TESTED: Specialized Rhyme Expert Carbon

Specialized are working hard to address various holes in the market and to complete their women’s range. Up until recently it’s been quite rare to find a women’s-specific bike with much more than 140mm of travel, nor one that would be suited to the demands of serious all-mountain riding and enduro racing – the climbing, the descending, the intensity and the gnarliness. It’s interesting to note many women competing on the Enduro World Series circuit use unisex bikes, race ‘prototypes’ (which seem to be unisex bikes branded as women’s rigs by sponsors), or adapt their women’s bikes by adding 160mm forks, and so on – in order to remain competitive. Things are slowly changing. But not how you’d expect…

In the last couple of years, Santa Cruz’s Juliana line of women’s bikes have added the 160mm carbon Roubion to their line-up, and Yeti have released the Beti for 2016. Specialized have joined these, adding the Rhyme to their line-up for 2016. While last year they offered the trail-oriented 110mm travel Rumor, and the XC style duallie the Era, the Rhyme is their first foray into all-mountain, enduro bikes for women, or smaller riders.

I say ‘smaller riders’ because it’s interesting to note that all the enduro style ‘women’s specific’ bikes above (the Roubion, the Beti, and the Rhyme) are designed around existing unisex mainframes, with other parts, such as stems, handlebars, and shocks, custom designed to suit women, added when they’re bolted together.

Initial impressions

The Rhyme is built on the same carbon mainframe and alloy rear triangle as Specialized’s unisex 160mm travel Stumpjumper FSR Expert, but offers another size, an XS, to the lineup, along with the usual ‘contact points’ parts tailored for women – saddle, handlebars, and grips, and slightly shorter stems. While this may seem disappointing at first, it’s much cheaper for bike brands, and it allows them to concentrate on other issues that can be more important when considering riders who are lighter or smaller – particularly shock tune, but more on that later.

Still, this raises the question as to whether this could spell the end of the women’s specific bike as we know it? Will bike brands abandon developing different frame geometry for women and return to the ‘shrink and pink’ approach? The only material difference between a lot of women’s and unisex bikes nowadays is that they’re offered in smaller sizes and tuned for lighter weights. If you have a 13-year-old son, for example, who wants to get started in enduro, the Rhyme could be perfect… Good luck getting him to ride it.

The Rhyme’s Fact 9m carbon frame is finished beautifully, and has a nice turquoise and matte black/carbon finish, and the alloy rear triangle blends in nicely.

Innovation is Specialized’s core business, and much of this is based around their SWAT (Storage, Water, Air, Tools) line of products and customisations. A lot of the reasoning behind SWAT seems to be that people don’t want to have pockets of backpacks full of spares and supplies while they’re riding – which is true – and the brand has come up with various alterations to undergarments, bib shorts, and bikes to help you carry it all. With some not-to-be underestimated alterations to the size and production of the downtube, the Rhyme comes specced with Specialized’s proprietary SWAT Door, a little removable casing on the downtube right under your bottle cage where you can stuff a tube, a pump, and a few other things (in the proprietary Specialized ‘sausage’ roll, to keep it all together and prevent rattling). The downtube is wider and stiffer than before, and uses internal channels for the brake hose, dropper post hose, and derailleur cables, which are kept out of the way of the SWAT box. The shock mount also holds a SWAT multi-tool, and the head set top cap holds a chain breaker, with room for a quick-link.

“The Rhyme demonstrates that it’s not necessary to completely redesign a great bike in order to make it suit women.”

Other innovations are, to me at least, more exciting. In particular, Specialized’s investment in a custom-tuned rear shock. Lighter riders will often struggle to get the performance they’ve paid for out of a standard shock, and the Rhyme features what Specialized call the Women’s Rx Tune. Working with Fox, they’ve tuned the Float CTD to give lighter-weight riders the same performance that those in the ‘normal’ range can expect from a rear shock of this quality. Incidentally, this is something you can invest in yourself. See our feature from our suspension expert Aiden Lefmann from issue 148. We set this up using the Autosag function then started again with the shock pump. In my experience this is usually best, as at around 55kg I find it hard to get the bike to sag enough by just sitting there. Your Specialized dealer will help you get set up, so nothing to worry about.

