Jones

Jeff Jones has a somewhat more prominent stand position this year, right near the front of the hall and packed with an array of variations of his 3D Spaceframe bike – singlespeed, twelve speed, six speed, lightweight touring, ultralight, all sorts. Also on display was the 853 steel frameset, which is fairly conventional in appearance but shares the geometry of the Spaceframe. The unicrown fork takes a 135mm wide hub and has clearance for a 4in Surly Endomorph tyre.

Also new is a revised version of the H-Bar. By curving the centre section forwards there’s now room to mount Rapidfire pods or twist shifters ahead of the grip sections. The grip sections are now one tube that curves right around the front, adding another riding position to the several dozen already available. Split clamps allow shifters to be mounted on the “closed” section of the bar should you so wish.

Crank Brothers

Crank Brothers hasn’t launched any whole new product lines for 2009 but there are additions to things they already do. First up are two new wheelsets to supplement the existing Cobalt (XC) and Iodine (all-mountain) offerings. The Opium set (the red one) is for DH racing, while Sage (the appropriately green one) is for freeride. Both share the construction fundamentals of the Cobalt and Iodine, with paired straight-pull spokes. They both have 24mm rims, but the Sage is slightly beefier where the spokes attach. Opium is claimed to be 956g front and 1,106g rear. Sage is a little heavier at 1,011g front and 1,161g rear.

There’s also a new version of the Joplin adjustable seatpost. Dubbed the Joplin 4 it’s packaged into a 27.2mm diameter post, broadening the range of bikes you can fit it to – the current Joplin is 30.9mm only. Crank Brothers has taken the opportunity to tackle a couple of the things that have ailed Joplin users. There’s an all-new clamp design with one bolt to clamp the rails and a separate pair of bolts to set the angle. The clamp also has a choice of round or oval holes to accommodate certain saddles that have oval rails.

DT Swiss

On the subject of wheels, DT Swiss has added 15mm through-axle options to most of its MTB range, with only the all-new FR2350 freeride wheels and XR1480 Classic XC rim brake wheels excepted (for different reasons). Pictured is the front half of the XR1450 wheelset.

As you might expect, there’s a 15mm-ready fork to go with the wheels in the shape of the EXC. It’s a 150mm travel, air sprung fork, with the 15mm axle bumping the weight up 100g from the QR model. The claimed 1,750g weight includes DT’s 15mm RWS axle, though, so it’s not exactly a porker. There’s also a 15mm version of the 130mm travel XMC.