Santa Cruz Bronson – First Look

The Santa Cruz Bronson has been about for a couple of years now, but is still proving a worthy bike. Check out our first look.

We’ve been lucky enough to get a frameset from the good people at Jungle Products (the UK distributor) to base our latest long term bike around. Since its launch a couple of years ago, where it was at the pointy end of the drive to 275 wheels, the Bronson has had a busy time. In the last 8 months since SC revamped the Nomad there have been quite a few people making the switch after a little more travel. In a relatively new move the Bronson is now available in three different framesets – the tried and trusted Carbon C, a new lower spec’d Carbon, and Aluminium. We have on test the Aluminium frame fitted with a Fox CTDK shock, and have built it up with a pimp range of components to make sure we do the bike justice.

Unboxing the Bronson was a treat, the satin black with magenta decals looks superb, as is the finish on the frame generally. There is everything you’d expect from a trail bike – ISCG05 mount, routing for front and rear mech, brake, and dropper post as well as a stealth dropper port. There’s no internal cable routing options, but we can live without that and once built and the cables trimmed the lines were not sullied. It also gave us the excuse to buy big packet of pink (magenta!) cable ties to finish the look.

Aesthetics aside, the frame is a beauty, quite a few people haven’t even noticed it’s not one of the carbon ones! Up front a tidy headtube features the classic badge as well as accommodating all the latest standards in fork sizes. We went for a tapered fork, and will be popping a Works Components headset in once it arrives.

The alloy frame has all the same features as the Carbon frames but at a cost of about half a pound. Using a VPP (Virtual pivot point) suspension design with short linkages means the back end is wonderfully stiff, helped out by the 142×12 rear axle. Down the bottom, the BB features a regular threaded shell rather than any sort of press-fit, keeping things simple. There are also bottle cage mounts on both sides of the downtube, the Californian design heritage being given away, I won’t bother with a bottle cage in the firing line of all that filth thanks!

The magic numbers all stack up pretty well for an all round trail bike; 150mm rear travel, 67 degree head angle and 73 degree seat angle give a solid all rounder that will climb and descend without too much bother. The sizing chart on the SC website is about right, at 5’11 and with a preference to some room in the cockpit we went for a large which felt about right. It’s worth checking the measurements before you get one as our large’s cockpit is about 17mm shorter than the Pyga we’d been on the week before at 610mm.

Despite the sunny climes of its homeland, servicing the linkage bearings looks to be straightforward – the linkages feature grease ports and you also get a grease gun in the box to keep things running smooth. Given how Wales likes to be wet I can see these coming in handy this winter. The Fox CTDK kashima coated shock seems to do the trick so far, we are still in throws of dialling it in, but it appears to be more refined than some CTD offerings we’ve used in the past.

Our first week on the bike has been a whirlwind of trails, we’ve put in a good few miles on some of our favorites including a couple of laps at Nant Gwtheyrn, just to see what would happen! So far she has been an absolute blast to ride both up and down the hill. We’ll bring you a more in depth take on how she rides in the next few weeks.

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Santa Cruz  Jungle Products