On the trail

The Rhyme demonstrates that it’s not necessary to completely redesign a great bike in order to make it suit women. From the moment I jumped on I was completely comfortable and enjoyed a sense of control and precision. The Trail Chassis that Specialized use for the Rhyme, Stumpjumper and Camber is longer in the top tube than it has been for the last few years, and the back end has very short chain stays of 420mm, even without using the ‘Boost’ standard 148×12 spacing (which can provide for even shorter stays). There’s a fairly low BB, but this is balanced well with 170mm cranks (so pedal striking was not an issue). The upshot of all these numbers is that the bike feels really stable when you’re going in a straight line (say, over a drop or down a chute), but responds incredibly well in corners. The Rhyme was particularly impressive – both stable and fast – in high-speed berms and off-camber corners, even on skatey pea gravel. This is also attributable to the great tyre choice and especially a smart wheelset. The Roval’s 29mm inner width meant I could run really low pressures and had excellent, tacky grip, even on the worst kind of surface.

In spite of the fact that this is, in effect, a ‘shrinked and pinked’ unisex bike, I felt that, out of the box, the bike fit perfectly. While some women will want to swap the 720mm bars out for something wider, maybe around the 750mm the unisex version runs, I found them just about right. The Specialized Myth Comp is a really comfy, impressive saddle, and although probably a little wide for me, they come in three different sizes, so chances are if you buy this bike from a Specialized dealer, they’ll be able to help you get the right one.

The Rhyme comes specced with a great SRAM X1 1×11 setup with the new Shimano XT brakes, which have great modulation and are known for their dependability. There’s a neat direct-mount chain ring, which is light and does away with chain ring bolts. The bike is intelligently setup with a 30-tooth chainring, but it’s easy to swap them over if the terrain demands. The Command dropper post worked perfectly, if alarmingly fast, and I was really impressed with the position of the lever to activate it, mimicking a left-hand shifter and always within easy reach.

It’s possible to run a front mech if you want two chainring options, but I was actually surprised to find that the Rhyme, which excelled on the descents, also climbed really, really well. Pedal bob was a bit of a problem if the shock is left fully open, but by adjusting it to the ‘climb’ or ‘trail’ setting I found I got plenty of great traction and could make it up some extremely steep, techy, and even long climbs without too much trouble. The SRAM 42-tooth rear sprocket was particularly useful in these cases.

While the Pike is known as one of the best trail forks around, as a lighter rider it did take a bit of work to get the adjustments right. The Pike’s air pressure, low speed compression damping and rebound damping can be tweaked to your requirements, and although the fork has not had the custom treatment, I managed to get great performance nonetheless. If you weigh less than about 65kg, be sure to take some time at your bike shop to get the settings just right or it’s possible that small bump performance will suffer.

The Rhyme comes with a Specialized Roval wheelset, which like all Specialized mountain bikes come tubeless-ready. DT internals mean the Traverse hubs should have a decent lifetime, and the Roval’s 29mm internal rim width fits recent moves to wider rims and lower tyre pressures, and married perfectly with the Specialized Butcher and Purgatory 2.3” tyres, which performed spectacularly on the loose, ball-bearing gravel they were tested on, and come highly recommended. The Roval’s low spoke count (24/28), using the very light DT Revolution spokes and combined with the wide rim make for a lightweight wheel without any compromise on tyre stability or performance. Although this choice appears across Specialized’s ranges, it’s a bonus if you’re lightweight or a small rider so it feels like the choice has been made in women’s favour.

Our take

The Specialized Rhyme might be a women’s bike in little more than name and a few easily changeable parts, but that’s fine. It performed outstandingly on the all-mountain and enduro-style terrain it was tested on, and was light and agile enough to handle the most techy of climbs, while being appropriately geared for the long, tough ones, too.

With its price tag of about eight big ones, this bike is going to attract serious riders, or riders who take their bikes seriously, and so it should – it’s a race-level machine with a thoughtful spec and incredible geometry that offers high-speed stability, accurate steering, and a great blend of agility, and confidence. If I had the money, I would even be tempted to choose a bike like the Rhyme over all-round trail bikes like last year’s Rumor and other similar offerings. Although it costs nearly twice as much, the Rhyme has the scope to take you above and beyond your limits and your expectations, particularly if you’re interested in tackling jumps, drops, and high-speed descents.

Model                                                                                           Rhyme FSR Expert Carbon 650B

RRP                                                                                                   $7,999

Weight                                                                                          12.1kg (as tested)

Distributor                                                                               Specialized Australia

Contact                                                                                        infoau@specialized.com