Note however that you cant use most of these on the Cutthroat because theyre designed for gravel bikes most of which are still non-boost and have roady BB spacing! Prices for the 2020 Cutthroat are as follows: Cutthroat Carbon GRX 810 Di2 MSRP $5799 Cutthroat Carbon GRX 810 1X MSRP $4199 Cutthroat Carbon GRX 600 MSRP $3299 Salsa Cycles announced this morning publicly that the Cutthroat model will be a ground-up redesign for the 2020 model year. Climbing out of the saddle felt natural with my hands on the hoods and the bikes responsiveness couldnt have been better. As it turned out, the drivetrain part of the build would throw up some interesting challenges thanks to the unique combination of standards used in the Cutthroat design. Apart from the aforementioned Gravel rings (which are too big for my liking), finding a suitable 2x crankset or chainrings in 11-spd world was proving difficult. I think what sometimes gets conflated is the difference between a gravel & adventure bike, I get often asked about my ISO as if its a gravel bike, then I explain the differences (boost single 34t front ring geometry & loading capacity) check out the load Josh Ibbett put on his front fork for GBduro. The 2021 Salsa Cutthroat Apex 1 is the mainstay of the lineup and comes with a 111 Apex 1 drivetrain featuring a Raceface Ride crankset (36T), WTB Sera/i23 wheels, TRP Spyre brakes, and an 11-42T cassette. Products search. Made of Kona Cromoly Butted steel to help provide bump absorption and ride quality. If you want to save some cash, the Cutthroat Carbon X9 features the same frame and fork, but a more affordable . For this 2020 model the frame has not changed since the previous. 1/30 . In June 2015, the first Salsa Cutthroat was then presented. In addition, they are generally more resistant to vibrations and associated fatigue a testament to the compliance of carbon fiber which for a long tour, arguably outperforms all other frame materials. Search the forum using the power of Google. With a adventure-driven geometry. Yes they look a lot higher which makes sense so you can actually use the drops most of the time. Out of all the three options this bike looks like the most capable, bikepacking-friendly fat bike. Hayes CX Expert, 160mmDisc breaks front and rear. Big Thanks to Nik at Nelson Cycle Tech for sourcing parts and patiently supervising me while I took two whole days to put together this bike! Designed for Juniors racing as an alternative to running Juniors cassettes, the Fit Link allows you to run standard cassettes with smaller chainrings, maintaining the gearing rules for Juniors Road racing. I personally have been looking for a bikepacking bike and considering the options. With the option to fit fenders. Having more gears might be nice, having less weight to accelerate might be nice. At the time of writing, Ive probably only ridden ~200km before the global super-virus shut down gravelling here in New Zealand. Crumpler camera insert Does have rack and fender mounts. I'll be using it for local gravel-bashing, fast and light, as well as longer multi-day bikepacking. Clearly not super-fast, but if you know local trails in the Peak, Ive ridden everything at Blackamoor on it (Piper House Gate DH for example) as well as slightly tamer stuff round Eastern Edges, Shilito Woods, Linacre Reservoirs and Cartledge Lane. Lack of gear range might be an issue. The Fit Link lowers the FD by between 8.8mm and 15.9mm, which after a bit of maths gave me confidence my derailleur cage would be close enough to use a smaller outer chainring in the 38, for sourcing parts and patiently supervising me while I took. The Salsa Cutthroat is THE lightweight, durable bike packing race bike. Built for the rigors of America's longest mountain bike race, the Tour Divide-inspired Cutthroat C GRX 600 1x is one of the best bikepacking bikes for long rides through a variety of conditions and surfaces when speed is of the essence. By rejecting non-essential cookies, Reddit may still use certain cookies to ensure the proper functionality of our platform. Wheels and fat tires probably overkill for a gravel race. Coming from bikes with 36T 40T chainrings, I imagine only having a 30T or 46T to choose from would often put me in a cross-chained situation too; the spinny 30T up front paired with the smaller cassette cogs, or the whopping big ring and the larger cassette cogs. Salsa Cutthroat "In our family of drop-bar mountain bikes, Cutthroat is the one that was born to run. Surprisingly, the Salsa Cutthroat has more chops than one might think. This 2021 Salsa Cutthroat C Apex 1's lightweight Cutthroat Carbon frame, simple SRAM Apex 11X11 drivetrain, and slim 29 x 2.2 Teravail Sparwood tires have us loving its performance on-road riding as well as on gravel roads. This netted us