can't say one way or the other."

One place I think tech journalism could improve without burning industry bridges would be to be more transparent about which companies the real engineers actually work for, and where in the chain the engineering and testing is getting done. There are dudes with desktop CAD workstations in USA and Canada and western Europe, sure, but a lot of engineering happens closer to the site of production; a lot of engineering happens at the suppliers (think steel and aluminum tubes--the metallurgy has already been done, and even a lot of the shapes are already in a catalog). I think the big factories, whether it's bikes or components or garments, are perfectly happy to let the American and Euro clients portray themselves to the end users as the designers of all this stuff, but I don't believe it always works that way. They're partnerships.

 @Snfoilhat: I listened to an interesting podcast, and a lot of the bike companies actually contract out their engineering out to consultants. Those consultants work under strict NDAs to protect the reputation of their customers. So it may be a rabbit hole that companies are unwilling to open, and more contentious than you think.

 @Snfoilhat: a real engineer would not state an opinion as fact, but we most certainly do not need mystical data to have a meaningful opinion on a design decision.

For example, I don’t need to know what testing and data shimano has on their brakes to know they have a long standing problem that no one else has that they have inexcusably ignored. And it’s not irresponsible to point out that their ceramic cylinders seem to have higher roughness than their competitors metal cylinders and to speculate that this allows air into the system which sometimes finds its way from the bladder into the main pressure lines all at once during certain riding scenarios.

An engineer could also disassemble the product and measure the surface roughness of the offending product to confirm that aspect of the theory, or attempt to lay their hands on a set of brakes with the issue and build a test protocol to recreate the issue. This without seeing any proprietary data and for very low cost.

Most of engineering is just following educated hunches. Yes, at some point you test those hunches with real world data before taking action, but nothing says real world data has to be complicated or expensive, and you don’t need ironclad proof before voicing a theory that makes sense.

 @Blackhat: Which brake do you find better at the budget price rage where Shimano has these problems? Serious question because I have Shimano Zee & 8100 brakes and want to change to something else but I've found all the cheap ones have issues of one type or another.

 @Snfoilhat: for sure, real engineering is way more interesting and complex that what most people think but it's also quite less clickbaity.
It would be really interesting to see pieces on material, wall thickness, shapes etc related to stiffness and so.
In some video tours on bike factories you can how many important design decisions are actually taken by the factory engineers, just remember the Grimm Donut thing.

 @ozhuck2flat: I honestly don’t try enough brakes to answer that question, but my understanding is the same as you: they all have serious issues so pick your poison. My opinion that you shouldn’t run shimano brakes - they definitely have some good qualities. But from an engineering perspective it’s astounding that they’ve failed to address it.

BTW: the downvotes on that post perfectly illustrates why you will never see real engineering content on Pinkbike. Even the slightest glimpse of an engineering opinion is too much. There’s a reason marketing guys write copy.

 @Blackhat: Thanks for sharing your opinion. I'd like to read more articles written from an engineering perspective, particularly a candid one from the the manufacturing or design engineer or the product line manager, but it's unlikely to happen because they'd want to keep their jobs or not violate non-disclosure agreements.
Well you've got my upvote.

 Thanks fellas! @theedon @privateer-wheels