The Fades Are Back

We have a fresh batch of Fades due in very soon which means Regular is back on the menu, and there's a new Raw option too.

When we did the last batch of Fades, we went big on new colours, introducing Dippy Egg and Purple Haze for the first time. But to do that we had to sacrifice the classic Raw finish. People loved the new colours, but of course we also got our asses kicked for not doing Raw. I think it was the first time we ever did a batch of frames without a Raw option. It's kind of our thing. This time round we weren't going to make the same mistake... Raw is back!

You can now preorder the Fade frame, Fade Deluxe bike and Fade Works bike in Raw. Stock is due to arrive around the end of November.

I hope you'll agree that the Raw frame looks sweet with the silver Pike DJ. Even better when it's paired up with our polished Motive DJ hubs.

New Rawness

It's probably hard to tell just by looking at the photos, but this isn't the same Raw finish that we used to do on the Fades. That was haund-brushed and then had a wet gloss clearcoat applied to it. It was the original Raw finish we developed way back in the beginning for the Edit v1, and we always felt that it was an 'honest' finish that suited the Fade well. But since then we've worked on a new solution for the Edit MX, and we like it even more, so we rolled it out on the Fade. It's a much more uniform brush, with a clear matte powdercoat applied on top. The result is brighter and it looks more like genuinely raw alloy (but it won't dull over time).

This batch is only Pitch Black and Raw frames in both sizes. But don't worry - if you're into Dippy Egg or Purple Haze, we still have plenty of Long frames in both colours, so there are four options available right now.

The Return Of Regular

The other thing we did was to introduce the Regular size, which was a bit of a gamble because we weren't sure how popular it would be. The Fade had built a solid reputation around having a longer reach than most other DJ bikes, but we wanted to do something for smaller riders or riders doing more techy stuff. I think we ordered 40x Regular frames in that batch. Turns out that was waaaaay too few, and they've been out of stock for ages. My bad. But now Regular Fades are coming back too!

The Regular Fade has a reach of 410mm whereas the Long Fade has a reach of 430mm. There's a very slight difference in standover clearance but other than that they're essentially the same. Both have the same super-short rear end that you can run at 385-400mm with the integrated chain tensioners.

Just As Clean As Ever

As you can hopefully tell, a lot of work goes into keeping the design, engineering and build of the Fade as clean as possible.

Both the Fade Deluxe and Fade Works come with a full Burgtec finishing kit. And as they're built to order, you get to choose your bar rise, bar width and brake orientation. So your Fade will be built exactly as you want it. The steerer is left long with 6x 5mm carbon spacers so you can fine-tune the front-end before committing to anything. And as you can see, we run the rear brake hose at 1500mm so barspins are on the menu.

This bike's been specified with the black brushed alloy head badge, but you also have the choice of a silver brushed alloy badge. That looks better on the Pitch Black frames though (in my opinion).

We run our own custom-made CNC chainring on both the Fade Deluxe and Fade Works to get the ratio just right. 28t on the front and 11t in the back gets you a 2.55 ratio, a good all-purpose setup for dirt jump and pump track.

Nice little closeup of the way we designed the singlespeed-specific Motive DJ hubs to work with the Fade frame.

Integrated chain tensioners. Nice.

We're expecting this batch of frames to arrive around the end of November, but we've opened up preorders now for everyone who's super keen.