[Closed] New Soul from Cotic

It's rather lovely 🙂

Loving the mercury finish

I'm on the mailing list. I got nada. 🙁

(Post up some pics, you buggers...)

Looks great 8)

Mercury looks stunning.

It's rather long and rather shiny!

I'm on the mailing list (or so I thought) and also missing an email. 🙁
What colours does it come in? (please say black)

That is quite a pretty bike and I'm liking the new geometry.

Slight hijack: What's happening about the Solaris?

It's lovely isn't it? I can't believe they've made it a fatbike.

I do like the mercury colour too, and no [b]jekkyl[/b] there is no black.

I think the new Solaris is next if Sam (demo man) is to be believed.

Looks good with the magenta

I like it... but the 148 backend and ISCG mounts take something away from its character for me. (Yes, that is completely irrational, it's just a bike.)

It's clever where they've hidden all of the batteries in the frame, is it still a steel frame though if its essentially just one big battery?

Didnt think they'd go down that route for such a small company

😆

Yes, the battery is cool.

Not sure about the integrated coffee machine and bacon sarny maker.

😯

I'm not convinced by the return to 27.2 seatpost and 1 1/8 headset!

Anybody want to buy a kidney or two? 'Mercury' looks good and finally it's got ISCG tabs! Boost only though 🙁

9 x 3 speed only, nice.

Those canti mounts will be useful though.

Might have to get a ride on one.
Nice blue, but for me the colours peaked a few years ago with the gloss green and orange frames.

Press-fit bottom bracket, finally!

I'm not convinced by the return to 27.2 seatpost and 1 1/8 headset!

9 x 3 speed only, nice.

lol, these are all things which would make it more attractive to me. 😛
Someone stick a pic up .

Press-fit bottom bracket, finally!

It's funny, of all the comments that one made me laugh most!

Someone stick a pic up .

[img] [/img]

You are all horrible people. Especially the press-fit bloke. 🙂

It's clever where they've hidden all of the batteries in the frame, is it still a steel frame though if its essentially just one big battery?

Didnt think they'd go down that route for such a small company

Yup the trails really do come alive as if you sit down you get a massive shock to the testicles

Ah damn. I really want on of those.

Surprised they've gone carbon after all these years, but you can't argue with the weight saving.

Shame it's not black.
Might have finally defected from my late-Pre-CEN Soul if it was.

Shiney looks alright though.

[i]if you sit down you get a massive shock to the testicles [/i]

Buster Gonad rides full sus - massive testicles to the shock.

[img] [/img]

... but seriously, anyone got a sneaky newsletter archive link? I just joined the mailing list, but presume i've missed this one now..

Launch vid [url=

Sweet jumps!

I shouldn't break the embargo but I can let you know that they've been experimenting with [url= http://www.instructables.com/id/Transforming-Bicycle-Tall-Bike-to-Chopper-Bike/ ]new[/url] geometry.

I thought they'd have kept it under a grand but I suppose building that is always going to cost a lot ore than just steel tubes

Can someone post a pic or info for us mere mortals?

I rode my old Bfe for four years. I loved it but I was desperate to get back on full suspension. So I've spent a small fortune building one and I'm perfectly happy with it.

Then the new Bfe comes out and looks mint. I keep thinking of ways to justify building one.

Now this! Never wanted a Soul before, the Bfe was the right choice for me, but this one is stunning. Mercury and magenta please.

Gonna do some sums.....

Horrible colour choices 😳 I'm out 🙄

Just had a butcher's at the geometry. Really good.

This bodes very well for the next versions of the Solaris and the 29er FS bikes.

http: link to email pls

Silver with pink. Silver with Orange or Orange with blue.
Meh.

http: link to email pls

Me too pls

Why’d they drop 853 though 🙁

Just get yourselves on the Cotic email list, it's easy to subscribe

Tried. It’s down.

