The Significant Other Ded Reckin is a titanium and steel full suspension short travel trail bike made by Ashley King. It is designed, fabricated, finished, and assembled in Denver, Colorado, by the small team at Significant Other Bicycles – Ashley just opened the second pre-order for these bikes today, so we’re launching this review to coincide. Paul has been ripping the Ded Reckin prototype around Bellingham, WA, for the last few months. Follow along for his review and extensive photo gallery.
Significant Other Ded Reckin Overview
I have never ridden a mountain bike that so perfectly matched my riding style as this one. This bike is special. You can tell a lot of attention, skill, and determination went into this bike. Ashley and the team behind Significant Other knocked it out of the park with the Ded Reckin. It’s short on travel and big on presence. It has 120mm of rear travel, a 130 mm fork, and 14 eyeballs.
While gushing about Ashley, the brain behind the eyeballs of Significant Other, would be easy, this article is mostly going to be about the bike she built. For that, please read Travis’s interview with Ashley about designing her line of full suspension bikes and Petor’s story on her background and the brand.
Behind the name: Significant Other
I want to quickly touch on the name Significant Other, as I think it is important. Ashley decided on this name as it summed up her experience learning to build bikes, but also her experience on a bike. While learning to weld frames, she had this underlying feeling that she didn’t belong in the industry. She felt “othered.” And yet, that is how each and every single one of us feels. We all live our own experience, and to ourselves, we are the other to everybody else. Bikes have the potential to be unique to us and to carry us through stories, landscapes, and life. The name Significant Other is two-fold; it is the relationship Ashley wants with her bikes and the way she wants them to exist outside of the underlying landscape of the bike industry.
I hope that reading this review and looking at these images frees your eye from the status quo. And with that, let’s drop some gears, slam the post, and descend into this review of the Significant Other Ded Reckin.
Ded Reckin Quick Hits
- Made and Cerakoted in Denver, Colorado
- Grade 9 titanium front triangle
- 316L stainless and 4130 steel rear triangle
- 120mm rear travel, 190x45mm Standard, Inline, Air
- Upper shock mounting hardware: M8x16mm
- Lower shock mounting hardware: M8x30mm
- Designed for 130mm forks
- Clearance for up to 29″ x 2.5″ tires
- 148x12mm rear spacing (UDH)
- 44mm headtube – ZS44 Top/EC44 Bottom headset
- 73mm threaded BB shell
- 30.9mm ø seat post, internal dropper post routing
- Chainring Clearance: 36T
My Riding Profile
I am 5’10” and weigh ~170 pounds when dressed to ride. All of these photos feature a 200mm Bike Yoke Revive dropper post with my 750 mm saddle height. I live in Bellingham, Washington, and primarily ride hand-built trails with a moderate amount of chunk, the type of trails that make up the majority of our primary trail system. My local climbs are almost all fire road and moderately chunky singletrack.
My preference is for trails where flow must be picked out of the roots and rocks as opposed to being handed to you through extensive grooming and removed trail features. That said, the occasional guilty pleasure of a machine-built or hand-shaped roller coaster of a trail is fun. I am not the most talented at taming gravity, and consider myself more of the wheels-on-the-ground type of rider. Gap jumps and big air are not my forte; I much prefer finding freedom in natural trail undulations, where precision and timing make the small bits of airtime more memorable. I can get bikes slightly sideways and make shapes enough that they come through in photos. This bike made it easy.
Frame Details
The front triangle of the Ded Reckin is made of titanium, while the rear triangle is made of steel. The result: a wonderfully compliant frame. I’ll get into how that affects the ride later in the article. The chainstay yoke is 3d printed steel, and the main pivot cluster is printed titanium. For the new pre-order, Ashley is giving riders the option of choosing to have the rocker frame parts machined in Colorado by Prosise Metal Works (costs more) or overseas (costs less). That is an admirable decision that balances domestic manufacturing and puts the bike into a price point that more people can afford. The linkage pivot is laser-cut titanium. Please note that these photos don’t perfectly resemble the production bike’s design, which has been altered to be compatible with more shocks.
As pictured (with bottle cage and pedals, no bottle), this bike weighed 32 pounds and 10 oz. While that is a far cry from an ultralight XC bike, I think it would be fairly simple to lose a lot of the weight. A carbon crankset, a lighter set of wheels, a lighter fork, and XC tires would easily shed pounds from the bike, but it would also likely detract from the descending prowess. If you live somewhere flatter and prioritize the pedaling capability of a bike, perhaps consider building this bike up that way. If you live somewhere like Bellingham, where descents are somewhat more of the focus, the mini enduro build I tested would be great.
