There's A New Drop Bar (Almost) In Town

<==The Singular Cycles Gryphon with Woodchippers.

Recently I finished up the review for the Woodchipper Bar from Salsa Cycles. I really like this handlebar and while it won't replace my Midge Bar on the Fargo, (because everything is perfecto on that bike, and I don't want to change a thing), I will be using the Woodchipper alot! Yes, it is that good, for those not wanting to read the review. I even bought two pair of my own, so I'm not kidding! Salsa really did a great job on this handle bar, and while not perfect, it is a great effort. I would have concurred on much of the design, had I had that opportunity. Actually, I did mention to them that the extensions needed to be tweaked a bit from the proto I saw last year, so I guess I had a wee bit of input there!

<===Image from the Ragley Bikes site of the new Luxy Bar.

There is a new drop bar for off roading coming soon though that I was asked about and had some measure of input into from the get go. Ragley Bikes, which is the brain child of former On One designer, Brant Richards, is responsible for this. Brant saw a post I made on mtbr.com once that listed a few things I wanted to see done in an off road specific drop bar. He asked me to draw it and send it to him. I did, and he took some of that input along with a bunch of other off road drop bar users input to come up with what he calls the "Luxy Bar" I will say up front that whatever input I had that made it through to the final version is most likely minimal, but that's the story.

I have not actually seen one of these yet, so this picture is all I really have to go on for the final production piece. What I can see here is that the hooks slope outwards more than the Woodchipper does, and I happen to know that these will be 31.8mm only and that diameter goes all the way out to the hooks before the bar sweeps forwards and down where in tapers to the traditional diameter to fit the road levers. Similar to a Woodchipper, the Luxy will also feature some sweep to the extensions which are also longer than a Midge Bar extension.

These look to have more reach than a Woodchipper does, so a shorter stem may be on tap for my purposes, but I like what I am seeing here. Hopefully I will be getting one of the first sets to check out. (One can never have too many off road drop bars!) <====Ha!

So, I am stoked to see these come out, and although they are quite different than what I had in mind, they look to be quite nice. We'll see. And maybe someday, I'll have to try out my own idea for a drop bar for giggles. I'm sure it would be a dumb idea, because, well........just look at the Luxy Bar. It's not really what I had suggested, so obviously my ideas were goofy! Much smarter people were at the controls for this bar than I, and that's a good thing!