Santa Cruz

If ever a bike resembled your most cherished mix tape compilation, the Hightower is it.  Featuring our lower-link mounted shock design, updated, adjustable geometry, this “Engineering Best Of...” assembles some of our biggest design pleasers into one belter of a road-trip companion. The Hightower has been a does-it-all-well trail bike since its inception. More maneuverable than its longer-travel sibling, the Megatower, and more at home in the steep-and-chunky than its snappy cousin Tallboy, Hightower excels when the route covers ‘all points in between,’ and descents come courtesy of some big-ass climbs. The VPP suspension’s lower-link-mounted shock creates a nearly linear leverage curve, meaning it mops up bumps of all sizes and maintains the kind of progressivity normally reserved for our V10 DH bike! 145mm of rear travel complemented by a 150mm front end gives Hightower just a bit more front and rear travel over the first generation model. Combined with a slacker 65-degree head tube angle, the Hightower still sits squarely in the Goldilocks zone, but with a touch more “Oh sh*t get me out of here” capability when the porridge gets too hot! Balancing stiffness and weight savings in all the right places is a hallmark of all Santa Cruz carbon frames and the Hightower flies the flag yet higher. The advanced composite chassis tracks well across all trail surfaces, holds a line, and is reactive to rider directions while isolating pedal-influenced inputs. The Hightower also has a bonus disc to heighten the experience—the flip chip. In the High setting, the BB height is a little higher for those tricky tech trails and/or when Plus sized tires are required. In the Low position the shock rate is more progressive, to provide additional bottom-out resistance. Whatever mood you’re in, the tone of the Hightower can be adapted to meet your individual taste. And speaking of taste, there’s a room for a water bottle inside the main frame and a threaded BB for convenience. There’s refined cable routing for better shifting performance, simpler installation, and no cable rub. On top of that, there’s a tailgate shuttle guard, downtube protector, shock fender, and noise-canceling chainstay protector keeping things quiet. The lifetime frame warranty, lifetime pivot bearing replacement policy, and lifetime guarantee on the optional Reserve carbon wheels assures you that the Hightower will keep delivering the hits for years to come.

Key Features:

• Available in:Aluminum, Carbon C & Carbon CC
• Wheel size:29"
• Front travel:150mm
• Rear travel:145mm

The new 120mm Tallboy takes a leap further into what short-travel bikes really are capable of. With kick-ass lower-link VPP suspension, a streamlined design, the typical Santa Cruz refinement, and rather radical geometry, the Tallboy is back to being a genre bending folk hero. Sure, 10mm more travel might only seem like one small step—but coupled with a lower link-driven VPP suspension design this is one giant leap for the Tallboy. It’s the kind of bike that makes you sprint while going up, along, over, or down due to the maximum efficiency of the VPP design and responsive, lightweight chassis. But because it shares the same engineering principles as our longest travel bikes, the progressive lower link-mounted shock feels equally at home doing cross-country as it does in extreme-country. Paired with a 130mm fork the new Tallboy becomes ever more appealing to riders who like to open it up. And the geometry, that’s a big part of what’s going on… Established theory suggests shorter travel bikes get ridden slower, therefore require steeper and more conservative geometries. In reality though, when was the last time you ever throttled back on a fun trail because you weren’t on a bigger bike?  Caution to the wind and all that. So we’ve done the same here and mimicked our longer travel geometry to create a bike with a 65.5-degree head-angle, generous front center, and short offset fork. Something rarely seen on a bike of this ilk. And the radical thinking doesn’t stop there.  The Tallboy’s short-short 430mm chainstays have +/- 10mm of rear axle adjustment to ensure riders of all sizes and styles feel equally at home. Match that to a relatively low BB (335mm and 37.5mm drop) and you’ve got a combo that’s ready to haul into every pocket turn and launch out the other side.