Santa Cruz Bicycles

Tallboy 29 Carbon CC XX1 Eagle Reserve Mountain Bike

There was a time when Santa Cruz's lineup lacked a solid short-travel whip for cross country domination — when we rode the Tallboy on smooth and racy ribbons of trail because it was the closest thing to the tried-and-true Blur, which we dearly missed. Fortunately, with the Blur surging back into the xc scene, Santa Cruz was free to fine-tune the Tallboy  into the beast it was meant to be, with a trail-hungry personality that offers deeper travel, and a suspension design built to soak up rougher terrain, while still rolling atop the 29-inch wagon wheels we covet for soaring up climbs. The Tallboy is built to be more capable than ever, with geometry that boosts confidence on the descents, while maintaining the lively climbing properties we love. And if the geometry isn't enough, Santa Cruz spec's this particular build with a slew of cherry-picked SRAM XX1 Eagle components to offer you a massive 500% gear range to tackle days that boost up intense amounts of elevation, and soar down lofty rollers and banked berms on the descent.

The Tallboy follows the trends of its deeper-travel siblings, moving the VPP suspension down to a lower-link that offers improved stabilization in the roughest terrain, while an extra 10mm of travel helps soak up additional rocks and roots that the previous Tallboy would have shied away from. This makes the new ride more confident than ever, ready for bigger trails, rutted out lines, brakes bumps galore, and even turning the odd set of rollers into doubles — but not at the cost of climbing. The suspension is designed with the same engineering principles as the brand's longest travel bikes, making it just as at home riding cross-country as it is extreme backcountry. Santa Cruz's VPP suspension is designed to stabilize the suspension when you're putting power down on the pedals, meaning the rear end ceases to bob, providing a much more responsive and lively feel when you hammer up steeps, so you aren't wasting all of the power you put down. This is achieved with counter-rotating links that are carefully arranged to resist activation by pedaling forces, all but eliminating bobbing under power.

The Tallboy's geometry features a much slacker head tube angle that shifted from the 68-degrees in years past to the ultra-long 65.5-degrees it is today (with the flip chip in Low). This slack head tube elevates the confidence of the Tallboy when you point it downhill, providing improved handling in rough and jarring terrain, and boosting control at high speeds. With the head tube's shift into the slacker realm, balance needed to be achieved to maintain the bike's reputation for lively pedaling and handling, so the engineers at Santa Cruz opted to move the seat tube angle up a few degrees to a steep perch of 76.3 degrees — a full three degrees steeper than the previous model, allowing you to stay on top of the bike when pedal power matters, and keeping the cockpit compact enough for comfort when handling the bike in rowdy terrain.

With changes happening left and right on the Tallboy, thankfully Santa Cruz's Carbon CC frame construction remains unchanged and for this top-tier CC frame designation, the engineers use a higher modulus carbon versus the standard Carbon C model, so less material is required to hit the same strength and stiffness numbers. Less material equates to less weight, and well, we'll always take a lighter bike for any occasion. Climbing and just motoring along the flats is easier with less mass to haul around, and a stiffer chassis is more efficient at getting the power to the rear wheel and requires less body English while negotiating technical trails.

Final details include a threaded bottom bracket that's what we've come to expect from the California-based brand, and it's a strong selling point for those who don't like dealing with the tricky tolerances and creaky interfaces of press-fit models. Santa Cruz specs this model with some of our house favorite components, with a SRAM XX1 Eagle drivetrain for precise shifting and seemingly endless gears, plus a plush combination of FOX rear and RockShox front suspension that offers 120mm and 130mm of deep travel, respectively. This 29-inch version comes equipped with 2.3in Maxxis rubber, which occupies a sweet spot of cush and traction without feeling too sluggish, bouncy, or vague. The crowning jewel of the build is the Reserve Carbon Wheels, which provide a lightweight and stiff platform for your all-day pedaling, covered by a lifetime warranty too.