What happened here

[weirdoku]

Haven’t been on for a while, recently dusted off the mod after a few years to attempt to ride.

Where do people hang out these days? There’s next to no one online here, feels like some kinda purge happened.

What happened to all the parts manufacturers? There’s like 1 mod frame available to buy on tarty… heard about Deng a while ago. RIP, may he forever be CNC’ing in heaven lol.

Is trials finally dead?

[aener]

It's not dead, it's just pretty altered.

There's groups on Facebook which did a real number on forum popularity, but even with those the scene feels very much more fragmented than it used to be.
People say it's shrunk, but I'm not so sure. Maybe it has, but I kind of feel like about the same number of people ride, but all in their own little groups that don't cross paths so much.

Parts are weird. Pretty much everyone rides a Crewkerz now, and if they don't it's because they're on a Clean, and Inspired, or one of the newer carbon or street brands. They seem to have f**ked a lot of standardised parts off to lock you in to their own product line, which often has weak points. (The Clean crankset only fits the Clean freewheel, for example, and it's a terrifying thing to be near someone riding one.)

It's definitely gone quiet, but it's not gone, and people don't seem to want part variety or builds that suit them now. A handful of people ride these modern bikes (because that's all that's available at the minute) and tweak them to suit - shorter and higher stems or different bars etc - but the overwhelming majority seem to get a complete bike and ride it as sold, more like road bikes and MTB markets.

This is all subjective to my experience too, and I'm somewhat withdrawn from the scene too. Other people may have better knowledge.

[Mark W]

If you go on social media and search for trials related hashtags you'll find there's a lot of people still out there doing stuff, it's just that not much of it happens on forums any more. Social media has made everyone want to share photos/videos, and a forum isn't the ideal vehicle for that when you've got social platforms with larger audiences with built-in features allowing you to do it.

In terms of parts, it's mainly due to the pandemic and the knock-on effects of that (and other stuff going on in the world). Production got seriously delayed for almost all brands, or stopped entirely for others - due to China's zero covid policy Echo shut down super early into the pandemic, and the last thing I know about them was as of January this year they still hadn't been able to re-open their factory. China are still pursuing that method of dealing with the pandemic, so I assume they're still closed down now. Hopefully they'll be able to make it out the other side, but it's a huge financial burden to not be able to produce anything for 2+yrs while still having a factory...

Overall though, it is just the delays in production that mean things look slimmed down as far as parts go. Flipp's right in the sense that a lot of people have shifted to bikes like the Crewkerz, Clean and latest-big-on-social-media carbon brands. He's also right about the increase in proprietary parts being fitted to bikes, which in turn mean you're pretty locked into each brand's ecosystem. With Clean (the same is largely true for Crewkerz) as an example, once you've factored in the cost of the frame, the tensioner, the specific hub you need, the specific tensioner, the crankset and so on you're looking at not far off a complete bike price so I think for most people it makes sense to just do it in one. With basically all brands but Inspired selling direct to customer now it's easier to try and get a bit of a deal too.

[craigjames]

Doesn't help when you've got brands like Maestro/Xox (who a lot of people seem to ride for) don't have a website or do much in the way of marketing and advertising.

It is a shame that there isn't as much choice for a custom build, and as mentioned the move to manufacturer specific standards has limited options further. Hopefully manufacturing in China will kick off again and we'll start seeing some more products being offered, along with some updates/new websites to keep us all informed.

I do miss the busy forum, the stream of information, build threads and videos. Things change i guess!

[JT!]

I dusted off my old mod and sold it immediately, after riding my trail bike for a while couldn't go back to that tiny weird twitchy thing.

Then they started to build a skatepark down the street from me, my luck kept going up when I found a barely used Fourplay for sale really close by me. Then my luck ran out, the skatepark got put on hold. One of these days I'll ride that bike!

[weirdoku]

Damn social media ruining things eh. Good times we’re had here for sure.

Actually forgot about covid thing affecting parts, hopefully that ends and see more parts back in stores

Built up my Ko KM1 this week and went out for a bounce earlier, second pedal up the right pedal slides off the axle. Maybe it’s a sign lol.

 

[NINJА]

On 7/5/2022 at 7:35 PM, weirdoku said:

Is trials finally dead?

You can ask this question 70+ years later and I will answer NO. Would ride till I dead.

[Revolver]

On 7/7/2022 at 7:15 AM, weirdoku said:

Damn social media ruining things eh. Good times we’re had here for sure.

Actually forgot about covid thing affecting parts, hopefully that ends and see more parts back in stores

Built up my Ko KM1 this week and went out for a bounce earlier, second pedal up the right pedal slides off the axle. Maybe it’s a sign lol.

 

Good to see you're still alive lol

Built any new guitars and or keyboards?