2021 On-One

Hello Dave SRAM GX

On-One’s Hello Dave is a radical hardtail with a wild backstory. With a 62º head angle and stretched 1295mm wheelbase on the size L, it puts the 29in front wheel in the land of DH bikes rather than the more conventional best hardtails on the market. And, if that’s where you choose to ride it, the steel monster truck is easily capable of handling it. Need to know: Slacked-out aggro hardtail from UK online value kings Planet X/On-One Three frame sizes in triple butted steel, all with long 458mm chainstays and equally long wheelbases RockShox Pike fork has 150mm travel and Select-level Charger damper. Top quality kit includes SRAM GX Eagle 1×12-speed drivetrain, G2 brakes and grippy Schwalbe Addix tyres. Sold in the UK by Planet X – an online retailer with a reputation for unbelievable value – the Hello Dave is supplied as a complete build with a 150mm-travel RockShox Pike fork and SRAM GX Eagle drivetrain for less than £1,700. There’s also a frame only option for £599.99. A history of sickness The triple-butted 4130 steel frame has a ‘designed in Yorkshire’ sticker, but was actually first built for another UK brand launched in a blaze of crowdfunding hype and far-out frame designs. Called Sick Bicycle Co., this outfit made plenty of noise about its progressive hardtail ideas and ‘stick-it-to-the-man’ attitude and appealed to a certain demographic before shirking on its promises and becoming terminally ill in 2019. Sick’s demise wasn’t due to an unwilling customer base, more a failure to deliver its orders. The backlog and social media backlash this led to got so heated there were threats of violence as irate customers lost patience and wished to make the firm’s founders very sick indeed. And with many riders in the lurch and out of pocket, plenty of frames ended up unpaid for and sitting dormant with the frame-builder in Peru. I’m not making this up! Cue On-One and the League of Gentlemen-referencing ‘Hello Dave’ name entering the tale. So On-One bought that first frame batch cheap and continued the relationship (albeit with a few tweaks like no modular dropouts) to keep prices keen. And, considering Sick charged hundreds more with plenty of willing customers, On-One’s price is even more appealing. It makes for a cool backstory too, but what exactly did Sick dream up in the first place and does it work? Radical frame and geometry Hello Dave is essentially a super-strong aggro 29er hardtail that’s pretty extreme in terms of geometry. Designed to be hammered, it’s geared towards the steepest and roughest downhills, rather than making too many concessions to all day rides or climbing. This is reflected not only in the slack head angle mentioned earlier, but in a stabilising chainstay that’s much longer compared to other hardtails. At 458mm, the whopping back end here would be a more common vital statistic on a long travel e-bike. Another interesting metric is the 50mm BB drop, which equates to a 326mm BB height. That is …Continue reading »

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Is the On-One Hello Dave 'Sick' hardtail just a DH geometry gravity freak or a more versatile aggro all-rounder than expected?

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