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Tuning Styles Explained

On a mountain bike, suspension tuning can seem more of an art than a science. Once you start to achieve a good tune, aspects such as personal preference and how you want to use your bike become important.

The ShockWiz app offers three Tuning Styles: Balanced, Playful and Custom. When tuning mountain bike suspension, there is variance in how people like to ride and variance in different models of bikes. The Tuning Styles within the ShockWiz account for these variances.

There are many changes between Tuning Styles, but the following descriptions give an overview of the major differences. These descriptions can also found within the app by tapping Tuning Style and then selecting ‘info’

Balanced – Provides an overall compromise between traction, suppleness and pedaling efficiency. Balanced serves as a great baseline tune and is a favorite with ShockWiz users.

Playful – Allows for a perfect combination of traction, suppleness, and pedaling efficiency but with a livelier feel to give the bike ‘pop’.

Custom – For any rider who is not completely satisfied with Balanced or Playful tune, the Custom Tuning Style allows you to select one of fifteen different stiffness and liveliness combinations.

  • Stiffness can be tuned with one of five choices ranging from Softest to Firmest. By tweaking the Stiffness, you can alter how much resistance to movement the suspension has. More stiffness will result in a more efficient, but less comfortable ride, which is a XC racer preference. Alternatively, a stiffer Tuning Style could be selected when you are running a bike that is designed for burlier trails (i.e. a 180 mm travel bike on mellow, flowy trails).
  • Liveliness can be tuned with one of three choices ranging from Planted to Active. By altering the Liveliness, you can change how active the bike feels in ‘dynamic’ (through rough obstacles and on jump take offs and landings) situations.
  

 You can always pick and choose what you like from each Tuning Style. Eg: Tune the Baseline pressure and ramp from one Tuning Style and then switch Tuning Styles to tune the dampers.

NOTE: A new set of tuning Suggestions is automatically calculated when a new Tuning Style is selected, so you can always swap between styles to see how the Suggestions compare.

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