Digit Datum - That's A Wrap

The winter end of 2022 and beginning of 2023 will go down, at least as far as California is concerned, as one of the all-time great winters. Some of the deepest snowpack ever recorded in the Golden State, along with rainfall numbers that in many cases at least doubled seasonal averages. It was a great winter for skiing and aquifer recharging. It wasn't so great for testing bikes.

This here Digit Datum was introduced on this site last November, the suspension was talked through again in January, and by now I had hoped to have somewhere around 60 good hours of saddle time. Enough to say something about the durability of the design. Instead, I managed only about half that, somewhere around 300 miles total, most of that ridden in a slurry of mud and wet sand that were about as drivetrain friendly as grinding paste. So in a way it was like dog years for the drivetrain, and arguably the pivot bearings, but the riding was slower and softer than usual and there wasn't a whole lot of charging rock gardens at high speed or deathgrip descending.

The Cliffs Notes for the Datum are as follows, should the previous reading be too distant to recall: US made, small batch, aluminum, mullet wheeled, 140mm rear travel, proprietary shock integrated as a strut into the top tube, half as many pivots and bearings as current multi-link designs, surprisingly light weight trail bike.

"Proprietary rear shock" and "surprisingly light weight" combined with "aluminum" are probably where most readers concerns regarding longevity come home to roost. So, how did it go?

Fine. It went just fine. I was concerned that the lower concentric pivot may start making some noise, given that it housed both pivot and bottom bracket bearings. But it never uttered a peep, or squeak or creak. The shock didn't seem to notice the weather at all. I'm about to send the bike back to Tim, but I need to replace the brake pads and it probably needs a new chain. So, from a general wear and tear perspective, it held up well.

But how did it ride? How did the suspension perform?

Let's break that into two pieces.

RIDE

Good lord, what a fun bike. Ignore my facial expression in these photos. That is my Resting Oh God We're All Gonna Die Face. It always looks like that, even when I am having fun. And damn, I had some fun on this bike. Chalk it up to mulletude, praise the geometry, I dunno. The Digit is nice and stable and roomy in a slightly conservative way - meaning the numbers aren't aggressively skewed toward new school plow - but it struck a very nice geometry bargain between the counterweights of stability and agility. The frame and shock weight of this bike is under 6.5 pounds, remember, so it isn't really built to be a battleship. This is a middleweight trail bike; super fun to rip turn to turn, easy to wheelie, fun to jump, with a very understandable neutrality that makes it a hoot to ride.

The ride feel is a hair softer than I am nowadays used to, after a steady diet of increasingly overbuilt carbon fiber bikes. It held a line really well, and loved being compressed into corners, but instead of skittering around on square edged bumps and in rocky apexes, the Datum exhibited a quiet fuzziness that took a minute to get used to. Bear in mind, this test bike was built up with Crank Brothers Synthesis wheels, also known to be a pretty soft riding wheelset. Regardless, at times, a little bit of lateral flex could be felt. I have damned certain bikes for this in the past. On the Datum, I loved it.

It climbs smoothly when seated, and motors along as well as any of the other multi-link bikes in this travel segment, and it does admirably well when standing on the pedals and reefing it up steep sections. It's comfortable to churn out long fireroads as well as punch singletrack jabs. I never felt the need to flip the little blue compression lever. But it is not as buttery smooth and tractable under power as some of the dw-link hoverbikes I have ridden. The climbing prowess and the "not as buttery" analogy could both be the result of suspension kinematics, or could both be ascribed to compression damping. And then there's that mullet rear wheel. More on that and that later. Suffice to say, the Digit got up hills well enough to be a solid all-day big ride choice.

SUSPENS

This is going to be the choke point for most prospective buyers. People who like a ton of external adjustability on their shocks are going to feel that the Digit Integer doesn't have a whole lot of this. And it doesn't. People who don't really ever adjust their shocks much after getting them set up are going to be happy with the Integer. Riders who are more comfortable with well known, big-brand suspension - and the ocean of anecdotal familiarity regarding tuning and characteristics that goes along with that - are likely to be nervous about this one-off dark horse damper. People who are comfortable tearing into shocks or working with suspension tuners will find the innards of the Integer easy to understand, source parts for and work on.

For my part, I felt that maybe there was more low-speed compression damping than I wanted. But then again, it sure did climb well. Bit of a catch-22 there. Also, I am not 100% sure about my own bias here. Was I noticing compression damping, pronounced anti-squat, or a smaller diameter rear wheel than I am used to riding? It coulda been a combination of all three. However, IF there had been more low-speed compression adjustment range, and IF I could have flipped between wide open, super light compression damping and something more platformesque, THEN I might have been able to gain more insight into this. As it was, it was never really something that bothered me enough to want to actually do anything about.

Otherwise, the suspension worked exactly as advertised. There was a nice wide band of mid-stroke that held up well under power but also let the suspension go to work while relaying just enough feedback to let me read the ground. This gave way to a bit of ramp that I never felt the bottom of. Granted, I don't jump hard and am generally the first to remove volume spacers on ANY suspension, but I'm "husky" in stature and love a good G-out. Still didn't bottom it. Must try harder.

Basically, it reminded me a lot of my old Ibis RipMo, but with a little less plushness at sag point. If we were to draw general market comparisons, I would say the Digit is existentially somewhere between the flexstay Stumpjumper and something like the Pivot Switchblade. It's not as burly in its intent as a Stumpy Evo but isn't conceptually too far from a Transition Scout.

Tim Lane is making the kind of bike he wants to ride. He wanted something light, responsive, good handling, with sophisticated suspension that didn't require the complexity, hardware, and mass of other multi-link designs. It also happens to be made in the USA, out of aluminum, at a time when we are becoming increasingly cognizant of where our bikes are made and what they are made from.

If I was shopping right now, I'd be lining this up against some stiff competition. The bikes mentioned above are the tip of the iceberg in this super competitive segment. Most of them, I feel, are more steep and deep in their intent. I think really big human beings who like to crush really big jumps are going to be looking for something a lot more burly than the Digit anyway. At the other end of the trail ripping spectrum, the Digit has this sensible geometry, a light and sorta gentle riding frame, suspension that works real well but informs as it absorbs, BMW 2002 neutrality, an almost telepathic ease at dropping into turns, and that carvelicious little rear wheel.

I never really thought I would want to ride aluminum again. I also tried to dismiss mullet rear wheels as faddish. Yay, more crow to eat. I dig this bike. For trailriders who still crave the feel of side knobs biting in, who maybe ride more jibby than smashy, this is worth a good long look.