Soma Gator Bar Review

The Soma Gator Bar as seen on my Karate Monkey

The "world" of off-road drop bars is a weird, strange one with freak show bars and bizarre stems joining together to make for an often "hit or miss" component selection for gravel and off road riders. The bars are often times so out of the ordinary that, even though the design may be brilliant, the bars do not sell due to their massive departure from the norm of road racing bred drop bars. Sometimes that is frustrating to me, and in other cases, it makes a lot of sense. Case in point- The Soma Gator Bar.

The Soma Gator Bar is definitely one of the oddest drop bars I am aware of. At first glance, it looks vaguely similar to a Salsa Cycles Woodchipper Bar, but the resemblance is only cursory. The reality is that the Gator Bar stands alone with no known drop bars even coming close to its unique features. And just what are those, you may ask? Well, for starters, the extensions are mountain bike control compatible. What that means is that you could mount brakes and shifters right off your mountain bike to the longish extensions, as Soma made the diameter of this part of the bar 22.2mm. Here's a short bullet list from Soma's site on the features of this bar:

• - 6061 butted aluminum
  - Size/Width: 655mm at ends, center-to-center
  - Width: 505mm at front of drops, center-to-center
  - Width of flats on top: 340mm
  - Center: 31.8mm
  - Drops flare out at 20° angle
  - Drops are 190mm long and have an OD of 22.2
  (i.e. they can take flat bar grips)
  - Reach: 65mm / Drop: 112-160mm
  (Reach and drop is relative to the angle you install these bars at. On these types of bars, you want to angle the drops down, not have them parallel to the ground as with road bars)
  - Weight: 400g
  - No cable grooves
  - Shotpeen finish
  - Black or silver

The Gator Bar has narrow tops, a lot of flare, and a deep drop.

My initial reaction to the bar was that it had too deep of a drop. In fact, I have had this bar for over a year now sitting in the Lab, waiting for a suitable bike/set up to try it on. Every time I thought I could use it, I found that the extensions would end up so low that they would be unusable. Finally, I tried them on the resurrected Karate Monkey I have and the fit was......hmm.....okay? It was far better than anything else I had been able to try it on, so I thought I'd give it a go, despite its deep drop.

Those extensions are really long!

From the top the Gator Bar looks somewhat inviting. The long extensions could certainly be trimmed back, but the tops, despite being narrow, are nice. I'm not a big fan of the Cinnelli-like "rounded" section from the tops to the ramps, but a lot of people dig that sort of classically inspired bar shape. It isn't a deal killer, but in conjunction with how that corner also slopes downward to the brake hoods, it makes for a difficult to love position for cruising on the tops/hoods. Besides this, I felt the reach was a hair too long, but I suppose one might be able to adjust for that with stem length. Well, that is if the drops didn't have such the depth that these bars' drops have. I was stuck with one stock option for a stem from Dimension. Otherwise it would have to be mated up with a custom stem, and you'd have to be pretty sold on the rest of the bars' attributes to go to that expense, in my opinion.

The radius of the drop section suffers from what I call "Woodchipper Syndrome". Hey- if you like Woodchippers, that's great, but that radius makes lever placement tough.

The drop radius is what really tanks this bar, in my opinion. It is a similar beef I have with the Woodchipper. If you want your hoods to come off the ramps at an angle parallel to the ground, you have no choice but to have the extensions pointing downward at such an angle I find many people won't use them. (Based on experiences setting up Woodchippers for others.) This isn't at all what off road drop bars are about. In fact, it is the antithesis to the whole reason for a flared, swept drop bar. In the case of the Gator Bar, I had to compromise my ramps/hood position to get a usable extensions grip that, in the end, meant that neither position was suitable for my tastes. Well, not when you have Midge Bars, Cowchippers, and Gary Sweep OS bars that do the job so much better and afford one all the grip options with little to no compromises. So, yes......I ended up taking these off my Karate Monkey.


My final verdict on this bar is that it is so odd that it may only work for a very few folks. Soma makes the June Bug, a Midge Bar knock-off, which, in my opinion, is three times as usable as this bar is for most people. If a highly swept, angled extension bar is your cup of tea, I would point you toward the Woodchipper before taking a chance on this one. That said, this could be the bar you've been waiting for. In that case, I'd jump on this quick. In the fickle world of off road drop bars, you never know how long you'll be able to get such an odd handle bar.


Note: Soma Fab sent me this bar ages ago for test/review and I was not paid, nor bribed for this review. I strive to give my honest thoughts and opinions throughout.