[img] [/img]

[img] [/img]

[img] [/img]

Wow! Looks like the solarisMAX update could be exciting (so long as they design tubes profiles and stiffness for 29" not overweight 27).

plus one - Member

Horrible colour choices

You are measurably wrong

The shock of the new. It looks comedically long and slack but will look normal soon I imagine as others catch up

looks ****ing awful with that dinner plate out the back, makes it look back heavy. needs a couple more cables too 🙄

What a mess the cable routing is. Honest to goodness. Sort it out.

I love the little nubbly mech hanger.

[img] [/img]

Numbers?

I love the little nubbly mech hanger.

It's a pretty standard [url= https://www.syntace.com/index.cfm?pid=1&pk=1314 ]Syntace X-12[/url] hanger.

Numbers?

[url=

6, 9[/url]

Big Cotic fanboy here. I like the mercury finish, but the blingy gold components really are a bit naff

I just assumed that was Hope orange

It's a pretty standard Syntace X-12 hanger.

the introduction of this new standard has completely passed me by, this is great however. This means the end of traditonal mech hangers specific to each frame? and the matching rip off prices!

dumbbot - Member

Numbers?

1x specific then?

1x specific then?

OK, I'm still a little shocked as I expected it to be more 'conventional' than the new BFe. Now it's actually even more extreme in terms of length/reach. But Cy know's what he's doing, so...

...can anybody explain to me the rationale behind giving the "more agile/less high-speed/less gravity oriented" brother of the BFe an even longer front end?

Pretty sure it still has the cable routing to take a side swing front mech.

Pretty sure it states on the website that it's side swing compatible...

Or you can [url= ]bodge[/url] a [url= ]DM derailleur[/url] with a cable stop if you really need that triple...

Silver colour looks great

hock - Member
...can anybody explain to me the rationale behind giving the "more agile/less high-speed/less gravity oriented" brother of the BFe an even longer front end?

Possibly covered here...

Cy - Mr Cotic
17 years ago I had a steel hardtail with big forks, short stem, risers bars, and a disc brake on the front. It rode nicely enough, but it didn't fit me very well, I couldn't get a rear disc brake or big tyre in there, and I kept tipping off the back on climbs because of the fork. I wanted something with that steel ride and toughness, but that was progressive and forward looking. I wanted to fit the cool, high performance parts from my DH bike like disc brakes front and rear, big bars and great tyres. No one was doing anything like that at the time, so I took my steel rule and angle finder out and measured up the old bike. I drew it out on CAD and then figured out how to solve all the problems I had. I needed a much longer top tube and correct seat angle, so I could run a shorter stem (a stubby 90mm!) and still get in a good position without tipping off the back on steep climbs. I needed a slighter slacker head angle to stop the steering being too much of a handful. I needed wider stays for big tyres, and strength for even longer forks if I wanted them (a dizzying 125mm travel). I wanted it slightly stiffer along the length of the bike for confidence, without ruining the ride feel, or that beautiful ability of steel to breathe with the trail when the going got rough. Reynolds 853 gave me this incredibly strong material to work with in larger diameters and thinner walls to get exactly what I wanted. I designed my dream bike. That bike was the original Soul. Launched in 2003, it caught the imagination of a generation of riders, when hardtails were seeing a resurgence. Here was a bike that was light and lively, yet could be thrashed just like the heavy, dead feeling 'freeride' hardtails available at the time. It won tests. It won awards. When in one test it out scored a full suspension bike because the testers felt more confident on the Soul, they had seen just what we had - geometry was key.
Through four iterations I tried to maintain the forward looking perspective. By the time 2008 came around, 140mm forks were becoming a viable option. We tested some different geometries, but still came back to the original layout having what we felt was the best balance for what we wanted. The new EN safety tests then became law. This caused quite a lot of panic in the industry, particularly on the steel side of things as the new tests promptly snapped head tubes off frames with previously unblemished safety records - Soul included. I'm a big fan of moving to proper product testing; I was experienced with it from my previous life in the rail industry, so EN (EuroNorm - pan European safety standards like the old British Standards) documents weren't that much of a surprise to me. So whilst others made their steel frames dull and heavy, I got the stress analysis software fired up, and set myself the challenge of making a 140mm EN compatible Soul which was no heavier than the original. The bike grew gussets, subtle but important weld details around the head tube, and a certain Mr Bontrager sent me a 5 page email about something called ductile weld pool dilution. I wanted a little more lateral stiffness from the top tube, but also realised this was where a lot of vertical compliance comes from. And keeping with my weight mantra, I didn't want to increase the tube size. So I made it load dedicated, flat oval for lateral stiffness and vertical compliance. Ovalform was born and continues across our bikes to this day. Despite my efforts, the additional work still added weight, so I adopted our superlight dropouts which until thru axle, featured across all our hardtails. I missed my target, but only by 15 grams! The second generation Soul was launched for 2009.

