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I know what most people on here think of the Soul and I bet they are fantastic but my question is
How do people get on with riding a slack full sus one day and a fairly steep hardtail the next.?
I don't want to stop riding the Banshee Spitfire to get the best out of the Soul.
Anyone near Bristol got a 27.5 with 140 forks?
I flip between a slack 26" 160/140 FS and a Steep 100mm XC 29r, takes a couple of rides to settle back into each of them. Alternating in the week can be a little confusing if I'm not paying attention 🙂
I regularly swap between a full suss 29er and a fully rigid one . I mainly find my speed increases quite scarily when I'm on the full suss and I appreciate the trail difficulties more on the rigid.
Before I had a Spesh Pitch and a Ragley blue pig which would take about 30 minutes to gel back in.
I've got a Soul and a Rocket and if I'm riding both of them regularly than its easy to swap between them. If I ride one exclusively for a bit then it takes a little bit longer to get back into the swing of the other but pretty much by the end of the first chunk of singletrack it's all fine. I think the fact that they are reasonably different makes it easier to swap as they feel totally different to ride which acts as a reminder.
You might need to commit to a period of mostly riding the Soul to get there though.
I've never had a problem switching between the two, neither has the wife. Whilst both bikes could do exactly the same kind of riding we do tend to use them differently. Keeping the full suss for the longer day rides or the steeper technical stuff. The Soul being used for the shorter rides.
The Liteville feels like a truck and sluggish after riding the soul but I soon adapt, it's really not a problem.
Me, Soul and Liteville 301
The wife (ahsat) Soul and Banshee Spitfire
(All 26")
A timely thread having just got back from shredding lots of flat turns on the Soul. Took it out on Thursday for the first time in months, as I've been riding the Spitfire exclusively since March (just had to check on Strava - the trails got dry so quickly this spring!) It definitely took me an hour or so to get used to the huge difference in geometry but then I settled back into the groove and we started getting up to full speed.
What length forks do you have on your Soul? How does the build differ from the Spitfire?
Maybe I need something with geometry inbetween a soul and a switchback.
Any suggestions.?
SOAP - come and join mine and Chiefs Spitfire + Soul team!
Like p20 said, they are quite different, but I use them for different rides (though to be honest, both are great fun at the local trail centre). I just enjoy them differently. The spitfire is quicker in the rough stuff as it just eats rocks (as you know), but I enjoy the sprightliness of the Soul in comparison. I have 120 mm Rebas on the Soul and 150 mm Pikes on the Spitfire. I see the Spitfire as a mountain slayer and the Soul as a cross country and play bike (play for me does not involve large/any air time!). I personally dont notice a massive difference due to geometry (though its obviously there), but rather the difference between a full sus and a hardtail, and whichever hardtail it is isnt going to to change that. So stick with the posh steel!
I used to have an Orange Alpine along with my BFe (same geo as Soul) and if anything it made me appreciate the qualities of each bike more. Getting back on the BFe was great, it felt really light and nimble, easy to manual and whiz about on, compared to the lumbering oafishness of the Alipine. It felt great at speed, but I hated it on anything vaguely flat or uphill, hence it was voted out of the shed.