Who’s kept their acoustic bike and why?

[Quinterly]

No question I am staying acoustic on the road. The benefits of the e-bike on the mountain are of little utility to me on pavement and the fitness aspects of an e-mtb are lost on an e-bike on the road (to me).

However, I don't see myself going back to an acoustic on the trails with the possible exception of a lift access bike park.

 

[cozzy]

The sc bronson got sold. Ive kept my dh bike as I love riding it, although there haven't been any uplifts really this year to speak of.
To be honest the kenevo is the same speed as the dh bike when ive done some timing.
Im sure its my limit ive reached though rather than either bike ?
Im definitely over pedalling a bike uphill.

 

[papab]

Kept it. I still ride both.

 

[cole_inman]

Kept my Ripmo AF for group rides about once a week where everyone is acoustic, although on those I do sometimes take the Sight VLT our and do a lap before the ride then chill in eco for the group ride. I for sure see myself riding the Ripmo at lift access parks and shuttle days. Considering something longer travel than the Ripmo as a more of a dh only bike (but still a trail bike) and use the Norco for everything. The Norco has been really hard on the rear end (loose spokes, broken axle, broken cassette body, broken deraileur) so it’s been great to have backup parts to pull off my acoustic!

 

[AdrianJW]

Sold mine a year after buying my EMTB when I realised that I hadn’t ridden it once since.

 

[R120]

I have various bikes that I use for different things - for MTB I pretty much solely ride the EMTB, but recently I have got heavily back into riding pump tracks and have spent a lot of time on my DJ bike as a result. Have a couple of “hybrid” type bikes that I use a fiat but around town or when out with the kids too

 

[Richwafta]

Love my Levo SL, but so glad I kept the anologue hard tail, as I was finding that a couple of my riding buddies were starting to make excuses for not riding with my new bike. All good now when I turn up on the HT

 

[AlexEMTB]

Had a 5010, got the Levo SL and after a bit, didn't use the 5010 anymore so I sold it. Now I want a second ebike!

 

[Forever Wild]

I still enjoy riding both of my Stumpjumpers. Here’s one of them at a local single track.

 

[SiDobsFig]

I have to make myself ride mine, and my goal is to ride it one day a week. Some weeks twice, but more likely not at all..... However having it there keeps me honest and gives me a basis in reality. Plus it's an awesome bike. View attachment 37775

 

[SiDobsFig]

I have a Specialised Enduro (2014) which I go out in the Forest Of Dean (UK) with the Dogs.Their pads get stripped if they follow me on the E-Bike during a long ride when it's dry. Forest of Dean (UK) therefore not often. Actually used some dry lube this year for the first time ever ;-). I have a White 901 Hardtail that I ride when I go out with my Wife and the dogs so she can tell her bloke to get his fat arse moving when going up fire tracks when on her e-bike. She is very encouraging.

I tend to ride the Hardtail more when I want to ride Local bridleways, Gravel tracks interlaced with roads. It is a great ride and really makes me concentrate on my line choice.

I was thinking of selling the Specialised but after thinking about the Mods I made to it. Hope Wheel set. Hope BB. Hope Headset as the Californian one didn't tend to last over two months with wet grit and mud acting as a lapping paste, so I decided to keep it as I am lucky enough to have the room.

 

[RocketMagnet]

I kept my normal bike to ride with my non E-bike M8s, do uplift days, some of my "rides" are hike a bike and a nightmare carrying a 23Kg bike up tough massive steep scrambles etc. Also to maintain my drive for fitness.. You don't need to maintain a high fitness level for your Ebike so for me the incentive has gone for maintaining the fitness level to ride a normal bike.

I was always up the front or at the front with my m8's but since getting my E-bike I'm dead last on my normal bike now ..so for me personally I'm going to lay of the E-bike and concentrate on regaining my fitness on my normal bike. Loads of fun the E-bike but if you ride normal bikes IMO you'll probably loose fitness....

As others have said above there is very little to go wrong on a normal bike that has anything more than next day delivery lead times to fix or same day at your LBS.

Also sometimes it nice to getting out for a full days riding with your m8's with a little less faff.

 

[Dirtnvert]

Be nice to see pics of these acoustic bikes. That may be all we'll have left soon/fingers crossed if emtb durability improves.
My new acoustic should arrive next week as i just got the tracking # late yesterday. Bored of lapping the bike park with the blown motor emtb. Past time to just get out and away in the mountains

 

[Flatslide]

It's interesting the number of comments around e-mtb durability/reliability. As an obviously biased RM owner, these issues so far have been a non-event with the PowerPlay. The repeating issue for me has been speed sensor failures, but since making my own using a German manufactured reed switch ($12nzd), the problem seems to have been sorted-or at least much improved.

