Santa Cruz launched the sixth-generation Tallboy on May 19, and the headline is what the bike doesn’t have. VPP, the counter-rotating-link suspension Santa Cruz has built its identity around since the early 2000s, is gone. RIP. In its place is a four-bar layout: the ordinary kind, the kind half the industry uses, the kind Santa Cruz spent two decades politely implying it was above.
The rest of the bike changed too. Travel goes up 10mm at both ends, to 130mm in the rear with a 140mm fork. The head angle is now 65.1 degrees, or 64.8 in the low flip-chip position.
It also got a bit lighter. Pullin back from the “strength over weight” trend that seems to have dominated basically every bike since 2019 or so. Every build now ships on the lighter CC-grade frame, claimed at 2,530 grams with shock, roughly 300 grams (over half a pound) down from the Tallboy 5. Seatpost insertion improved enough that an XXL comes stock with a 240mm dropper, the Glovebox got an easier latch, and the frame is rated for a 150mm fork if that’s the kind of person you are.
So why retire the family recipe? Josh Kissner of Santa Cruz told Pinkbike the team wanted a more consistent leverage curve, “more support at the top of the stroke,” and “some zip” for a bike whose reputation ran descent-heavy. He was also blunt about the weight problem: “we’d taken the Tallboy 5 as far as we could in that regard. To significantly reduce weight and drastically change the ride feel, we needed a different design.” They prototyped a Blur-style flexstay version, which Kissner called “light as heck” but too finicky to hit the suspension targets with this much travel. The four-bar mule won.
For this category, the interesting part is where the new numbers land. At 130mm rear and 140mm front, the Tallboy 6 now sits exactly on the outer edge of what counts as downcountry, according to L’Académie du Vélo Downcountry.
Flow Mountain Bike pointed out that “there just aren’t that many 140/130mm travel trail bikes out there” and wondered whether Santa Cruz is starting a trend. The Tallboy launched in 2009 as the brand’s first full-suspension 29er, spent a decade as an XC bike, and became what Santa Cruz itself called “the downhiller’s XC bike” in 2019. This is the furthest trailward it has ever drifted. It still qualifies for the category. We checked our own definition twice, and we would know, because we wrote it.
The early reception is warm. Pinkbike’s Dario DiGiulio (a big fan of the previous gen) called the bike “fully reinvented” and “a joy,” and wrote that it “still aims to be the short travel ripper that suits a certain type of rider.” The Pinkbike comment section, meanwhile, spent launch day holding a wake for VPP and debating whether the new silhouette looks like a Giant. We would have joined in, but we’ve said our piece in those threads over the years, and grief needs room.
The bike launched with four builds, all CC carbon: $5,899 for the Tallboy 90 up to $9,299 for the X0 AXS RSV, with a $3,899 frameset. Claimed weights run 29.2 to 30.8 pounds across the ladder, and Pinkbike’s XL test bike weighed 29.9. That’s the heavier end of this category; a comparable build of, for example, a Spur V2 comes in around 27 pounds. It’s also more bike than those numbers used to buy.
