We’re all looking for a sweet spot when trail riding, whether balancing climbing & descending or just finding a work:life balance with enough time to actually ride. Well, for custom frame builder Sklar, the Sweet Spot is building stock steel hardtails, with progressive geometry ready for big all-mountain riding…
Sklar Sweet Spot, premium steel all-mountain hardtail
We know Adam Sklar for his finely crafted, custom steel & ti all-road and mountain bikes, made in his Bozemon, MT workshop. His swooping, cruiser-inspired hardtail mountain bikes are sought after for their playfulness & craftsmanship. But they are both expensive and a long wait to get ahold of.
Progressive geometry
The idea behind the new Sweet Spot was to take the progressive geometry that Sklar developed by building hundreds of custom hardtails, and pare it back into a more readily available stock geometry that Adam could produce more quickly, and at a lower cost to the buyer.
The sweet spot then, was dialing in three stock geometries that would fit a wide range of riders, giving them the ultimate steel trail hardtail at a more affordable price.
Tech details
The Sweet Spot is made in the USA from high-quality 4130 chromoly steel tubing that Sklar custom bends & shapes to create the perfect ride, optimizing drivetrain stiffness & flex for rider feel.
The bike is a 29er made for high-volume 2.6-2.8″ tires, so the medium & large are designed around a 150mm fork, but the small is paired with a 130mm for consistent handling.
The bikes all get Boost spaced Syntace thru-axles, with a 3D printed stainless steel chainstay yoke to fit those massive tires & the regular Boost chainline, and can fit up to a 36T chainring.
The bikes feature external downtube cable routing, plus a seattube cable port for an internal 31.6mm dropper post. They get three bottle cage mounts, tapered steerer headtubes, 73mm threaded BB & 180mm post mount rear brake
Pricing & availability
While the new Sweet Spot is a stock geometry hardtail, Sklar still builds each bike to order, so there aren’t a bunch of frames lying around waiting to ship.
With that you get to pick one of three stock sizes (S-L) and one of four powder coated colors: Pebble Grey, Strawberry Pink, Umbra Grey, or Mint Pastel. If you want anything different than that, you have to go custom. Lead time on the stock Sweet Spot is ~3 months (down from more than 12 months currently for full custom).
The Sweet Spot is available as a frame only for $2850 (a grand less than custom steel) or in a $3900 frame kit together with a King or White Ind. headset & a RockShox Pike Ultimate fork.
Three complete bike builds are also offered. An alloy component spec is the most “affordable” at $7430 with SRAM GX Eagle, the Pike Ultimate fork & Industry Nine Enduro 305 wheels. XX1/X01 & Enve bring it up to $9950. And then a completely tricked out carbon build with XX1 eTap AXS and Enve/King wheels tops out at a wallet crushing $11,110.
The bikes are available to order now, so drop a grand or two as a non-refundable deposit directly from the Sklar website to secure your place in the build queue.
