I'm looking forward to getting my Legend Mk2 in late summer.  I have a lot of time invested in feedback to the Banshee guys from the Mk1, so it will be cool to see and feel the refinements.

I've not been thinking about trail bikes much lately, but I'm sure my Balfa 2-step will serve me as long as I need it to.

I'm a pretty strong believer in bikes built for purpose.  I guess I'm blessed to be able to afford multiple bikes.  When it comes to downhill, there is no substitute for a true DH bike.  This point came home when Vance and I traded bikes at 7 springs this weekend, his Perp for my Legend.  He was immediately comfortable on the Legend and could feel the benefits of the lower, slacker geometry.  I was not so happy on the Perp, despite it being set up with a Boxxer for full DH.  The rear end felt great, but the front was steep (66 vs 64 degrees) and I immediately felt this in the rock gardens and steeper rock drop to berm.  Vance can go fast on anything, but I reckon his bike might be holding him back a little bit!  (Hope he doesn't read this before Nationals!)

There are a load of cool new DH bikes out this year.  Would love to try Gwinn's new Yeti or a Carbon V10 just for fun.  Blenki's Lappierre is probably the most revolutionary design out in a while, would love to try that as well.  

That said, IMO if you have a 8" DH bike with proper geo, then you'd probably get more benefit out of getting your fork and shock setup and running perfectly (or upgrading them) than a new frame.  

Post edited 12:24 – 2010/07/14 by Pslide

Sean said:

Hey Pslide, how does the Legend jump?  Does it totally eat lips or is it at least a little bit poppy?  I feel like I want to move on to a full on DH frame but want some of the pop and liveliness that a "freeride" bike provides.  At the same time though I don't want something that gets hung up in rock gardens and sucks on the square edged obstacles.

Suspension setup is absolutley key, i agree with you there.  I've gotten to the point where I can get things dialed pretty quickly as long as the equipment is up to the task.

You answered your own question!  Legend jumps absolutely fine, but totally depends on the suspension setup.  If you are running an RC4, no problem, relatively poppy, may need to dial out some compression and rebound.  Running a CCDB?  You can make it stick to the ground like glue or jump like magic beans, all depends on the setup.

I spent a lot of time playing around with damping – particularly over-damping.  I've backed it right out and now have a more poppy bike, although not as poppy as some.  You need to come give my Legend a try…

My Legend is a large.  I'm about 180 lbs and run various springs up to a 400 on my CCDB.  If I change over to my RC4, I drop down to 300 due to the air preload, so depending on how much you weigh we could pop the 400 on the RC4 and that should handle quite a lot of beef!

The Scythe is probably a better jumper.  The single pivot is nice and predictable, the leverage curve is probably a bit more progressive in the end stroke, the wheelbase and chainstays are shorter and the BB higher – all making it more poppy.  So if you're just going to play and jump, and aren't worried about going fast, a Scythe would be good.  I'll see you at the bottom, ha ha!  

Sean said:

Alright so I'm 99% sure I'll be on a Legend next season.  All of my current parts will transfer over but I will need to grab a dual crown fork.  I could run it wil the Totem temporarily but I'm sure I'd want the extra travel sooner than later.  I wan tto do a super thorough review of it with tons of video media.  I want to shoot the bike at many angles using POV cameras so that viewers can see how the suspension reacts to different obstacles.  I want to take this review do a different level and make it stand out.  There are too many "rode the blinged out bike for a month, here's what I think" reviews out there.  I want to give the readers more quantitative information.

Just out of curiosity, most DH riders are interested in how bikes compare to each other.  Otherwise the review is pretty arbitrary.  So any plans to compare the Legend to other bikes out there?  If you knew some people with competitive bikes and similar builds, it would be awesome to do a comparo.  Let everyone swap bikes around and write down their impressions.