{"id":1270,"date":"2016-03-22T02:57:07","date_gmt":"2016-03-22T02:57:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ssgc.co\/?p=1270"},"modified":"2016-03-22T03:41:03","modified_gmt":"2016-03-22T03:41:03","slug":"review-reid-sscx-cyclocross-single-speed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/singlespeedgoldcoast.com\/2016\/03\/22\/review-reid-sscx-cyclocross-single-speed\/","title":{"rendered":"Review: Reid SSCX Cyclocross Single Speed"},"content":{"rendered":"

Looking for a cheap entr\u00e9 into this winter’s cyclocross? Or just want a bike that’ll take you down a gravel road and back? Reid might have the answer for you in their single speed cyclocross bike, the Reid SSCX<\/a>.<\/p>\n

How do you feel about Reid? I’ve ridden half a dozen of their bikes. What they deliver at the price is hard to knock. Doesn’t mean people don’t knock them. It’s easy to compare a $350 fixie with a hand-build custom and find it comes up short. The bikes I’ve ridden, considering their price, have never come up short. That said, Reid are definitely stepping up and those who have dismissed this brand before might have to have a fresh look at the Reid SSCX.<\/p>\n

The SSCX is a beautifully finished product. The welds are tiny uniform beads. The grey matt looked a treat and the understated Reid\u00a0and SSCX graphics set it all off nicely. Made you want to climb right onboard and get going.<\/p>\n

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What’s The Reid SSCX About?<\/h3>\n

The Reid SSCX is a tilt at providing us a single-speed cyclocross bike.\u00a0At $500 retail it’d be a cheap way into Cyclocross, if you’re interested in that sort of thing. (Too much like actual racing\u00a0for this guy.) It’s also a gravel grinder or tough city commuter, if you want to take it that way.<\/p>\n

The gearing doesn’t give too much of a hint toward where Reid place the SSCX. I was comfortable riding this bike on road. With the knobby tyres it rolled along quite nicely. Off-road the gearing suited gravel roads and this is where I enjoyed the bike the most. The gearing let me conquer a few small climbs when the gravel turned back to tarmac. And I could imagine it’d just about suit racing cyclocross. Though to be honest I think\u00a0I’d need to drop\u00a0a couple of teeth off the front cog before I got stuck into sucky mud.<\/p>\n

I reckon Reid are having a bit of an each way bet with the SSCX. \u00a0They’ve shot for the mid-ground and I think that tells us where Reid sees this bike. It’s whatever you want it to be. \u00a0Swap a cog if you want to dedicate it to cyclocross perhaps. Swap the tyres if you want to ride it on roads. Or just enjoy the bike as is, ride the damned thing everywhere like I did, from home to beach and lake and cross-country and then back through the bike trails of suburbia.<\/p>\n

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There’s the right fixings to add a rack, further indication that Reid expect\u00a0the SSCX to be versatile.<\/p>\n

Riding Reid SSCX<\/h3>\n

The first few moments\u00a0after I got\u00a0on this bike I felt\u00a0like the front end wallowed. The feeling dissipated\u00a0soon enough. But I was left wondering if this wasn’t just a\u00a0road bike with a raked out front end. The answer isn’t obvious until you get it off road. That’s when the bike makes perfect sense. Handling off-road is natural and intuitive. It’s not mountain bike and it’s not road bike. (One likes to draw parallels, you see…) It feels a lot more like a road bike than last CX bike I threw a leg over<\/a>. The main thing here is, the bike goes where you point it. Ever ridden a road bike off-road? You have to kind of hang on and steer the bike by force of will. With the SSCX you can point where you want to go and reasonably expect the bike to go there. I even got a little whip happening on some trail obstacles once my confidence was up.<\/p>\n

Few bikes invite to be skidded the way this one does. The front end just wants you to lean on it and break\u00a0traction at\u00a0the rear. And who am I to disappoint? With slightly knobby tyres the traction riding on roads and paths was\u00a0skid friendly. I’d hate to take back bald tyres so I’m glad I’ve spent more time off-road where getting my skiddy thrills was\u00a0harmless to the rubber. The back end loved to be trying to say hello to\u00a0the front and driving it into corners this was was too much fun to resist. Which is good because in some ways I never quite got rid of that sensation of the front end wanting to wallow. Was it just me? We got a fair bit of rain and I never really wanted to lean it over on wet roads. But who needs to when cornering is better done at a slide.<\/p>\n