Frame Finish
I loved the black Cerakote finish on this frame. It is understated yet still beautiful, quirky, and unique. Eyeballs abound on the seattube, toptube, headtube badge, and even the loam shelf of the chainstay yoke. There are 14 on this bike. Yet, rather shockingly, this bike still slides under the radar. I like that. Nothing is that shiny, and the bike doesn’t pop from a mile away. Even the limited edition iridescent Cane Creek Helm is somewhat subtle and only shows it’s stunning finish when viewed from the right angle with the right light.
Ashley uses Cerakote for the finish work. This thin ceramic coating is quite durable but will also patina nicely compared to paint. Anodizing is cool, but there is a bit more control in the Cerakote process. The frames are raw titanium with black Cerakote details… stealthy, discrete, and subtle. Just lots of eyeballs.
Geometry
The frame I reviewed was the DR-45 (Dead Reckin, 45cm reach). All of the mountain bikes I have owned or ridden have had reaches between 450 and 475mm. The shorter side of that range feels more playful and nimble, the longer side of that range feels more stable and speed-capable. I have kind of settled on 460 being the perfect number. If I could customize the front triangle of a Ded Reckin, that would be the only change I would make. 450mm of reach felt small, but only when moving between bikes. Size charts tend to put me in a size large or medium-large, but I have found I prefer smaller-fitting mountain bikes.
Luckily, Ashley recently changed some of the ways riders can spec their bike and specify mildly-custom geo. I would have hesitated to choose the DR-47 geometry as I loved the 440mm chainstay length of DR-45. I loved how this bike wheelied. No, I can’t manual. You’ll have to read Travis’s reviews to see manuals.
What kind of bike is it?
This geometry is firmly and confidently in the short travel trail category of bikes. While I don’t like lumping bikes into categories (see: free thy eye), I recognize that consumers tend to start there in their search. So yes, this bike is “downcountry” in that it is more confident on the descent than an XC bike yet somewhat light on the travel numbers for what the industry is now calling a “trail” bike.
I did not swap the low-rise bars that Ashley sent with the bike to something with a taller stack, as I wanted to embrace her decision-making and see how it fared for me. Ashley lives in the Colorado Front Range, where trails are more pedal-focused than descent-focused. Though I live in Bellingham, where the vast majority of mountain bike riders are gravity obsessed, I like a more all-around bike and ride. Though the cockpit was significantly lower than other bikes I had recently ridden, I like how it paired with this bike. Could I have put a taller handlebar on it? Sure, but then I don’t think it would feel like the shorter travel bike that I really like. More on that in the descending portion of the article.
Suspension Design
The Ded Reckin uses a linkage-driven single-pivot design that is altered with a flex stay. That’s kind of a mouthful, and what does it mean? Single pivot suspension platforms are very simple: the rear triangle pivots around a single point. There are minimal bearings and not many other components to fabricate or maintain. This is why they are common on bikes from small builders. They are also great for those wanting more ground-hugging bike behavior, but they don’t necessarily pedal as well as something with a more complex suspension design, as you see on most of the big brands. By adding a linkage and flexible stay design, Ashley was able to get the suspension feel and frame design that she was after.
The flexstay design coaxes the suspension towards the sag point around 25-30%. It pushes the bike towards that point when unweighted and resists pushing further into the travel when under compression. This alters the leverage curve to make for a supportive pedaling platform that still remains supple to small bumps. The brake mount is just as much a part of the suspension as the shock, and its coaxial design helps separate the effect of braking from the suspension’s performance. Overall, the kinematics are tuned for pedaling support with a healthy amount of anti-squat and a more playful and energetic feel that comes from the flexstay design. The linkage-driven vertical shock layout also opens up the front triangle for big bottles or frame bags. Travis Engle is our resident suspension guru, and I highly recommend this Shock Value article that explains suspension kinematics.
Suspension Setup
A note about my preference when it comes to bikes: I like bikes that pedal well with minimal suspension movement and pedal bob. I don’t treat climbs as a necessary evil for getting to the top; I treat them as an equal part in the riding experience. Frankly, I probably spend more time sessioning features on climbs than on descents. This doesn’t mean that I want every bike to feel like a hardtail or XC bike, it just means that I don’t want to wallow through travel while hammering up a climb while listening to German EDM. Ya feel?
On the first few rides with this bike, I ran about 30% sag. I think I was actually running a bit more. I did feel like the bike wallowed a bit with that much preload, particularly the rear. My roommate took a spin on it and had the same thoughts. It ate through travel more than I wanted it to, but extra compression damping made things feel a bit harsh. I added pressure to both the fork and shock, and was pleasantly surprised at how much of a difference that made.
