CANYON SPECTRAL CF8 CLLCTV

Canyon’s new mullet Spectral is a cut-andshut job, but it’s no Frankenbike monster

- Danny Milner

£3,999 / 29/27.5in / canyon.com

NEED TO KNOW

• Mullet version of Canyon’s Spectral trail bike
• Black sheep of the Spectral family gets a Fox DHX coil shock to crank the fun factor up to 11
• Three different weight springs included to dial your set-up
• 160mm-travel fork paired with 150mm rear travel
• Adjustable geometry via flip-chip
• Full carbon frame available in four sizes

With its new Spectral CF8 CLLCTV, Canyon joins the short but growing list of brands with a dedicated analogue mullet bike. It even throws the horns and rocks its locks by keeping the term mullet, rather than going for the safer and more boring MX label that most rival brands have adopted.

First thing to get out of the way is that, while the wheel size mash-up is new for 2022, the Spectral chassis was refreshed last year, so if you’re familiar with that bike, you’ll have a head start understanding the new CF8 CLLCTV. For those of you playing catch-up, I’ll summarise the updates. Front and centre were changes to the geometry and sizing, with a longer reach, slacker head angle and steeper seat angle. The kinematics were also revised to give more support and improved pedalling performance. Finally, time and effort was spent increasing stiffness across the carbon front and rear triangles to give riders more accuracy and confidence.

Scratch below the surface and Canyon also took learnings from its Sender DH bike to make servicing and maintenance less of a headache. Replaceable captive nuts, steel pivot inserts, threaded BB shell, tube-in-tube internal cable routing, double-sealed bearings and a SRAM UDH mech hanger should mean you can spend more time partying than wrenching.