AccidentalDishing

@hllclmbr: prior to owning the hummingbird core, I would have said yes. The Ca built bikes use 3d printed socket junctions. But ORA butts their own tubing and has the ability to fine tune each tube set based on Neuhaus input learned through their own building and testing

I assume Taiwanese. I have it's little brother, the hummingbird "core" which is also made in the ORA factory in Taiwan. Look up ORA engineering on youtube. Their factory, tooling, working conditions and commitment to QA is phenomenal. I have owned ~ 10 steel hardtails from Vassago to Esker and Chumba. This HB core is the highest build and ride quality by far. Geo is on point too.

@bman33: for most of us, myself included, I wholeheartedly agree. This bike is meant to be raced at the world cup level, and at that speed aerodynamics do matter. Several xcc races this year had average speeds in the 19-20 mph range. Thats as fast as your normal Saturday road group ride. At that level, a rider would be disadvantaged. In my opinion these bikes should be sold to Joe public with external routing save the highest build with full tourism for either pros or that one guy we all know. Id take external all day

100% this. There are white pagers that address exactly this and even some that address frequency ranges that specifically impact numbness to hands.

@ti473: check out DHMan's post.https://www.pinkbike.com/forum/listcomments/?threadid=169604&pagenum=17

The go-to park singlespeed tensioner is a short cage Zee derailleur with a parallelagram delete. Adjustable clutch, shimano pulleys, stout, under 60 bucks. Put a dab of loctite on the pins when you press them back in as a bit of the retention knurling gets worn away when you remove them.

@nation: interesting input, thanks! I'm pretty light at 155lb so I definitely dont get the frame flex of a bigger rider even with some serious pumping. Its noticeably stiffer than an epic evo 7. Its cool we even have a choice in fast do all punk rocker xc bikes these days. Spearfish, revolver, hei hei, epic 8, spur and 429 on the trail end. We can nit pick but these bikes all ride and last way better than 2016 could have dreamed.

I have to wonder how this is an improvement over the previous gen. My 2022 hei hei meets your last paragraph to a T. But its 25.5 lbs with a deluxe/SID 120m, the suspension is dialed and the rear flex triangle makes bottoming almost impossible. Its lighter, pedals way better, and does really well even compared to epic evo 7 or epic 8 (ridden both quite a bit). I do have a 1.2 degree wolftooth geoshift headset in it so it measures about 66.3 deg static. Size large. It has about 10k miles on it including a ton of Frederick Watershed, Snowshoe, Pisgah races and fun rides. I did get a spare main pivot as the bearings have started to wear through the pin anodizing. No grooves yet, but I want this thing to last a few more years. Only drawback is the PF bb ( I put a wheels threaded bb shell in it from day 1 and on 3rd set of bearings) and the upper pivot of the swing link takes abuse. Those bearings have been down 3x and the rest once and due again over the winter. I was looking at the new revolver as a replacement, but im hoping the next blur due next year is epic 8 ish with a higher stack.

Pretty rad to see two generations of the hei hei at the pointy end of this field. Seriously an underrated bike for this type of terrain

Everytime I see colorful singlespeed cogs I get all giddy. Then I look at the wall of shame and all the aluminum cogs from endless and wolftooth that died an early death. Then I look at the surly cogs and their boring functionality and durability and put the wallet away