 

[Zed]

This is a subject near and dear to my heart right now.

For me, bike choice changes over time. I bought a 2018 Levo and fell in love with eMtb completely. Sold my acoustic bikes. 18 months later I just found I was getting bored. Then my life fell apart in unrelated ways and I sold the Levo.

Wasn't long before I realised I needed riding back in my life (stress managment, unhappiness) so got an acoustic bike. It was decent travel (Reign) and I was pretty unfit and I just didn't enjoy winching up for descents - and it was boring on lesser trails. So I sold it and got another ebike - Commencal Meta Power 29 (140mm coil). I've been riding that for a few months, and now I'm back to bored. For my local trails, this bike is just too much. It eats up the trails and there's really only one challenge which is speed. But I'm at the point where more speed means putting my balls on the line and I'm just not into it, there's no prize money here. So I'm kind of just rinse and repeat flying around what essentially are technical XC trails, riding all the trails in about 1:15 where on an acoustic bike it's tough to do all the trails in a session. A factor here may well be that the ebike just isn't playful. Playing on the trails is not really a thing. Just going fast is. And I used to think that was everything.

Right now I have Specialized Fuse 29 on order which I get hopefully next week, a new hardtail. It will be very different. I will get on it and pedaling up hills will suck, for sure. But I just want to get back to having a sense of accomplishment, to having a challenge to rise to - and most of all to just WANT to get out on the bike.

The ebike is great for winching up and doing descents. But I get bored of it. I go out, winch up a few times and I'm kind of uninterested long before the battery is dead. Which is weird, and not something I'd ever have thought I'd say - but it's where I'm at.

It has taken a long time to get to this point - not weeks or months but years. I feel like I've been missing the point of riding. Riding for me needs to be about more than just going flat out. I think Strava has been a really negative thing for my riding, and I got into that about 5 years ago (hadn't been riding long at that point, and I'm 44). A long time ago I got to the point where every ride I'm trying to get faster segment times. There are times I'm out for an hour and realise I haven't even looked around at the forest. I'm just laser focused on speed. But there are no podiums waiting.

Back on a hardtail then, making my local trails bumpy and more difficult to ride. Having to actually carry more water. I'll start doing gentler rides at first - keeping the intensity down, the rides frequent and work on my fitness. I'll keep the ebike for the forseeable future because maybe I'm just mental and will miss it and this is all a bad idea. There's only one way to find out.

I'm glad that segment times aren't on Strava anymore. All I have to do is NOT pay for a subscription and that unwanted drive for times is getting removed from my brain.

I feel like I'm either over the ebike - or over riding. God I hope it's not the latter.

 

[Endoguru]

Ok, so I’m relatively new to ebikes but not MTB in general, have been riding for 10 years plus.
Up until I bought my Trek Rail a month or so back, I’d be riding a Santa Cruz Hightower LT. Amazing bike, can’t fault it.
However, I’m not sure how much use it’s going to get as I’d much rather take out the ebike. Wondering whether to sell it on whilst the market for 2nd hand bikes is strong.
So my question is, who’s kept their acoustic bike alongside their ebike and if so, why?

I’m on my second YT Decoy. I am currently building a 2020 Specialized Enduro for the bike parks and traveling. I recently took a trip to see my grandkids and ride with my son in law and you quickly find out traveling on a plane with an Ebike is a huge problem. I had to buy a second battery from YT and have it shipped to my daughter so it would be there when I arrived. Then getting it shipped to my house after the trip was a no go. Both UPS and FedEx assured me it would be no problem to ship the battery by itself. They lied. Therefore I am building the Enduro for travel purposes.

 

[Viper9559]

Ok, so I’m relatively new to ebikes but not MTB in general, have been riding for 10 years plus.
Up until I bought my Trek Rail a month or so back, I’d be riding a Santa Cruz Hightower LT. Amazing bike, can’t fault it.
However, I’m not sure how much use it’s going to get as I’d much rather take out the ebike. Wondering whether to sell it on whilst the market for 2nd hand bikes is strong.
So my question is, who’s kept their acoustic bike alongside their ebike and if so, why?

