Kore Controls – First Look
My name is Simon and I am a Baroholic. It’s taken some time to come to terms with it but there is no denying the fact. There used to be a time when I was utterly ignorant about bars. Just something to hold onto, if they don’t ever break then they have worked. Thankfully as bar technology has moved on so have I and now I have a collection of bars so vast they actually have their own room in my home. All of them are in near perfect condition, not snapped, bent, dented or scratched but the collection is so varied and wide simply because I’ve realised just how important bars are. There is no question they have been the single biggest factor in moving my riding forward. Finding the right width, rise and sweep have transformed my riding so Bars are unquestionably my Holy Grail.
The Kore OCD Bars are their high-end gravity addition to the range. Made from 7050-T6 butted and heat treated aircraft quality aluminium and sitting at the now almost standard 800mm in length they immediately felt like they were on the money. Nice and light at 257g and with a 20mm rise, 5 Degree Upsweep and 7 Degree Backsweep they are where modern bars need to be. As a bonus they are pretty too. It’s all personal taste of course but the bead blasted black is nice and stealthy. If bright and sparkly is more your thing then they are also available in Powder Coated White, polished red, grey or silver. They have fairly busy graphics going on which may not to be to everybody’s taste but it’s a high quality finish all the same. Finally they are equipped with cutting marks if you want to go a bit shorter in width for more Enduro style duties.
Time will tell if these are my Holy Grail.
Kore have also released their three-piece direct mount stem. Again in a nice stealthy black or a sparkly white with a very cool and understated CNC’d logo. At 113g this feels superlight, combined with zero rise and a 50mm extension it seems the numbers are once again on the money. The machining is as good as it gets, all of the edges are silky smooth on the bar clamp area and the finish is top notch. Visually it looks such an insignificant piece of kit with its three-piece design but given its weight and extensive World Cup testing it’s clearly a design that works.
Finally but not unimportantly are Kores Ikon lock-on Grips. Utilising the fairly standard lock-on system with one 3mm bolt at each end should pretty much guarantee no chance of slipping. A significantly chunky raised ‘KK’ logo surface looks to provide a nice soft and grippy feel, particularly for none-glove wearers, and a nice narrow profile at 135mm in length completes.
Available in black, white or grey.
Words: Simon Lacey
Photos: Beth Lacey