I met Jason, Pivot‘s traveling demo man, out at the USNWC yesterday for his last demo of the season before Interbike.  We tried to arrange a formal, long-term review of their upcoming Mach 429, but since the bikes he had were prototypes that had been on demo since Interbike last year, his marketing guy decided best to wait until the production frames are available.
So, if this isn’t a review, what can I tell you?
This:  If you’re in the market for a 29er, wait until this bike comes out and at least test ride it.  Keeping in mind this was a pre-production version, I have to say that the bike rode very, very smooth, hooked up on everything and was pretty “flickable” for such a large bike.  Some people argue that full-suspension just doesn’t work right on a 29er frame, but from my brief ride on this test bike, I’d beg to differ.  I never felt like anything was compromised to get 100mm travel on a big-wheeled bike, and it was stiff and pretty efficient.  In fact, I rode their 26″ Mach 4 afterward (which is also a very, very sweet bike) and felt overall much faster on the 29er.
The changes between what you see here (click on image for a larger version) and what will be hitting stores are few…mainly some squarer tubing on the front triangle and slightly redesigned seat-stay-area braces on the rear triangle.  We’ll be doing a full review shortly after Interbike, but you can read Speedgoat’s first impressions here in the meantime.