Fast forward three years and taper steerer forks and dropper posts are becoming essential items. Time for Gen3. Keeping with that original progressive spirit, I have always seen our bikes as forward looking, despite using what some people consider to be anachronistic material. Referencing the learned Mr B again, I didn't buy a Bontrager in the mid-90s despite wanting one soooooooooooooooo much because Keith doggedly stuck with 1" headsets in a time of industry wide use of 1 1/8". Whilst I always try and look objectively at new ideas and 'standards' which proliferate in our industry, there is also a need to balance grumpy-engineer "the current thing just works" with simple kit availability. Tapered forks were everywhere, and did seem to offer advantages. Dropper posts simply weren't going to happen in 27.2mm diameter, so a bigger seat tube was needed. Again, weight was a consideration: We already had a custom designed oversized seat tube, which I had designed, tooled up for and been using on the BFe since 2005. It used modified down tubes before anyone else in steel was doing 34.9mm seat tubes. A lighter weight 853 version was conceived which was stiffer and lighter than the 28.6mm tube it replaced, with 31.6mm seatpost size for all the dropper posts. The tapered head tube could have easily been achieved with a straight 44mm head tube, but on the Soul - with its still slim top tube - it looks weird, and would add weight. Although much more expensive, I designed our tapering design which is 30% lighter than the straight 44mm tubes, and looks better on the Soul (and Flare!) too.
The 4th iteration of the Soul was a much more holistic affair, as the almost overnight switch to 27.5" wheels in the industry meant needing to a long, hard, look at the original geometry and how it might be adapted. With stems now coming back to 60-80mm, there needed to be some more length in the frame, but with the extra length of the rear end for the bigger wheels, the weight balance would still be good. Most people were running 120mm forks, so the bike was optimised around these. We still liked the position of our layback seatposts from the original Soul, but droppers with their inline clamps had cramped up the position somewhat. By laying back the seat angle a little it gave us the position and the space was wanted and OFI Geometry was born.

But how fast things change. As more people were tending towards longer forks I realised that the slacker seat angle of the OFI Geometry limited the bikes ability to work across a range of forks really effectively. Also, as we have brought in the droplink bikes with their even longer reach, slacker angles and shorter stems. We have realised that these attributes aren't a barrier to having fun on tight, twisty singletrack as well as bombing down hills. Unlike in 2000 when I wanted bits from my DH bike on my trail hardtail, now it's our enduro bikes that are making us want to cross pollinate the range. It was time to grab that progressive spirit of the original bike again, be brave, be open minded, and try some new ideas. Earlier this year we hacked the front end off a Soul275 and our friends at 18 Bikes welded on a radically different geometry front end. We increased the length to the point where most riders would need a 35mm stem, and then used anglesets to find the balance point on the head angle where you would get the confidence you need in the front end, with nice crisp turn in for the singletrack, without making it over responsive and nervous. Paul did most of the development work and found that 67 was the magic number. We looked to the future in terms of tyre technology, and moved our Super Clearance stays across from the SolarisMAX so that the next generation of 27.5 x 2.6" tyres will fit. We optimised around 120mm forks again, but using the extra space in the long frame, we brought the seat angle forward a little again. Not super steep - we aren't a fan of these mega steep seat angle which seem to have proliferated recently - but back to a nice neutral 73 deg which, with an inline clamp seatpost, will give you plenty of scope to get your weight right without overloading your wrists. The longer frame necessitated an increase in stiffness, so the top tube is finally that next size up, but it's lighter and more efficient than making the original size thicker, and it's shaped uniquely for Cotic so that it still marries up to our lovely light tapered head tube. The final new feature is something I wasn't sure about, given my slight obsessive tendencies towards the Souls' weight - an ISCG05 mounting. The Soul has one for the first time, because with the vast majority of people using 1x drivetrains, and the super neat chainguides now available from the likes of One Up, the time had come to add this feature. Forward looking, but considered.

