Countless hours on the trails make this the ultimate test of performance as well as reliability
SEAN’S SONDER SIGNAL ST GX
£2,899 • 29in • alpkit.com
THE RIDER
SEAN WHITE
Position Freelance writer/tester
Mostly rides Forest of Dean, Mid Wales
Height 6ft 2in
Weight 87kg
THE BIKE
n Handmade 4130 steel frame with sizespecific chainstays and up-to-date trail geometry
n Cane Creek Helm air fork upgrade comes with 130mm travel – the sweet spot for a 29er trail hardtail?
n Full SRAM GX Eagle drivetrain with a super-wide 10-52t cassette
n Hope Fortus wheelset, an upgrade over Sonder’s housebrand hoops and a solid choice for 12 months of heavy use
With the Sonder nearing the end of its tenure, I thought a quick head-to-head with a benchmark UK designed 29er hardtail would unearth anything that I may have overlooked. Whyte’s 629 was the obvious choice to pitch against my Signal ST, as it’s a bike that scored a perfect 10 rating, placing it at the top of a hardtail test I did last year.
With a price tag that’s £900 below the Sonder’s, it sports a lower spec across the board but that’s far from the full story. Sonder has opted for a steel frame and a 130mm-travel fork, while Whyte gets an aluminium frame and 120mm travel. Most surprising then, is that their weights are almost identical. To keep things fair, and to mirror mbr's test protocol, I equipped both bikes with the same Maxxis tyres, set at identical pressures.
With my local trails running dry, fast and rough, I expected Sonder’s compliant steel frame to have a comfort advantage over the Whyte and I was right, but it wasn’t as perceptible as I’d thought. Those long curved seatstays on the Whyte, matched to well-considered tubing profiles, give a nicely damped ride quality – just not a match for Whyte’s 909 hardtail with its 27.5x2.8in tyres, or my Sonder Signal ST when it comes to a taking the edge off rooty singletrack on a multihour epic.
Jumping off the Whyte and back onto the Sonder revealed another variance between them. Where the limousinelength Whyte is surefooted and planted, with near-perfect weight distribution (whether climbing or descending), the Sonder feels much more animated. At 435mm on this size XL, the Sonder’s chainstays are 15mm shorter than the Whyte’s, and combined with a taller 315mm bottom bracket height (300mm on the 629) the result is a livelier but slightly less stable feel.
Another insight was the gap in performance of the forks. The more basic spec of the RockShox 35 on the Whyte made itself known now the trails have dried up and speeds have increased. Switching back to the Sonder underlined just how m
