Description

The Tallboy has earned a loyal following amongst those who seek a go-to bike that will hold up to the relentless hammering of “power hour” hot laps or long days in the saddle harvesting the best trails. The highly-refined VPP™ suspension on the Tallboy combines pedaling efficiency and all-out bump-chomping prowess. If ever there was a gravity riders’ XC bike, the Tallboy is it. With kick-ass lower-link VPP suspension, a streamlined design, the typical Santa Cruz refinement, and rather radical geometry, the Tallboy is back to being a genre bending folk hero.

Chainstay length and seat angle are matched to the frame size (STA steepens and rear centre grows as frame size increases) so that every rider, no matter what height, gets the same balance of geometry and handling characteristics. Santa Cruz tailor stiffness for every size to make sure everyone gets the same ride quality. Bigger riders means greater stresses on larger frames, but that’s remedied with our size-specific frame stiffness tunes.

Some call 120mm “short travel”, others call it all the travel you’ll need. The Tallboy is an efficient XC pedaler with a geo and shock tune that make it way more capable than the millimeters suggest. It’s the kind of bike that makes you sprint while going up, along, over, or down due to the maximum efficiency of the VPP design and responsive, lightweight chassis. But because it shares the same engineering principles as our longest travel bikes, the progressive lower link-mounted shock feels equally at home doing cross-country as it does in extreme-country. Paired with a 130mm fork the new Tallboy becomes ever more appealing to riders who like to open it up.

Significantly reducing peak anti-squat (over previous generations of Tallboy) has improved both small bump sensitivity and square-edge compliance. And because anti-squat values trend with anti-rise, we were also to reduce the anti-rise to improve braking sensitivity.

The Tallboy has a lower starting ratio and increased ending ratio of the leverage curve. This makes ist really sensitive further into the travel and helps the bike ride higher in its stroke, producing a more responsive, snappy feel.

And the geometry, that’s a big part of what’s going on… Established theory suggests shorter travel bikes get ridden slower, therefore require steeper and more conservative geometries. In reality though, when was the last time you ever throttled back on a fun trail because you weren’t on a bigger bike? Caution to the wind and all that. So we’ve done the same here and mimicked our longer travel geometry to create a bike with a 65.5-degree head-angle, generous front center, and short offset fork. Something rarely seen on a bike of this ilk.

Flip-Chip
A flip chip is a simple mechanism that we use to adjust geometry and suspension feel on our bikes. The lower-link flip chip sits in the shock mount in lower-link. This one adjusts the BB height up and down and the Lo setting makes the suspension more progressive (more bottom out resistance). The axle flip chip changes the chainstay length by +/- 10mm. This provides a rider with choice about how the bike rides or fits. Shorter is more playful and lively, longer being more stable descending and more traction for climbing. It also means that taller riders can tailor the fit of the bike and create a balanced front-rear proportion. And one more thing, on the Tallboy, flip the axle chip to long if you want to fit your bike with 29×2.6 tires.

Santa Cruz carbon frame
We don’t just use carbon to build bikes because it looks cool and everyone is doing it. We pioneer advanced materials and production methods to build the most durable and high-performance bicycles because it’s the way to ensure that riders can just enjoy riding their bike. Our experience with carbon production allows us to build bikes that are extremely reliable.

We design, test and prototype our carbon technology in Santa Cruz, CA. Our carbon lab gives us the capacity to research carbon layup optimization that we can apply to our production frames, and research and test new manufacturing processes and techniques. Our production bikes are strong as hell, and we feel we have a good handle on our toolbox of materials, but having the carbon facility in the same building as the engineers allows us to push our understanding forward, and take advantage of emerging materials technology.

Our frames are manufactured in our exclusive factory (Skybox). We founded this manufacturing facility ourselves because we wanted to be able to control how our designs were produced, to ensure quality control, and to make sure the advancements we design remain proprietary to us (we’re not being selfish, it just sucks when someone peers over your shoulder to get the answer you’ve worked hard to figure out). What’s more, if something needs improving, we have the capacity and capability to change it, before it gets into your hands.

Recommended frame size

• XS: 142 – 155 cm
• S: 155 – 165 cm
• M: 165 – 175 cm
• L: 175 – 185 cm
• XL: 185 – 193 cm
• XXL: 193 – 201 cm

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