"But this was what the most popular tire manufacturer in mountain biking gave us in 2015. If Maxxis didn’t have it, chances are most of us stopped there and took what we could get."
This could be pointed to as why it took so long for tires in general to get really good. If "most of us" only looked at Maxxis and just accepted their (at the time) shitty selection (not even to mention the insanity that was some models' "2.35" versions actually being only 50mm, the same as real 2.0s, instead of the 60mm they should have been), that helps explain why they didn't make anything else.
I've heard so many times "I've only ever ridden Maxxis and they're the best", which is ridiculous to say since you literally have no comparison. I haven't ridden Maxxis in years, mostly because I like to keep most of my money, and prior min-maxing on tires led me to less expensive brands with equivalent or better performance. (Especially in the cold: the high end Conti and Spesh compounds have helped me do some gnarly stupid shit in the winter with a decent coating of snow over granite that has better riders balking because they have no confidence in their (inevitably Maxxis) tires sticking well enough.)
I think if fewer people blindly latched themselves on to a single brand just for the shred-signalling factor, everything would be better, and in this case we would have arrived at the "2.6 ain't Plus anymore, it's basically the norm, and these new wide tires are way better than the first Pluses, too" much sooner.
March 14, 2022, 10:03 p.m. - Justin White
"But this was what the most popular tire manufacturer in mountain biking gave us in 2015. If Maxxis didn’t have it, chances are most of us stopped there and took what we could get." This could be pointed to as why it took so long for tires in general to get really good. If "most of us" only looked at Maxxis and just accepted their (at the time) shitty selection (not even to mention the insanity that was some models' "2.35" versions actually being only 50mm, the same as real 2.0s, instead of the 60mm they should have been), that helps explain why they didn't make anything else. I've heard so many times "I've only ever ridden Maxxis and they're the best", which is ridiculous to say since you literally have no comparison. I haven't ridden Maxxis in years, mostly because I like to keep most of my money, and prior min-maxing on tires led me to less expensive brands with equivalent or better performance. (Especially in the cold: the high end Conti and Spesh compounds have helped me do some gnarly stupid shit in the winter with a decent coating of snow over granite that has better riders balking because they have no confidence in their (inevitably Maxxis) tires sticking well enough.) I think if fewer people blindly latched themselves on to a single brand just for the shred-signalling factor, everything would be better, and in this case we would have arrived at the "2.6 ain't Plus anymore, it's basically the norm, and these new wide tires are way better than the first Pluses, too" much sooner.