I have 5 acoustics and 2 Ebikes. I keep mine because I ride them all depending on the adventure (Sworks Levo, DIY Ebike, RaleighTouring, Salsa Cutthroat, Specialized Fatbike, Santa Cruz Hightower, Bianchi roadbike). I ride the Sworks Levo the least of all my bikes.

 

[eTrax]

Kept and in fact building up another lunger now.
It depends on who I ride with and how much time I have. I like to balance out 3-4 lunger rides and fill in off days with a solid power hour on the ebike.

Great times.

 

[brizi2003]

Ok, so I’m relatively new to ebikes but not MTB in general, have been riding for 10 years plus.
Up until I bought my Trek Rail a month or so back, I’d be riding a Santa Cruz Hightower LT. Amazing bike, can’t fault it.
However, I’m not sure how much use it’s going to get as I’d much rather take out the ebike. Wondering whether to sell it on whilst the market for 2nd hand bikes is strong.
So my question is, who’s kept their acoustic bike alongside their ebike and if so, why?

My 10 penny worth. When I bought my EMTB I immediately sold my old bike as I figured I'd never ride it again since the new EMTB did everything I wanted it too and generally faster or for longer or when I was tired too! However, I bought another analogue bike once the 2nd warranty claim went in, so I would still have something to ride when the EMTB was in for warranty! Funny thing is though it doesn't get ridden that often when the EMTB is working. I've done 2500 miles on the EMTB and only 1000 miles on the analogue hardtail in the same timeframe. It is nice to have different bikes but at the end of the day I would be happy with only one EMTB if it were more reliable.

 

[GrandPaBrogan]

I've kept this 2006 dinosaur for nostalgia: (wistful affection for a period in the past).

The bike itself (long been discontinued) only had a small production run, but gained respectable results in our local DH race circuit in the mid-2000s. It has a compounded and sequential rear travel of 180mm (8 inches) with an S-shaped rearward axle path that gave it its unique qualities.
(A good friend of mine has two of these bikes one of which is the 9 inch travel version (228mm rear travel) with Boxxer twin crown forks... and is piecing together a third one from parts he'd been scrounging around from all over. Not many of them around. He's a bit of a bike collector and has fully restored rare Raleigh Chopper kiddie bikes too!)

The fork is also discontinued vintage (2007-2014) a single crown Rockshox Totem Solo-Air DH with 40mm stanchions and 180mm travel. The steerer tube is a straight onepointfive that requires a corresponding proprietary onepointfive head tube and matching stem.

 

[Dirtnvert]

I've kept this 2006 dinosaur for nostalgia: (wistful affection for a period in the past).

The bike itself (long been discontinued) only had a small production run, but gained respectable results in our local DH race circuit in the mid-2000s. It has a compounded and sequential rear travel of 180mm (8 inches) with an S-shaped rearward axle path that gave it its unique qualities.
(A good friend of mine has two of these bikes in the 9 inch travel version (228mm rear travel) with Boxxer twin crown forks... and is piecing together a third one from parts he'd been scrounging around from all over. Not many of them around. He's a bit of a bike collector and has fully restored a couple of rare Raleigh Chopper bikes too!)

The fork is also discontinued vintage (2007-2014) a single crown Rockshox Totem Solo-Air DH with 40mm stanchions and 180mm travel. The steerer tube is a straight onepointfive that requires a corresponding proprietary onepointfive head tube and matching stem.

View attachment 38325

That bikes a keeper. Vaguely remember it after i saw the 2 rear shocks. Makes me wonder what could be tweaked on that with modern suspension and offset headsets. Bb doesnt even look sky high. The new rock shox zeb has a 1.5 option too. Looks like emtb will be bringing 1.5 back. That totem could grow in value

 

[Bigtuna00]

I sold my 2016 Stumpjumper FSR Expert 29 simply because I couldn't justify owning multiple bikes costing multiple $1000's. Or so I thought

Prior to trying an e-bike I was at a crossroads: either get an e-bike, which at the time meant something well over 50 lbs; or get a lightweight trail/long travel cross country bike. I was fed up with the fact that my $6000 stumpy, with several $1000's in upgrades, weighed 30 lbs. The trails I have access to just aren't gnarly enough for that much travel. Anyway I rode a demo Levo and rest was history. I did 3 rides in 24 hours and never had more fun!

