Have you ever wished for a steeper seat angle, but weren't able to slide your seat far enough forward to achieve this? Fair Bicycle has come up with a solution - the Drop Best Reverb Offset Saddle Clamp. The two-man European team behind this brand, Marco Giarrana and Valetin Wendel, are multi-discipline mountain bikers who have a heavy belief in eco-friendly and fair trade business practices.
Right now, the clamps are only offered for Rock Shox Reverbs, but I would expect the idea to spark enough interest that Fair Bicycle will soon branch out to other brands of posts. The 27mm offset clamp can change the virtual seat tube angle by 2º and allows for independent adjustment of the saddle position and angle.
In the positive offset position, the Drop Best will bring a steeper, new school seat tube angle to older bikes that might suffer from being too relaxed. If you've had the chance to jump on a bike with modern geometry, you know that a steeper seat tube angle makes for a much more comfortable climbing position. That can aid in keeping the front wheel on the ground on tricky climbs, too.
Fair Bicycle says that the negative offset could help strike a balance for some new bikes with extremely steep STAs. Extra large frames with seat tube angles of 77º or steeper can make the seated position much shorter in comparison to the reach measurement or standing position. What this means is Fair Bicycles' Drop Best could help tall riders find more room while pedalling seated.
The clamps are machined in Switzerland from 7075 aluminum and use 12.9 and 10.9 grade USA made bolts. The system has been independently tested in Germany to meet ISO MTB standards. The stock Reverb rail clamps and hardware weighs 74 grams, while the Drop Best comes in at at 125 grams. This may be substantial in terms of percentages, but I would bet that improving your seated position takes precedence over a few grams.
The Drop Best will retail online only at
fairbicycle.com for $118 USD / €99 / £85.
Reverb sag has nothing to do with the line bleed.
Just kidding. Although there were a lot of bad Reverbs, the current C1s seem to do well. And we actually have very good support from SRAM here in Switzerland on Reverbs (read: low cost, closing both eyes, because they know).
Not true. I've had my PNW rainer sag on me. Cable actuated air cartridge droppers can also fail and sag, though they are much easier to work on to be fair.
Perhaps more people claim reverbs fail, because they are by far the most specced on bikes????
I will be looking to see if your Fair head is adaptable.
I believe only one co makes a set back dropper (9 point
We can now adjust head angles but are somewhat stuck with the seat angle.
Nice work
I am morbidly curious as to whether it'll snap the bolt, or pull out the post head first?
As @hamncheez said, at least this will help reduce the load on the bushings.
Edit, actually given the leverage (particularly in the negative offset), it'd be a lot lower than 10g to overcome the clamp load.
Yeah, I've seen some post heads come loose in my day.
Could be a problem.
I'm not really sure why we're talking about weight on the front of the saddle when it comes to catastrophic failure. Surely weight on the rear, especially in the negative offset position, is the worst case scenario?
This is the same reason car lug bolts don’t snap even though they are massively undersized to hold the forces of your car: they clamp the wheel to the hub/rotor, and the shear force provided by that friction interface is over an order of magnitude higher than the shear strength of the bolts.
If you put ball bearings between this adapter and the seat mast (or between your car’s wheel and rotor), you’d have threaded fastener failure almost immediately.
Pinkbike Forum: “DH/4x - the weight game” page 3123
It won’t let me copy the link for some reason.
That was exactly one of our thoughts. Also a way to keep riding a bike for longer = good for the environment.
Using a forward seat offset and an angleset will really squeeze the seated position into something resembling grandmas citybike.
YEARS of the same problem over and over. Every time my friend gets a new Bronson my mind is blown that SantaCruz still specs their high end bikes with that piece of garbage.
I do envy the people that upgrade every year but in reality there is no need for it. But if you can afford it, why not. I do laugh at the people I see driving beaters with their $6k plus bikes hitched on the back. Priorities I guess!
I felt too forward previously...but it may be different for you and your bike geo.
People are just trying to use bikes like the slash as a trail bike
If all goes well, we do our (drop) best.
We don't know, but pretty sure warranty is void when running a DROP BEST. But that will be the case with many accessories (think your steerer tube gets a crack and you have been running a SWAT style tool in it. Not sure what a fork manufacturer would say.
I had people telling me my bike look funny "clown bike" was the words I was told in 2015 with a 78STA. They rode it and had a different idea later
You can't have it all, there is no space for it.
It's almost funny watching frame manufacturers try to 'sell' stupid long chainstays on enduro bikes as a performance enhancing 'decision'. Just admit that you prioritised uphill pedaling position and that meant you had no choice but to run a 450mm chainstay and be done with it.
FINALLY. People are understanding that too steep of STA + too long of a reach = uncomfortable pedaling position on modern XL bikes. We need to increase the stack height when we increase reach and STA too much. Otherwise us tall folk look like hunchbacks pedaling up hills.
I do wonder slightly if optimal use of this product will be limited to bikes which have slack SAs (which is a common thing) and are also quite long already?
So a well designed bike from a few years ago might have a too-slack SA by current standards, but the reach would be in proportion with that - and this product might lead to the bike feeling too short?
Does that make sense?
For for those people with injuries (like a low back) that’s still want to ride and not be hunched over as much like road riders, and
For those casing that hard, hopefully you remember to drop your post before sending it (or bring your DH bike next time)
The ability to customize is a good thing
Thanks for R&D and for building it. Hopefully few more post options will spawn from this.
@bigbrett: had good experiences with them so far
it's funny because Maverick dug out the dropper idea and made it big again around 2007?
How about something more reasonable, like a 12mm offset?
We really do have to do better though if we want to compete and re-shore manufacturing as the whole world won’t understand (or don’t care) about shop conditions, just that product works and it’s cheap.
I also know personally of a few shops in Taiwan that are as clean and well setup as any I have seen in the UK, better than many even, and prices are still good.
Good luck with it, it’s a hard position to try and convince the customer a price is worth paying because of the place of manufacture.
Re-shoring: We see this happening for even more complex machining here. Companies are getting ready with automation for small batches too, bringing the difference down to salary cost, basically. However, we want to source from places where workers have insurance, paid vacation. I have seen top notch shops in Taiwan too (quality, efficiency, know how definitely!), but the wages, vacation, environmental standards are too low. Being ex-machinists ourselves our rough guideline is: source from where you would happily work yourself.
I understand. It is an uncommon look. I was a hardliner too in many cases. For way too long I was die hard to run max. a 34T cassette. Because those 42Ts looked like a tourists bike IMO. Now I happily run a 52T cassette and even think that looks totally cool. Not sure why. Can it be because all our heroes do too? I am not 100% sure on that.
While a bike with DROP BEST looks uncommon, I do think you can start to like it visually too, once you appreciate the functional advantage. If you are on a bike/position that needs adjusting.
Honestly though, cool option for some older bikes...I turned my post backwards on an older steel frame I had, reach stunk, bit I could pedal up steep hills...
That's where this thing loses me. If you're bike's geo is old enough to have a super slack STA, then it's also probably a shorter bike than most of what's currently out there. You'll get your climbing seated position more over the BB, but you're going to have a super cramped cockpit. No thanks!
This is perfect for me but I am not going back to a reverb over a my One-up post.