I already have a Rocket and a BFe and REALLY don't need another hardtail, but those pictures have got me thinking about saving up anyway...

Always wanted a 26er Soul but have struggled over the years to get a decent second hand frame in my size now they have discontinued them. This new one doesn't appeal to me at all. To me the Soul was always a jack of all trades, master of none, do-it-all XC / trail bike. This new one looks like its trying to go after the "long and slack" crew while losing some of the XC efficiency.

Efficiency? It's still a 120mm hardtail. Thing is, the changes don't necessarily make for a less good allrounder. For years I had a ragley ti as my number one bike and at the time everyone thought that sort of bike is just for ragging down hills and riding flat out, but I did everything on it- XC racing, downhill racing... And tbh that was at about the same time as the Soul started to feel a bit old hat.

I'll reserve judgement til I ride it tbh but I doubt it's lost any Soulness.

I sold my 26 Soul last week, and was hanging off on replacement partly to see this. I actually ordered a Bird Zero TR a few days ago. Opened the Cotic mail this morning, read it in detail and am reassured with my Bird purchase. To me, the Soul seems just a little too long and different, but I guess it’s all down to how it rides.

colournoise - Member
Possibly covered here...

Thanks!

Well, it says, that they managed to "find the balance point on the head angle where you would get the confidence you need in the front end, with [u]nice crisp turn in for the singletrack[/u], without making it over responsive and nervous. (...) 67 was the magic number.”

Which underlines that they know what they’re doing. But I would like to understand it, too. 😉

To me, the Soul seems just a little too long and different

It's shorter reach than your Zero TR!

I'm in the process of surrendering to inevitability. I really don't need yet another hardtail though...

It's shorter reach than your Zero TR!

I really like them I think they look great. I’m with Northwind on this as well, somehow suggesting that if something is long it’s not efficient seems bizarre to me. I’d rather do 30 miles more stretched out than sit with a short top tube. If I was jumping maybe not.

I'm in the process of [b]surrendering to inevitability.[/b] I really don't need yet another hardtail though...

Love that 🙂

I started out looking at Escapde’s (to get something different and more suited to my from-the-door riding than BFe/Covert) then demoed a Solaris-Max and thought that would be my next bike. Now this !

I quite like it but I'm holding out for the new Solaris. I want a mile muncher as much as a woodsy carver.

Then again, bikepacking is a thing so I may not be able to wait and may end up with a Krampus before Cy does the needful 😉

I don't know what it is, maybe it's a large frame & only 650b wheels, but it looks all out of proportion.

Numbers?

Yeah you know like price, reach, weight? Those sort of useful numbers.

But thanks, now I'm going to have that bloody Sesame Street song in my head all day.

I also thought that it does look rather gate-like, I hope that's an XL frame.

I'd like to understand Cy's process for the colour selection.

I'm sure that's a large because they don't make an XL and the medium's seat tube is only 16.7" long. It's basically the same weight as the old one, steeper seat angle, slacker head angle and longer reach.