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The bike felt\u00a0so comfortable off road I had to remind myself that it\u00a0wasn’t\u00a0a mountain bike. The bike and the trail reminded\u00a0me soon enough. I’m used to having 140mm of boing front and\u00a0rear to soak up the bouncy bits. With nothing but myself as suspension I was reminded how quickly things can get out of shape\u00a0when you hit some rocks or roots at speed.<\/p>\n

The more I rode the SSCX the more fun I had. Flat off-road trails are a bore on a proper mountain bike. On the SSCX they were\u00a0a treat. I discovered the pleasures of exploring gravel tracks, finding unexpected trails in places I thought I knew pretty well. Big knobbies and loads\u00a0of front and back bounce are also a complete bore on sealed roads. On the SSCX the ride home was just an extension of the rest of the ride.<\/p>\n

Tearing down to Burleigh with a screaming tailwind I ran out of pace. Left wanting a bigger gear. Not by much. The\u00a0flipside was that it\u00a0allowed me to get home from exploring those trails without feeling like I was dying. My fitness isn’t at the impressive end of our sport and a couple hours in the saddle and some undulating terrain on the way home made me grateful for the gearing the bike carried.<\/p>\n

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I’m a bit of a convert to the idea of a gravel bike now. I’ve hated on\u00a0gravel bikes before. Aren’t gravel bikes just normal bikes ridden on gravel? Do we need another type of bike in our\u00a0garage? That’s the kind of thing I said. The answer is, I’ve discovered, yes. This bike fills a niche and it’s buckets of fun when used to explore. So I’m reassessing my attitude to gravel bikes (but I still for the moment deplore fat bikes, until perhaps I actually ride\u00a0one).<\/p>\n

As a road bike it’s not as fast as a fixie would be. You’re carrying more weight and you’ve got bigger tyres and that slightly lower gear. The flip side is the bike helps you find new ways to navigate the streets. You start finding ways to do things you couldn’t on a more delicate ride. So rather than picking my way through street works, I barrelled through them. I feared gutters less (though to be honest my bunny-hop was woeful) and I could trackstand for days on this thing. It\u00a0was\u00a0so stable I found I could do things I couldn’t do on my own bike, like rolling backward during\u00a0a trackstand while looking sideways down the road for traffic, pushing forward again as the car passed. The trackstand itself didn’t need my focus to make it happen. (If only I looked remotely as cool in real life as I did in my imagination while doing this.) If you’re struggling with track stands, get this bike (or, you know, practise your track stands).<\/p>\n

Components On The Reid SSCX<\/h3>\n

The first thing I noticed were the center-pull brakes. I remember mountain bikes\u00a0transitioning from center-pull brakes to v-brakes and then to disc. (Giving my age away again.) I’ve often wondered why so many bikes like tourers, cyclocross and gravel bikes still use center-pull when v-brakes were so much better. Well I’ve got my answer. Because center-pull brakes\u00a0work just fine. And you don’t have to stuff around nearly as much. Getting the best out of v-brakes required a lot of fiddling. These brakes were set-and-forget and always had enough braking for a bike of this type.<\/p>\n

It’d be great to see disc brakes on this type of\u00a0bike. But not at this price. If you saw disc brakes on a bike at this price you could assume one of two things. Either every other component was sacrificed so they could get\u00a0disc brakes on there for marketing purposes. Or the disc brakes themselves were rubbish. I like that Reid have made a practical and functional choice for us cyclists.<\/p>\n

The bottom bracket and crankset are a no-name\u00a0combo looking good in matt black. You’ve got a square taper bottom bracket. That might give some hassles down the track for those with big legs but at this price I’ve not seen any brand offer splined bottom brackets. All bearings are sealed, as I’ve come to expect from Reid, and that includes the wheels.<\/p>\n

There are a good looking set of Alex double-wall rims running on those hubs. They look the goods and ought to stay true through a fair bit of abuse.<\/p>\n

The handlebars are good for their job, with that small drop common to cyclocross bikes. The top bar is flat to give you somewhere to rest your hands on long grinds.<\/p>\n