Formula Selva S Josh Bryceland Signature Edition

I’ve become a bit obsessed with products from lesser known companies over the last few months. Honestly, it’s a little bit boring that nearly every bike comes attached with forks, shocks or drivetrains from one of two brands. How did we get here? How does this happen? Sure, if you can get a well working piece of equipment at a good price, sometimes it’s easiest to take the less risky path. But us product testers? Shouldn’t we throw caution to the wind and see what else is out there? Shouldn’t we be driving our pathway to knowledge forward? Well, just like Marco Polo, here I am, about to head out on a grand, risky adventure in the pursuit of knowledge.

On Formula

I mean “risky” is a strong word. Formula has been around for ages. Motorcycle stuff since the 70’s! Disc brakes for mountain bikes since the early 90’s! Suspension forks since 2012! They’re not exactly new to the game as they’ve been cranking out made in Italy stuff since…well, since a while, anyhow.

The Selva itself isn’t exactly a “new” product. The first mention I can find goes all the way back to 2016! AJ took a really detailed look at one a few years back (review and teardown) and came away impressed. Did the heavy lifting for me, too!

The killer feature, of course, is the CTS valve. Formula has figured out a way to essentially re-valve your fork without re-valving your fork. If you’re searching for a particular feel, pop in a new CTS valve and Bob’s your uncle. In total, there are eight different valves (well…nine, but more on that in a minute), each with slightly different properties – from ultra light silver to super firm electric blue.

Other things going on in the Selva

3 spring types – Coil, Single air (ridden here) and dual air. All three springs are available separately for retrofit. Single air is billed as the middle ground. Performance with light weight and ease of use.

Neopos volume spacers – A step beyond the typical hunks of plastic we’re used to jamming in our forks. Neopos compress as the air pressure differential ramps up, before a controlled expansion. The effect is to have a similar impact to the mid stroke as a plastic spacer, but less end stroke ramp.

A further alphabet city of stuff – RCC, IFT, ILS and HEX. You can dig into those things here.

Options and other things:

• Spring types – Coil, Single Air, Dual Air
• 650b or 29er
• Standard (120-160mm of travel) or Extended (160-170 for 29er, 170-180 for 650b)
• 37mm offset on 650b or 43mm offset on 29er
• Fixed coil negative spring (coil and single air)
• 160mm post mount
• Tapered 1-1/8”-1.5” steerer
• 15mm Boost or 20mm Boost
• 35mm stanchions

Again, most of this is known and has been largely covered by AJ. What brings us here today is the fact that Formula is smart! Formula has Josh Bryceland! Formula is using Josh Bryceland to bring us a new concept in forks! Behold, the signature Josh Bryceland Selva!

The Josh Bryceland Selva

On the surface, this looks like a Selva with some special graphics applied. But under those graphics, two things are lurking. The first is a larger, more linear, air spring. The next is the mother of all CTS valves. Watch this video to find out how we got to that.

What you end up with is a gently massaged Selva, put together to satisfy Josh Bryceland, and then sold to you in limited quantities (100, to be exact). Will some of these things make it to the regular Selva? Are there many people capable of pushing their forks to a level that requires a professional level fork tune? Do I like asking questions of myself? Who knows?

If you are interested, all of this is available for the low, low price 1514 EUR, 1279 GBP, or 1750 CAD.

First Ride

As you can see in the photos, I have some suspension related gizmos that I’ve been playing with. Those are going to factor into the longer review. I have a super tunable fork here and I’m excited to see what that looks like with an advanced data acquisition system. I’ve had the fork for a week or so but just got it mounted up. I was in the process of dialling in my current system and didn’t want to interrupt that process. So, this truly is a “first ride” impression.

And so far it’s a pretty great first impression. The fork is doing everything as advertised on the box. My settings:

- 78 psi (2 below recommended)

- Rebound – 9 clicks from closed

- Compression – 1 click from fully open

- CTS valve – Super Duper Bryceland valve

This is giving me a pretty low 16% static sag that turns into about 22% dynamic sag on the trail. In talking to the folks at Formula, I was a bit intimidated by the Bryceland CTS. There’s not really a world where I see myself needing a whole lot of compression damping ramp up. A theory though. Note the axis on that damping curve. It’s force vs. speed. I mean…maybe us schlubs just never get shaft speeds that hit the steep part of the curve? Maybe this is similar to an F1 car, where if you don’t drive fast enough you can’t develop any downforce and you just slide right out the corner?

Either way, the fork is working pretty darn well. It’s super supple off the top, and the 22% dynamic sag is showing a fair amount of support through the mid stroke, with the fork riding quite high in the travel. The high damping CTS is showing itself through slightly lower compression shaft speeds. I actually made pretty good use of travel, hitting 96% at one point, so I’m not exactly sure where that’s going to take me. Through multiple, chattery hits, things are buttery smooth, and so far I have just enough ramp up to prevent a full bottom.

Next Steps

Next steps are to hit Formula up for the full gamut of CTS valves (the fork comes stock with 3 – the installed Bryceland valve, plus Gold and Orange), a few extra Neopos spacers and maybe a few other trinkets. I’m going to show you the deep, deep data that I find on this fork and try it at the different ends of the spectrum. I want to see just how usable such a tunable fork is and where it takes me with my suspension tuning. Stay tuned.

Formula Selva S Josh Bryceland Signature Edition