At 25% sag, front and rear, the bike came alive. It felt perky and no longer felt excessively bobbly during pedal inputs. Nestling into the travel felt predictable and welcome. I did try 20% sag for a bit, but felt like the bike was a bit more nervous when set to that pressure. Again, these are simply preferences and conclusions I came to for myself. Free thy eye and play around with it. For folks curious, I ran about 190psi in the shock at my 175-pound riding weight. That’s in line with what I run on other bikes.
Ashley worked with Cane Creek to make this project happen. I liked how these squishy bits performed, especially as I had never spent time on Cane Creek suspension before. Again, I’m referencing a Travis Engle article where he does a deep dive into why their shocks are so good, especially on a short travel bike like the Ded Reckin.
Climbing
Recently, I spent a day pedaling a friend’s Specialized Epic Evo. It’s a good comparison to the Ded Reckin for a number of reasons. For one, they live on complete opposite ends of the “availability” spectrum. The Epic is produced in the thousands, the Ded Reckin I reviewed will likely never exist as more than 100 units. There also might be a chance that you’re cross shopping these categories of bikes. While I don’t love reviews that seek to pit bikes against one another, I do think that this is a great place to have a conversation.
The Epic is an XC race bike and behaves as such. When hammering on the pedals, you can feel the suspension move, but very quickly, you run into a “platform” in the suspension travel that is hard to push through. It feels firm and efficient on the up, but that same ultra-supportive feel makes for a somewhat harsh descent when compared to the Significant Other. The Epic liked to perch high in the travel, and the Ded Reckin seemed to operate smoothly within it. The Ded Reckin climbs and pedals superbly, especially once I closed the low-speed compression circuit on the rear shock, but not quite like the rocketship that is a race-focused carbon XC bike. And that’s good, I don’t want a rocket ship, I want an earthly wagon to carry me through the woods.
Descending
This bike behaves much more like the short-travel trail bikes I have ridden than XC bikes. It felt similar to the Evil Following that I reviewed, which makes sense as Evil’s suspension is a modified single pivot as well. The flexstay design of the Ded Reckin encourages the bike to sit near its sag point with more than just air pressure. The stays want to be there and actively resist sinking further into the travel.
The result is a lively suspension that feels active enough to absorb small bumps and doesn’t bottom out easily under large compressions. When descending, it feels more inclined to carry the rider through the rough stuff instead of skittering nervously across the top. I was pleasantly surprised at how I could sit in the bike and let the suspension work. That said, there were still sufficient amounts of pop that side hits and silly doubles came easy. I really liked the shorter reach and chainstay length of the bike that aid in the nimble, tossable feel.
The low cockpit that this bike came with works well for undulating terrain, where yanking on the bars and pedaling hard is of priority. If I were building a bike to frequently ride the steep stuff that we have in Bellingham, I’d build something with a taller stack height. I’d go with a taller cockpit to keep my body more centered when pointed downhill. But, I don’t really like that kind of riding all the time, and I don’t think this is quite that bike. The Ded Reckin pedals well and wants to go explore. Undulating terrain is its home, and that is where I like to live as well.
It’s Alive
On flowy trails, the lively nature of the short travel platform made for fun riding without having to ride fast. Nose bonking off stumps was second nature, and finding side hits was easy. In the chunk, I allowed myself to be a bit more of a passenger and let the eyes on the bike find the right line. I lowered myself into the wheelbase and let the suspension soak up the impacts. I’m not going to claim that it felt like I was riding something with 180 mm of square-edge eating travel, but it did feel like the 120 mm of rear travel was punching well above its weight.
I found that this bike pumped incredibly well. I have a little challenge to ride one of our local trails with zero pedal strokes. I’ve tried it on so many different bikes and have come closest on the Ded Reckin. Is it the shorter bike? Is it the suspension platform? Was it the trail conditions? Was I riding particularly well that day? I will never know, but I do know that the Ded Reckin felt particularly well-suited to the job.
Let the little bikes feast.
There’s a trail in Bellingham that goes by a few names depending on when you discovered it. The first half of this trail rides the side of a hill, undulating with the terrain. The trail’s surface is fairly smooth, and the riding features lots of small doubles and compressions. The second half of this trail moves through a recent clear-cut and is chunky, rutty, and steep. I found that the Ded Reckin performed admirably in both of these terrain types.
