2022 Cannondale Jekyll - High Pivot & High Hopes | Dissected &...

It’s back! The 2022 Cannondale Jekyll made some social media waves when it was first introduced a few months back. Its transcendent color changing paint job, Gravity Cavity cutout and downtube shock placement, and of course…high pivot Guidler pulley suspension platform had people talking. We got our Jekyll a while back and have been very excited to get it out on the trails for our latest Dissected Feature.

As with all our Dissected Features, this is not intended to be a long-term review or test but an in-depth release feature to share product information and features as well as share our initial ride impressions from the short time we’ve spent aboard this product prior to release.

During the creation of this feature, we spent quite a bit of time on Zoom calls with the crew at Cannondale Bicycles and enjoyed the education and willingness to answer our questions. Most of our calls were with Scott Vogelmann, the global director for MTB at Cannondale Bicycles. We talked about the development, testing and goals of the new Jekyll. The recent wave of high pivot enduro bikes have been getting a lot of press and love, and we wanted to see what makes the Jekyll different.

First up we wanted to get into the biggest changes, the high pivot moves with the shock relocation. Sporting 165mm of high pivot, four-bar, Horst Link suspension with a Guidler (chain guide/idler wheel), Cannondale transformed the 2022 Jekyll into a big mountain beast. When we asked Scott Vogelmann about the kinematics and tune put into the new bike, he had some interesting things to say. “It’s great to hear your feedback and that you noticed the difference compared to other bikes in the category,” Vogelmann began. “We could have tuned the bike to cater more to riders on the ragged edge, pure race speed runs and the hardest chargers out there. The reality is, we know that very few people ride like that and those that do, aren’t riding like that 100% of the time. If you make a bike designed to perform at that level, it will have tradeoffs everywhere else.” And what Scott means by that is, it will be an abusive bike that is rough, hard to hold on to and less than fun on days where you just want to ride your bike. We’d much rather have a bike we can tune up for race day and enjoy more easily on our casual weekly rides and compared to other high pivot enduro rigs out there, it seems Cannondale have succeeded here.

Speaking of tradeoffs and fun, most of us agree that while climbing can be enjoyed as a Type 2 sort of fun, downhilling is what really keeps us coming back. At least that’s how riders looking at a 165/170mm enduro bike think. If you don’t agree, maybe you should check out the Cannondale Scalpel…but we digress. The compromise downhill-biased riders make is that uphill performance is secondary compared to confidence, travel, and safety for the high-speed descents. Despite that willing tradeoff, we don’t want to feel like we’re pedaling in sand, so efficiency and geometry are important to keeping the bikes somewhat capable of getting back up to the top of our next downhill.

Continue reading the Dissected Feature on the site here:
https://theloamwolf.com/2022/01/20/dissected-cannondale-jeyll-high-pivot-high-hopes/

For ordering and more info, visit https://www.cannondale.com/

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