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It occured to me the other day, with the constant tweeking of angles back and forth, but constantly constrained within the realms of being actually rideable, are there any Hardtail frames that are effectively the same bike, in terms of geometry?
Lets ignore the subtleties of tube selection, wall thickness etc etc for now.
I wonder if you went and dropped £900 on a nice new Pace RC429 frame, are you effecitvely buying a... Ragley Big wig, or Cotic Soul (picking frames out of thin air, ive not looked at the geometry), with a different paint job?
How different can they get, without ending up like PinkBike's grim donut?
This can help you compare: https://geometrygeeks.bike
Simple answer is that they vary just as much as full sus bike geom varies.
Even the same model from the same brand will often change between model years (or revisions).
Make sure you are comparing like with like (ie both static or both sagged same amount).
I know that some On One & Kona published data is incorrect so I wouldn't put too much thought into it.
In my opinion the 4 key things (for a given wheel size) are:
Reach. Head angle. BB drop. Chainstay length.
Everything else is either defined by these numbers or has enough adjustability in various bolt on components to adjust (within the realms of normal).
Of course theres some ambiguity, eg reach defined as going to the top of the headtube, so a longer headtube means that the bottom of the headtube is further horizontally from the BB