Hi Flo7 and QuentinLL !
I'm new to MTB and before 2020 I was only road biking. So when I started MTB my local shop recommended a cross country bike to start riding on easy trails. So I started with a Santa Cruz Blur X01 TR (110mm fork) with Reserve 25 carbon rims.
I've always had medium size bikes as I'm 1.73M with inseam about 31.5 inches.
Anyway after a few rides at Empire 47 in Quebec, Canada, I liked it very much! But eventually I realized that for some trails I would have more fun with a more robust bike. But because of that COVID thing most local shops are overwhelmed by high demand so availability of mtb is scarce, plus a brand new Hightower X01 is a lot of money especially after spending 10K$can on a SC Blur!
So I contacted Adam at Carbonda asking if they had some Trail frame in the works. So the early specs they provided for medium FM1156 was supposed to be already final with Top Tube Length of 598mm which is pretty similar to medium Hightower. Actually the rest of the specs also share similarities with NS Bike Define 130.
But like they say: Specs are subject to changed without notice! And when I received the frame 6 months later, and now that "official specs" are out the Top Tube Length for medium is only 575mm which is obviously noticeable when you ride the bike, it feels very compact. I hope that with a longer Stem the "feel" will be less compact.
As for Head Tube Angle:
My SC Blur TR is 68.5 HTA so I wanted a slacker frame but not too slack as I'm not a fan of neck breaking DH.
So for me 66.5 HTA seemed to be a nice balanced.
But then again in the early spec sheet they wrote 67 HTA with a 130mm fork and now in January we see 65.5 HTA on Carbonda web site.
My new FM1156 certainly looks and feel much slacker than my SC blur TR, but certainly not as slack as 65.5 but I guess I should measure the HTA myself!
Final weight of the rig with I9 Enduro S + Maxxis 2.4 WT = approximately 29.5 pounds
Compared to SC Hightower or Tallboy or NS Define 130, I would say that I saved 15-20% $$ by building the rig myself.
Plus I spent countless hours online to learn how to assemble a bike from scratch, but that was part of the fun, of course!
I'm finishing 2 FM936 for my 2 kids and I'll give my SC Blur to my wife so we can all go for family mtb rides!
