From Dirt Issue 138 – August 2013

Words by Steve Jones. Photos by Steve Jones.

Back in 2005 Cane Creek introduced the Double Barrel shock. It was an exceptional shock. Its twin tube design came with Swedish Ohlins heritage, a company that had worked with the very finest motocross racers for many decades. I have clear memories of watching the brilliant Russian Gennady Moiseev and Swede Hakan Carlqvist win world titles back in the late seventies when they used Ohlins on their KTM’s and Husqvarna’s.

Back to bicycles, and there’s a part of many rider’s hearts connecting the two sports, it still took many years for the Cane Creek Double Barrel catch on – its superior performance was failed to be recognized by many companies and a certain disconnect emerged between riders and the shock in their ability to either know what they wanted or how to achieve it, even if it is the case with most other dampers too. More than this, many bike designs simply didn’t work with the brilliant damper.

This Ohlins/Specialized partnership sees a marked shift over the Cane Creek connection in several ways. First they have removed a large part of rider decision making to a certain extent and also have the unit dialled into the bike. On this occasion Specialized’s downhill bike the Demo, but it also becomes available for the Enduro Evo too.

What makes this shock special is that it removes any unwanted areas of damping, extremes whereby it is quite normal to be able to slow rebound down to almost zero movement or speed the unit up to an undamped wild spring like behaviour.>>