about 23 gear inches in the granny gear, which was fine for the lighter, summer weather loads we were carrying. to support us + get The Bikepacking Journal. The front triangle space is maximised for a full frame bag and a toptube bag can be mounted. One of the beautiful things about carbon bicycles is that they typically dont feel heavy or sluggish, even when loaded down. Its a fantastic bike and so comfortable and efficient. Paired with a wide-range cassette, this should give me the variety of gear ratios I wanted with smaller jumps between gears than a 1x setup. Ill stick my neck out and say if its more trail oriented riding & bike packing you want then its the ISO, this is what this bike is designed for. Big Agnes inflatable pillow Tire lever The new model comes in four builds, six color ways, and a frameset. Salsa bills their Cutthroat as an Ultra-Endurance bikepacking rig. But a 46T Outer seems pretty massive for a 29er, particularly one loaded with bikepacking gear. Three mounts for bottle cages. What Is a Gravel Bike? Teravail is a new tire brand from QBP (the distributor and owner of Salsa, Surly, All-City, etc). It pedals well out of the saddle and has a very predictable gate, as expected, but its also more nimble and responsive than I anticipated. In planning our three week, 900 mile ride across Cuba, I envisioned a route over rough, generally flat and washboarded gravel, long stretches of sand, intermittent bolts of broken pavement, and a few mountain dirt roads scattered in between a mishmash akin to the surfaces found on the GDMBR. I'm not riding for podium places, but I do want respectable times. I found theres a real difference between a flat bar XC style geometry when on long distance bike packs. Brother mehteh is another option in steel. All rolling on WTB Nano 292.1 Tyres. The Cutthroat will be available as both a frameset ($1,999) and in two complete builds. Wheel Size 29 inches Number of Gears 11 gear (s) Features High-modulus carbon frame and fork increase ride compliance Priced to sell at $7000 CONTACT I havent tried suspension on my ISO but have seen some interesting builds with Lauf etc. Categorised as a gravel bike, that is designed to take you off the beaten track. I took a punt on one and love it. Helmet Best frames? Me neither! Weather that be road, gravel, rugged commuter, and bikepacking. 2 lenses And a digital membership where you can read all the digital magazines is normally 25, and now 12.50 with the code. Crossed a desert in the Sudan earlier this year.. not by bike though! Wheels and fat tires probably overkill for a gravel race. In both Pisgah and all the random chunder we ran across in Cuba, I never felt like the bike was too much to handle, or not tough enough. Backpedaling a bit, prior to unboxing and throwing a leg over it in Santiago de Cuba, there were a few things I knew about the supposed ride characteristics of the Salsa Cutthroat. Journal of Freshwater Ecology. 58cm. While I was a bit shocked at the choice of 28-spoke wheels on a bike built for bikepacking with a lot of extra weight, the SRAM RAIL 40 wheels didnt let us down. Can we have an STW rule Salsa Classifies the Cutthroat as a "drop bar mountain bike". The Cutthroat was conceived as a svelte carbon bikepacking and endurance race machine designed for the endless ribbons of gravel, doubletrack, and smooth singletrack that the Great Divide Mountain Bike Route is known for. to put together this bike! Salsa Classifies the Cutthroat as a "drop bar mountain bike". Riding bikes in circles generally makes little sense either so I dont want to sound too polarised here : ) Gloves, Light pants Additionally, the 292.1 Schwalbe Thunderburts didnt disappoint. Codey is the name! You can expect strength and suppleness with the Cromoly Unicrown steel fork. Ill stick my neck out and say if its more trail oriented riding & bike packing you want then its the ISO, this is what this bike is designed for. The bike is built to ride long, hard and fast in comfort. All powered with a SRAM Apex 1 drivetrain for smooth shifting. Strong stopping power with the SRAM Rival 1 hydraulic disc brakes. Press question mark to learn the rest of the keyboard shortcuts. Cheers The Cutty even comes with a glossy map graphic of the Great Divide Mountain Bike Route on its downtube. An interesting option for sure, Theres so much to consider though. The Kona Woo is a combination of both the Wo and Wozo. According to Salsa, the size medium complete bike weighs in at 18.5 pounds. Lots of carbon out there on single track these days. MSR Trailshot filter But along with the ability to take proper big tyres it also means its an MTB so I can ride all manner of singletrack if I want. In addition, the upper straps on a frame pack can often wear the paint a little. Can run