My friend and I rode that trail one day, me on Ded Reckin and him on a Transition Scout. I rode it faster than I ever had. I rode fast enough that I missed a corner and found the bushes, to no fault of the bike. My buddy was in hot pursuit and took the same foolish line. It wasn’t yet berry season and we only came out with scratches, not snacks. We laughed. The Ded Reckin earned some respect: I was shocked at how well it had tried to recover me from my absurd decision-making. It offers a pleasant and calm ride even when pushed into speeds and terrain where bigger bikes tend to reign. Would I spend all of my time riding the bike like this? No, but it is capable enough for it.
Organic-like Frame Compliance
Here is where I think the Ded Reckin is most different from the vast majority of other full suspension bikes on which I have spent significant time. More so than on any other mountain bike I have ridden, it felt like the frame compliance was contributing to the ride experience and suspension performance. There is a discernible distortion in the frame as it folds through a corner and a clearly felt “return to center” as it springs out of the turn. It’s not excessive, and to put it simply, it feels really cool.
Compared to the carbon bikes with similar travel numbers that I have ridden, the vibrations coming through the handlebars and pedals felt more muted. A comparable metaphor would be wrapping your knuckles on a piece of still-wet driftwood, fresh out of the ocean, compared to one that’s been resting up on shore for months. The wet wood has a more damp and dull return to it. That’s how I’d describe the sensation of the Ded Reckin. It feels organic.
Currently, I’m reviewing a carbon bike with the exact same travel numbers. I had to dial back the compression damping, compared to the Ded Reckin, because I got so used to the compliant titanium and steel chassis playing a major role in how the bike molded to the trail. There’s metal magic happening with the Ded Reckin. Is it more than a full suspension steel bike? I don’t know, as I haven’t spent enough time on comparable steel bikes to say. John actually ordered a Ded Reckin, and I’m curious as to how he thinks it compares to his Cotic and Starling. Maybe he’ll write about it. Perhaps an article on chassis stiffness?
Pricing, Availability, and Build Kits
There are some big changes from Ashley’s initial pre-order round of the Ded Reckin. In the second round pre-order, riders can only choose frameset builds as opposed to a complete bike, but there are now greater customization options, including bespoke reach and stack.
Frameset options:
- frame only ($3700)
- frame + shock ($4100)
- Cane Creek Air IL or Coil IL
- frame + shock + fork + headset ($5,090)
- Significant Other Titanium Headset or Cane Creek Hellbender70
- Cane Creek Helm
Frameset Modifications:
- rear triangle swap: switch to the chainstay length that isn’t spec’d with your stock size (go shorter or longer) (+$100)
- custom stack and reach + long or short chainstay length (+$800)
- Prosise Metal Works machined parts (+$500)
- The machined parts on the stock frame (the rocker, lower shock mounts, main pivot bolt, and co-axial brake mount) are made by my CNC partner in China.
- You can choose to have these parts machined in Colorado by Adam of Prosise Metal Works instead
- A perk of choosing the Prosise Mod is that you can also choose a custom ano color or design for your machined parts, courtesy of the legendary Ashley of ashley.anodized.it (+150)
- Choose your serial number up to 14 characters (+$100)
- More bosses: stock boss configuration allows for one bottle in the front triangle; additional bosses are extra (+$25/boss)
- Add double or triple bosses underneath the DT
- Add double bosses on top of the top tube for more storage
- titanium hardware: all stock small bolt hardware is stainless steel, you can swap these for titanium (+$50)
- In list format, this might be a bit confusing, but it adds up cleanly in the pre-order process on Significant Other’s website.
That’s it. No full builds. I didn’t even really discuss the parts that came with this bike, as I think every rider will have their own opinions and choices. To be brief, I liked the Bike Yoke dropper and TRP brakes, but I found the TRP drivetrain to be lackluster and eager to drop chains. If I were to spec this bike myself, I’d choose a SRAM Transmission drivetrain, Hope Brakes, Wolf Tooth odds and ends, some wheels that I haven’t yet decided on, the Continental Kryptotal and Magnotal tires I rode, and the supplied Cane Creek suspension.
This second preorder is capped at a limit, with frames expected to start shipping in the late fall. The preorder will close on June 21.
TL;DR
The Significant Other Ded Reckin is a jaw-dropping bicycle, both in ride quality and aesthetic understatements. Ashley King, the maker, hates to label her bikes within a category, so I won’t either. This bike is short on travel and full of character. It pedals exceptionally well and has an addictive, organic-like frame compliance. It’s different, it’s beautiful, and it’s my favorite mountain bike I have ridden to date.
Pros
- Frame compliance makes for fascinating cornering and helps suppress trail chatter
- Playful and jib happy, but still carries speed in straight lines very well.
- Unique and eye-catching
- Made in the USA at an affordable price point
- No gimmicks
- 14 eyeballs
Cons
- I’m really struggling to find one.
