Maybe not the best forum to ask, but if you have or had one, what’s your experience with a Redshift Shockstop stem? I’m very happy with the smoothness of my gravel bike on pavement and dirt running a 44mm WTB Raddler tire at 26 psi in the front. It’s only going fast on rougher surfaces and descending that I’d like some additional absorption. Do they provide decent benefit in situations like that? I know an actual suspension fork would be better, but I’m not interested in going that route at this point.
I used one when I had a gravel bike and it worked really well and I would recommend. I definitely noticed the difference. Also it felt fine on the smoother stuff and I barely noticed a difference to a rigid stem in those situations. Just be sure to set it up correctly with the right elastimers for your weight.
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I ran one for years before I got my Lauf, big fan. Noticeable reduction in hand/arm fatigue in long races. There is a bit of a spring effect that some don’t like, but I didn’t find it to detract from performance. It can take some trial and error to find the right stiffness, I liked mine on the firmer side. I also used mine w aero bars, worked well to make them more stable off road.
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What I was thinking is that I’d set them up with one of the stiffer elastomers to minimize the effect during most riding so that they mainly kick in on rougher stuff, or with more weight on the bars descending. Do you think that’d work reasonably well?
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Haven’t tried the Lauf fork, but been happily using Redshift stem for more than a year and when tested against Rudy on the same bike there was almost no difference
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I think the best way I would describe it is that you really don’t notice it unless you are consciously thinking about it, but you sure would notice if you switched back. It does a great job of taking the edge off and helping with hand/ forearm fatigue.
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Yes. I used to have one and same as user you are responding to I set it up with a firmer elastomer. It worked well. It’s easy enough to swap out the elastomers to see what works best. But it definitely takes the edge off on rougher roads.
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That was basically my approach.
There are definitely similarities between the redshift stem and the Lauf fork, both provide a bit of undamped “travel”. But the redshift stem still has the entire frame/front of the bike travelling (only isolates the rider) while the lauf just isolates the wheel and limits bike/frame movement. It just feels smoother. A proper damped fork like a rudy has some advantages, but I also think the undamped options also have advantages when we are talking about short travel for gravel. Undamped has a little bit of a spring effect, but does better at smoothing constant road chatter (zero stiction in the fork). Damped does better absorbing big hits with minimal bounce. For me, the Lauf fork feels similar to running a higher volume front tire. There are probably courses where the weight/complexity of damped suspension makes sense, but I find the lauf to be excellent in most conditions and I struggle to find many use cases where I’d pick a short travel damped fork over the lauf for gravel racing (even if I ignored the additional weight and cost/complexity of maintenance for the damped fork).
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OK. You guys talked me into it. I just placed the order. I’ll report back after I’ve ridden it.
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Good call, I was skeptical but tried one anyway and I love it. I don’t really notice it now that I’m used to it, I can do longer rides without the arm and neck fatigue I was feeling before.
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I liked mine when I had it. I ended up running a firmer elastomer than recommended. That said, I now have rigid forks on both my gravel bikes with bigger tires and Lauf Smoothie bars, and I am not sure I miss it.
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Yeah. Those do look good. I have carbon bars now and have and had various others others on road and mtb too. I feel they might cut a little of the very high frequency stuff, but that’s not what I’m after in this case, which is the bigger jarring hits that are more than a mm or two of bar compliance might help with.
I just went with what redshift recommended for my weight and worked perfectly for me.
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I’ve been running a redshift stem on my titanium bike for about a year. I particularly liked it with the aero bars.
I took it off for the first time last week and did a chunk 40 mile ride today with 5000’ of climbing. I loved the solid stem when climbing and on pavement, but I really missed it on some of the really chunky downhill sections. I think I’ll most likely be changing back. Might put in a slight stiffer elastomer, but we’ll see.
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Tangentially related, picked up an eesilk+ seatpost for gravel mode on a bike that wheel swaps between disciplines and it’s unexpectedly staying on for road mode. Seated riding over cobbles, lush.
Has me stem curious!