Mountain bike hardtails

Be prepared for a million and one different, and generally very valid, opinions! Your budget is going to play a part though.

Yesterday I gave away a good quality hard-tail to a friends son. I still have two quality dualies. I can't see myself ever riding a hard-tail again. Hard-tails are dead.

I agree, Fatboy's bike is awesome, that's A LOT of bike for not a lot. It's soooo tempting but my next N+1 will probably be of the road/cx variety

Do you have a preference on wheel size?

The general consensus seems to be that 29ers are the way to go for hard tails. If you search the forums you will see that the jury is still out on duallys.

Try to find a bike shop that will let you test ride or try some friends bikes.

'm presuming you'll want to use the same bike for a bit of weekend warrioring, so a dually would be better then and give you a more enjoyable ride, rather than a balls out racer. A hard tail with that budget would be a light weight piece of kit that is purely for racing. Saying that, I ride a HT, I give it loads of abuse at the weekend, do nearly 100k a week on the road and take it in the occasional xc race.

I recon it's all about what you're most comfortable on. Beg, (probably best not to steal) or borrow a couple of different bikes from mates or shops if you can and see what you prefer.

rigid.

The luddites' choice

If you're keen as mustard and have got what it takes, hardtail is where it's at. Duallys are for fattys and old folk. If I wanted a pogo stick I would just buy one. Hardtail all the way! haha

I hear they have awesome rear end traction, never break loose even, not on grass or anything

what's the quote? Hardtails are for fun-haters who don't like going fast?

After a long break from Riding(10 years) I bought a Giant XTC1 26r 2010. I often look at Dual suspension bikes and think i'd love to own one, however the more and longer i ride i am finding my skills and fitness are improving all the time, the New hard tails perform amazingly climbing and decending and i now look forward to every ride, I even dont mind being locked into cleats any more.
You'll get a great hard tail in your budget, but and average Dually

My oppinion, hope it helps

$3,500 will buy a very good dually and an awesome hardtail. BTW, go for the Anthem if it's for race/XC but the theme is the same, you'll get good gear for that money.

I've only been into MTB for less than a year, but my experiences may be relevant to you as I've gone up a steep learning curve in that time!

I can echo the advice above about starting on a hardtail - you learn better technique as they're less forgiving of sloppiness than a dually. They're also cheaper, so when you inevitably decide you want something else, you haven't wasted too much money!

However, I've now graduated to a dually, and my hardtail is getting less and less use, though I'll still keep it. I find the dually both faster as you can just ride thru bumpy suff, and more comfortable as I progress to longer and longer rides. In fact, after the 4 day Cape to Cape last year I promised my body I wouldn't put it through that kind of punishment again on a hardtail!

Just as another perspective on your budget - for that kind of money you could get one really good bike, or two 'decent' bikes. I know its sacrelidge on here to suggest that anything less than a carbon frame and XT/XTR will do, but I picked up a new Giant hardtail (XTC) and a dually (Trance) both with Deore/SLX/Fox components for $3k combined. That way you could have say, a 29er hardtail for the sheer fun of it and the shorter races, and a 26" dually for more technical trails and endurance races.

Just a thought...

Dave, correction: Red Hill equals 0mm travel AM bike terrritory. Amount of stuff ridden (downwards) last visit in order, by bike with travel. Nomad 160mm, Reign 152mm, Jones 0mm, Titus 120mm, 575 140mm, ......

The last 12 months I have been riding my AM hardtail with 160mm 36 TALAS over my dually.

Mine is a custom AM build but the standard XC Santa Cruz Chameleon build for $2150 new in Sydney with perhaps a TALAS upgrade to a 32mm 150mm travel fork (+$500 to $600) would make a very capable bike.

As many people have gone from XC hard tails to duallys over the last 6 years or so some of the perceived benefits have been in the vast improvements in fork design in the same time period.

I strapped a 2010 fork on my old hard tail from my dually and the bike was unrecognizeable even at 100mm travel. I then invested in the new SC hardtail frame that could make full use of a 100mm/130mm/160mm travel adjust fork and have a very capable and versatile bike.

The travel adjust also changes the head angle from XC snappiness to AM tending FR stability especially combined with the short chain stays on my frame.

Enjoying going as back to basics as my wrist cartlidge allows.