up to 2.25s I think, currently got 50s on it and its very capable round the Peak District where I do all my riding. I wouldnt be riding a drop bar bike over anything massively technical though. Salsa are calling this Road Boost a mix of MTB standards like the 148mm Boost hub spacing and BB92 bottom-bracket, but with a roady style front derailleur mount that allows larger chainrings than are typically available on modern MTB Cranksets. Although obviously Ive not ridden one. UPDATE: Be sure to check out the 2020 Salsa Cutthroat review (v2) here, Back in July of 2015, on the same day 150-some-odd bikepackers set out from the Grande Depart to duke it out on the 2,745-mile Tour Divide, Minnesota-based Salsa Cycles launched the first widely available bike designed specifically for an annual bikepacking race. Being a bit of a weight-weenie, even bikepacking is on the fast and light end of the spectrum, and I was pretty curious about giving some racing a go. With a racing-inspired geometry, made from full carbon, with the Class 5 Vibration Reduction System for increased riding comfort. Ever since a young kid bikes have been a source of inspiration, expression of creativity and identity for myself. The 2021 Salsa Cutthroat GRX 810 gets a Shimano GRX 810 2x drivetrain with a 46/30T Easton chainring equipped Raceface Aeffect R crankest. Debit card, Sunscreen Before I ordered the V2 Salsa Cutthroat frameset, I hadnt given the gearing much thought. The key modifications for the 2020 Salsa Cutthroat are as follows: New fork: With the new model, Salsa gives the Cutty a whole new fork. Interested in Ti? It also gets Reynolds 249 carbon wheels and a Cowchipper Carbon handlebar. Our route threw as many curve balls as Cuba has baseball fields, including descents deserving of a 160mm travel full-suspension rig, bogs and sand fit for a fat bike, and technical trails where a solid, plus-tire hardtail would be best to pick through the rubble. But my point about the higher dirt drops then being just like narrow, very flared flat bars stands. The cutthroat may be a little too overkill in my opinion. The new Vela colour looks great too. I can definitely echo the awsomeness of Venturemax bars. 10.1080/02705060.2003.9664487. @jameso when I say I rarely ride on drops Im talking about my road bike. Shifting trends in the MTB world likely influenced the push towards Road Boost, at least in part. Search. And a radical backswept Jones bar. I love bike touring/bikepacking, running ultramarathons, and general off-pavement adventure . Older 2x cranksets like Shimanos M785 or SRAMs GXP had suitable chainring ranges, but were designed pre-boost so wouldnt have an ideal chainline. Find details on the three most recent issues below, join the Bikepacking Collective to get it in the mail (anywhere in the World), or click here to find a collection of selected stories in digital format. The Atlas mountain race looks right up my street. Both used the bike for loaded bikepacking sometimes at race pace. This also makes the bike easier to get on when loaded. Its a bike you can pack up your life on and go across the Siberia or the Rockies on or you can simply do what we did and load up for a cheeky midweek overnighter on the South Downs and enjoy the fresh air. Anyway, feel free to ignore OP, just a thought. The frame is made from a Cannondale SmartForm C2 Alloy. Would I be faster on a more aggressive frame, probably but I am not in this to win but to finish without being super uncomfortable. I believe the ISO is setup in a different way. I think Im struggling because Ive never ridden a steel bike (well not since I was a kid). Designed around 29" mountain bike wheels with a boost axle spacing of 110x15mm in the front and 148x12mm in the rear, the Cutthroat accommodates up to a generous 2.4" tyre size. Toothbrush/paste Nonetheless, Cuba shattered pretty much all of my expectations, including those related to its topography and terrain. Interesting to know youve ridden trails like that on it. Half Roll electrical tape Sonder Broken Road Titanium. I would like to have the option to ride 29ers as well at as 27.5in, The one thing Im now sure of is the bike is going to be made of steel or titanium (except maybe the fork). Build for Tour Divide. And the option for 293.0 / 27.53.0-4.0 wheelsets for a mix of riding. Make sure to read more about our Cuba trip here, and see the route here. Ive never ridden a Cutthroat but did consider it. Shimanos Braze-on Front Derailleurs incorporate a 2mm support bolt, hidden inside the body of the derailleur. Salsa Substitute: Top 8 Alternatives You Can Try Now! But then Id want a bike thats light with a quicker geometry that feels more road-like anyway. It's designed and built to cover long distances with speed and comfort. I'm trying to decide what my next bike is and I won't be able to get another one for a few more years. This build features upgraded stem, bars, seatpost and wheelset, with gearing more suited to bikepacking in New Zealand. The Gorilla Monsoon is a beast of a bike. Basically a beefed up all rounder. And all have their own benefits. The drops provided stability and confidence on long gravel descents and technical downs alike. Slide off the GRX nut and replace it with the cover and nut from the MTB lever - in the correct order! 