Inexpensive, works great within it's limits, Great for older ridged bikes that can't take Sus. forks.

Not for the agressive MTB'er (not enough travel or stiff enough) Old style H-bar clamp.

As I mentioned earlier, this strem is great for modest riding, like dirt roads and easy to moderate trails, but for the serious stuff, go with fork suspention, this stem doesn't offer enough. What I really found it good for was commuting. It smooths out the chip and tar on the back roads here is S. Carolina.

SoftRide has recently reintroduced their suspention stems, with a much better look and cleaner design, for both threadless and threaded forks. Unfortunatly, they still incorporate the older style bar clamp. Now, if they could just give it a removeable face plate.


IMO, Softride is wasting their time trying to sell this design to the off-road market. What they should really do is design a lighter road version, maybe with a little less travel, for hybrids, commuting and bike touring. These bikes would benefit much better from this products strong points and their users would much better appreciate a lighter (although more limited) suspension option than MTB'ers.

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only suspension stem ever tried.