Yelli Screamy ! ?

As usual, I was on MTBR forums and found myself browsing through a photo thread in the "all-mountain" section. Specifically, it was members posting pics of their AM hard-tail rigs. In the past, I've always associated AM with a full-suspension bike and would never think of riding a hard-tail for anything more than cross-country riding. I was wrong. Turns out, there are quite a few people running HT bikes pretty aggressively and several manufacturers producing slacker HT frames meant for longer travel forks and abusive riding.

Looking through the pages of bikes photos that were posted, one particular bike caught my eye due to the frame itself as well as the name...Yelli Screamy. Lets face it...most hard-tail frames look pretty much the same. It's a generic metal tube frame consisting of triangles, a seat post, and a fork. But there was something different about this frame...the bend in the top tube, the short chainstays, it just stood out among the rest of the bikes I was looking at. So, from there I of course had to look into the bike and see what it was all about. The Yelli Screamy is made by a company consisting of two brothers....the Canfield Brothers. They produce a range of frames from downhill to trail and have begun producing other components including cranks, pedals, and wheelsets. Most of the articles I could find on the Yelli Screamy produced glowing reviews and quite the following as a great handling trail/all-mountain hard-tail. It boasts one of the shortest chainstays (16.7") on a hard-tail frame, and is advertised as a "29er that handles like a 26er". Back when 29er's first started appearing, many critiqued their handling as less precise and awkward. The Canfield Brother's have claimed to change this with a more playful frame geometry. From all that I have read online, this claim seems to be true.

So is this the bike I've been looking for? Well it's not full-suspension, but it is also much cheaper than a full-suspension frame. The big question is...do I really want a full-suspension bike? In general, a HT is lighter, cheaper, stiffer, and simpler than a full squish bike. What does this mean? Well, it's all subjective, but less maintenance and service as well as less to go wrong when your on the trail is a big plus to me. Better climbing is a plus also. I've always heard that a HT makes you a better rider...

Needless to say, I bit the bullet and decided to buy the frame and try my hand at building it up!
To be continued.....