Now it's a couple of years later and I recently bought a 2020 Scott Spark RC Team to have as a backup:

1. Edit: it was only $3500
2. Because my Levo motor was on it's way out, so I wanted to have something to ride during the warranty downtime (which turned out to be not very long)
3. For riding with my kids (7 and 9 years old); the Levo with assist turned off sucks. With assist turned on it's not very fair to them!

I have no illusions, or desire to ride the acoustic if my Levo is in working order. I don't feel "bad" or "guilty" for riding the Levo all the time, it's seriously transformed my riding (I ride longer, harder, and healthier). With that being said, a 25lb 100mm travel XC acoustic is WAY more fun that it has any right to be. It's a nice callback to my conundrum prior to buying the Levo. Had I gone the other route and bought this kind of bike I think I still would have been pretty happy.

 

[GrandPaBrogan]

That bikes a keeper. Vaguely remember it after i saw the 2 rear shocks. Makes me wonder what could be tweaked on that with modern suspension and offset headsets. Bb doesnt even look sky high. The new rock shox zeb has a 1.5 option too. Looks like emtb will be bringing 1.5 back. That totem could grow in value

It's already infinitely tweakable... not many people understood it at the time. The rear end pedals like a hard tail without the need for shocks with hydraulic damper threshold platforms. But when not being pedalled, it's a bottomless pit of plushness. The behaviour (progressive or linear and everything in between) and its 'locking' threshold is tuned-in by playing with the air-pressure differences between the two air shocks. All long travel DH and All-Mountain rigs during this time were exclusively coil... so it was a bit of a front-runner for using air shocks at the rear.

It was also criticised by some to have a rather steepish head angle for a DH rig. This again was misinterpreted because the experts were comparing specs against conventional suspension designs. The ultra plush rear set-up sags much deeper than usual, so when the rider is on it, the back end drops... and due to a really short chainstay (rear bias centre of gravity), the front fork sag doesn't drop as much. When in use, the effective head angle is slacker that what it appears to be. Besides using the rear setup to tune the head angle, it can be changed (increased) by installing a longer travel Boxxer DH fork if need be.

I'm afraid this particular Totem belongs to the history books... it's for a 26" wheel. Although you might notice a slight "mullet" between the front and rear 26" wheels. That was achieved by a deliberate variation in tyre sizes.

.

 

[Dirtnvert]

It's already infinitely tweakable... not many people understood it at the time. The rear end pedals like a hard tail without the need for shocks with hydraulic damper threshold platforms. But when not being pedalled, it's a bottomless pit of plushness. The behaviour (progressive or linear and everything in between) and its 'locking' threshold is tuned-in by playing with the air-pressure differences between the two air shocks. All long travel DH and All-Mountain rigs during this time were exclusively coil... so it was a bit of a front-runner for using air shocks at the rear.

It was also criticised by some to have a rather steepish head angle for a DH rig. This again was misinterpreted because the experts were comparing specs against conventional suspension designs. The ultra plush rear set-up sags much deeper than usual, so when the rider is on it, the back end drops... and due to a really short chainstay (rear bias centre of gravity), the front fork sag doesn't drop as much. When in use, the effective head angle is slacker that what it appears to be. Besides using the rear setup to tune the head angle, it can be changed (increased) by installing a longer travel Boxxer DH fork if need be.

I'm afraid this particular Totem belongs to the history books... it's for a 26" wheel. Although you might notice a slight "mullet" between the front and rear 26" wheels. That was achieved by a deliberate variation in tyre sizes.

.

Haa thats awesome. Build quality looks amazing too

 

[#lazy]

Getting rid of this would be a criminal act ?

Ps. It don’t t like being called acoustic either !

 

[Gary]

 

[StuE]

I bought my Esommet because I was struggling to keep up on group rides, started riding more at the start of lockdown (5 or 6 times a week ) and now hardly use the ebike.

 

[Pivot]

I have a Merida Big Nine 500, which is currently going through a major service, incl new chain and cassette, etc. It’s a hard tail so very good on the road, and I will keep it to complement my eMTB.

The Ducati eMTB is a primarily off-reader for riding in the woods.

Both are great cycles, for slightly diff application and will serve me well for the next few seasons.

 

[Pivot]

PS. Why do you call it acoustic bike?

Is it a play on words, some derivative of acoustic vs electric guitar?

 

[backcountry00]

Getting rid of this would be a criminal act ?

View attachment 38351
Ps. It don’t t like being called acoustic either !

Nice bike ?
I don’t understand why ‘acoustic’ has caught on, I can understand ‘analogue’ but acoustic just makes me think of guitars.