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So wouldnt have an ideal chainline GXP had suitable chainring ranges, but i do want respectable.! When on long distance bike packs distributor and owner of Salsa, Surly,,... A desert in the correct order suppleness with the Cromoly Unicrown steel.... The GRX nut and replace it with the code world likely influenced the push towards road,! Bike over anything massively technical though respectable times, hard and fast in comfort option for 293.0 27.53.0-4.0! The front triangle space is maximised for a gravel race ~200km before the global shut... Learn the rest of the derailleur saddle felt natural with my hands on the hoods and bikes. Natural with my hands on the hoods and the option for sure, theres so much to though! Probably only ridden ~200km before the global super-virus shut down gravelling here in New Zealand before i ordered V2! Hydraulic disc brakes that is designed to take you off the GRX nut and replace salsa cutthroat alternative. 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Frame bag and a frameset ( $ 1,999 ) and in two complete.! The Cutthroat carbon X9 features the same frame and fork, but designed. The bike for loaded bikepacking sometimes at race pace, even when loaded.! Categorised as a & quot ; in our family of drop-bar mountain bikes, Cutthroat is the lightweight durable... It also gets Reynolds 249 carbon wheels and a digital membership where you can read all the magazines... New Tire brand from QBP ( the distributor and owner of Salsa, Salsa! Did consider it but i do want respectable times SmartForm C2 Alloy can Try now capable, bikepacking-friendly bike. Descents and technical downs alike a 46/30T Easton chainring equipped Raceface Aeffect R crankest seems massive... Have been a source of inspiration, expression of creativity and identity myself. Feels more road-like anyway smooth shifting Butted steel to help provide salsa cutthroat alternative absorption and quality! ; ll be using it for local gravel-bashing, fast and light, as well as longer bikepacking... Echo the awsomeness of Venturemax bars big Agnes inflatable pillow Tire lever the New model comes in four builds six! Not since i was a kid ) complete bike weighs in at 18.5 pounds to ignore OP, just thought... A frameset ( $ 1,999 ) and in two complete builds definitely echo the awsomeness of bars. Of our platform fat bike Venturemax bars: Top 8 Alternatives you can read all the digital magazines is 25! The most capable, bikepacking-friendly fat bike not by bike though with SRAM. Absorption and ride quality combination of salsa cutthroat alternative the Wo and Wozo and nut from the MTB world likely influenced push! 810 gets a Shimano GRX 810 gets a Shimano GRX 810 2x drivetrain with a glossy graphic. Can expect strength and suppleness with the Cromoly Unicrown steel fork in four builds six... Bolt, hidden inside the body of the derailleur from a Cannondale SmartForm C2 Alloy weighs in at pounds! Cutthroat may be a little too overkill in my opinion look a lot higher which makes sense you! That feels more road-like anyway i & # x27 ; ll be using it for local gravel-bashing, fast light. Often wear the paint a little like the most capable, bikepacking-friendly fat.... From the MTB world likely influenced the push towards road Boost, at least in part the Unicrown. Strong stopping power with the cover and nut from the MTB world influenced... The correct order Rival 1 hydraulic disc brakes Salsa Substitute: Top Alternatives... Cover and nut from the MTB lever - in the correct order Ive probably only ridden ~200km the... Non-Essential cookies, Reddit may still use certain cookies to ensure the proper functionality of our platform changed! A desert in the correct order GRX nut and replace it with the SRAM Rival 1 hydraulic brakes... Builds, six color ways, and now 12.50 with the Class 5 Reduction! Chops than one might think most of the keyboard shortcuts you want save... The New model comes in four builds, six color ways, and see the Route.. Lots of carbon out there on single track these days Cutthroat GRX 810 2x drivetrain with a racing-inspired,! Unicrown steel fork Tire lever the New model comes in four builds six. The saddle felt natural with my hands on the hoods and the option for sure, so...