Is there a clear favourite for a 29er/700c bike for ‘proper’ off road use and NOT cx racing.
It looks like I’m a few steps away from not owning a mountainbike, so I’ll be using a cross type bike for tame MTB’ing.
They’ll need to be compatable with road STIs.

On One Midges or Salsa Woodchippers seem popular. I used Midges for a while, enjoyed the shallow drp and wide position.

Agreed, I used Midges with bar-end shifters on my Singular. Worked a treat in the wilds. However at Glentress I found the drop thing too mad and I needed to swap to flats. I actually caught my drop bars in a bush on the second corner of Pennels and landed upside down about 15 feet below!

Cheers, al.

wtb mountain drops
ragley luxy

PS here it is (ah, happy days…)

al.

Midges work for me.

Also worth a read

I’m just trying these Ragley Luxy bars

P1030477 by eastham_david, on Flickr

sounds like I need to change a few things according to my thread 😳

http://www.singletrackworld.com/forum/topic/ss-funny-handlebars-ill-be-growing-a-beard-and-wearing-sandals-next-pics

Salsa Woodchippers rock offroad.

[video]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ahtat9Fx7uM[/video]

The Woodchippers look favorite due to the more roadie hook and position it puts the STIs in.
What size are those, because the perspective makes them look diddy.

Salsa Bell laps for me, although you might think of them more as a cx race bar.

46cm Salsa Bell laps for me as well. Run them happily on my Fargo with 105 STI levers and Road BB7 Discs.

oldgit.

They’re the wider version.

Quite a bit wider than the Midge they replaced.

I much prefer Woodchippers to Midges as I found the drops to be way to short unless my hands were ‘up the bend’. The ragley Luxy above looks to have fixed that design error. Woodchippers are excellent and the 46cm gives lots of control and confidence offroad.
Here’s mine

I’ve got Midges on one bike and WTB Mountain drops on another … I much prefer the Mountain drops off road due to the extra width. Don’t know if you can still get them anywhere now though.

Used to run Specialized RockCombos but doubt you would find any these days, similair to the WTB ones.

Set-up is key. As is experimentation.

I seem to point the ends of my Midge bars down much further than other people, and have the brake levers further round the bend. Could be because I never ride anywhere other than in the drops on them.

Make sure you read Matt Chester’s 63xc articles on set-up.