Stanton Bikes designs & builds a wide range of metal mountain bikes in-house on the edge of the Peak District in the UK. But it’s their mid-travel, short link Switchback & Switch9er FS trail bikes that look like the most fun. Mating steel front triangles to alloy rear ends with 140 or 160mm or rear wheel travel and 29″ or 27.5″ wheels, the Stanton switches it up with some unique mountain bike designs.
Stanton Switchback & Switch9er FS UK-made trail bikes
UK mountain bike builder Stanton only really started producing frames around eight years ago, with a modern rethinking of the idea of a do-it-all trail hardtail. Now, after several generations of Taiwanese-made steel, then titanium hardtails that carved a niche out in the UK, founder Dan Stanton has brought all frame production back to the UK, in their Derbyshire, England workshop. And the project that originally made that happen last year was their Switchback FS family of UK-made full-suspension trail bikes.
Three separate full suspension bikes – Switchback FS 140, Switch9er FS & Switchback FS 160 – they all share the same construction and much of the key details, adapted for 27.5 or 29 ” wheels and 140mm or 160mm of travel.
Stanton Switchback – Tech details
Like the original Switchback hardtails, the Switchback FS bikes were developed to be playful all-around trail/all-mountain/enduro bikes capable of everyday trail to bike park riding. They are said to feature versatile suspension kinematics with a progressive bottomless feel that pedals well, yet eats up both small & large bumps thanks to the ‘dual link pivot system’.
The bikes all are handbuilt from triple-butted Reynolds 631 steel main triangles with straight 44mm headtubes to fit any fork, gussets to handle any load, and CNC-machined steel pivot points. Their rear ends are built from two independent boxy, heat-treated aluminum triangles that are joined together rotating on two CNC-machined alloy linkages.
The bikes all feature traditional threaded bottom brackets, stealth 30.9mm dropper post compatibility, full-length external cable routing, machined Swapout dropouts (Boost 148 standard).
The bikes all come in four stock frame sizes (15, 16.5, 18 & 19.5″) with claimed weight for all models effectively the same at 3.95kg without shock, 4.47kg with shock (15″).
Stanton Switchback – Pricing & availability
All three of the Switchbacks retail for £2500 for the frameset, including the option to pick either a Fox X2 Air or Ohlins TTX Coil shock for these first, individually numbered Launch Edition frames.
The three frame variants are the 140mm travel front & rear 27.5″ wheeled Switchback FS 140, the 140mm rear/160mm front 29er Switch9er FS, and the 160mm travel front & rear 27.5″ wheeled Switchback FS 160. The first 100 individual frames of each model are being offered in a range of custom colors and geometry.
Complete bike builds are also available in all models starting from £3975 and up.
Stanton steel & titanium trail hardtails
Following on from the UK-made FS (full-suspension) bikes, all the steel and titanium bikes have now moved to UK-production.
On the steel side that includes the £700 XC Sherpa 853 UK (80-120mm forks), all-rounder trail to enduro Slackline 853 UK (120-140mm forks), the all-mountain to enduro Switchback 531 UK (120-160mm forks) & it’s big-wheeled all-mountain Switch9er 531 UK (120-160mm forks). Steel hardtails are available now for pre-order, with estimated spring-summer availability depending on model.
And on the titanium side, the £2000 XC Sherpa Ti UK (80-120mm), trail center Slackline Ti UK (120-140mm), epic all-mountain trail Switchback Ti UK (120-160mm) & big-wheeled trail Switch9er Ti UK (120-160mm). All of the ti bikes have just begun serial UK production, so lead time is about 4 months for full availability.