Can't beat a hard tail for challenge and fun. Itchy and Scratchy, Drop Zone etc all good. Enjoying learning to drop a hard tail.

Awaba XC and Ourimbah XC are fine on hard tail. You get good at unweighting the back end and riding the fork through corners. Even when I run fork at 100mm travel the 40mm of sag is fine.

You can also really pump the bike over terrain as you lose nothing in the back end.

Will be adding a dropper type post though soon as you really need use your legs a lot more and spend more time out of the saddle over techy stuff.

One of the previous posters hit the nail on the head; what do you want to do? And what are you looking to get out of it?

Maybe the point is that it's not the bike that you ride, but what you - as the rider - want?

Pardon the rest of the post, but there's something I want to get off my chest ...

I was out thrashing the trails - and me! - on my hardtail today, and couldn't help compare this with the ride a month ago on my dually. I believe the dually rates as an MTB, so don't think my opinions are jaundiced by different levels of bikes; e.g a gem of a HT vs a ... Huffy...? - for a dually.

HT is a Scott racing frame circa 2002, upgraded to XTR disk brakes, light XC wheels, ... light; 9 point something. Dually is a 2009 Jamis Dakar XCR Pro. Full carbon, XT and XTR, weighs 11 point something kgs ... Today's ride was Oaks, Ingar, Andersons, Oaks.

The analogy that came to mind while belting along was; do you want the puppy, or the adult dog? Most prefer one over the other.

Puppy; excitable, skittish, keen as mustard, flies off at top speed at the slightest prompting, a bit of a handful, but gives you a helluvu lot of feedback, goes and goes and just can't get enough. And give it the slightest hint that you're going out to play, it'll be ready to bound off with you on your next adventures. Does want some firm control and reigning in, otherwise it can get to be quite a handful. Of course, spending day after day after day with a puppy can be hard work.

A hardtail will feed every slight feature in the road back to you; it's raw, naked communication between rider, machine and environment. You'll thrill from the feedback and stimulation you're getting. Get a decent one, and it'll leap effortlessly in whatever direction you set it, and no matter what you're doing, it'll ask you to give it more, more, more ...! It's not 'easy' but the raw-edged excitement and satisfaction will leave you with a grin you just can't wipe.

Adult dog; settled, somewhat genteel, takes life at its own pace. Loyal and dutiful, but would rather sleep on the sofa (yours!) than bound around all day in the park. Don't be mistaken: It's very dutiful; always come when bidden, but not always the one urging you on. And, already trained, so will never try get the better of you. Even fetches your slippers at bedtime. A real advantage is that your adult dog won't wear you down. You can spend days on end with your chilled out mutt, and simply soak in the camaraderie, with the knowledge that a dog - any dog - is Man's best friend.

A dually is a more remote ride. Sure its comfortable, but that softer ride comes at the expense of the raw edginess you'd otherwise have. It'll climb, it'll descend, it'll go where you want it to go ... but ... it waits for you. It doesn't really notice if you're not as attentive as you should be. Poor choice of line? No worries - can handle that; just soak up some more of the feedback. So that you may as well be perched on a marshmallow. But you can perch on that marshmallow for days (literally) on end.

So ...

You want to have a ball each and every time you're out on a ride?

Or are you doing two, three, four, ... day races? Perfect for you to have a dually to expend your energy wisely, and ensure you get to the end.

Really boils down to you the potential owner; puppy or the grown-up dog?

Hope this helps.

I see Giant are recommended by quite a few people on this thread & I'm not surprised, they offer a great allround package & are excellent value, especially if you compare the price here to other countries where most of their competitors are cheaper Giant's tend to be comparable. (Btw. I don't ride one or sell them)

Personal choice at the moment if I had around $3K and wanted to ride XC & race this year:

Giant composite 29er hard tail. I never thought that I'd ever buy another hard tail again but with the big wheels the hardtail works really well. For $2500 (offers around at the moment) you get a bike ready to race out of the box, it's not too harsh due to the frame & big wheels and with a few updates (Presents) could be even better.

For a little less extreme the Anthem is a great & fast trail/race duallie and for more fun but still XC capable the Trance.

I also like the new Scott Spark & Specialized Camber but they aren't as much bike for the money.

For me though being a constant modifier the Niner Jet RDO carbon is next in line (When someone buys my kidney).