June 3, 2016, 11:35 p.m. -  boomforeal

#!markdown thanks drew, glad you enjoyed it re. your questions - the jones has given me some ideas. but it more exposed some of the gaps and laziness in my thinking than gave me real clarity or new certainties. i haven't translated any of its ideas on to my own bikes (though i did pick up a set of knock-off h-bars for my commuter) because i think a lot of the odd features of the jones work in concert, rather than individually, to achieve their positive impact on the bike's ride. i know you're a fan of throwing interesting ideas and tweaks at the proverbial wall… i guess i don't have that kind of inclination, which is why i doubly appreciated getting a chance to ride the jones - in terms of the jones influencing a future purchase, see my cop-out above. my sense from riding the jones, and this was reinforced from my conversations with jeff, was that specific elements of the bike's handling and ride couldn't be traced to specific individuals features, like its long chainstays or slack seat tube angle. it honestly does seem like jeff started with a blank slate and just kept building new frames and trying tweaking things until he found the right mix - he's not married to specific design elements: for example, his regular Jones bike has really short chainstays, while the Plus has really long ones - and he's not really able to articulate in technical terms why his bikes ride the way they do (nor is he seemingly inclined to try), but his description of how they ride is bang on so, i don't think its as simple as looking for characteristics of the Plus in other bikes. and i think anyone who was looking to tap into the Jones Plus' secret sauce in designing a suspension mountain bike would have to go pretty far down the rabbit hole… but i for one would be pretty interested in seeing the results!