The successor to the popular Manitou Swinger SPV, the Revox has been designed from the ground up with the aim of producing a World Cup-winning package.
Ride: stable, effective & easily adjusted
Once fitted to the bike, the Revox was easy to set up. What’s more, because no tools are required to adjust any of the shock settings, any fine-tuning can easily be done while out riding.
The SPV valve worked well and the shock pedalled efficiently. On low-speed bumps and faster uneven terrain, the Revox kept the back wheel in check and made sure it hugged the ground to keep all the traction you could want.
In rutted, brake-bumped corners, the Manitou held on well, sitting you into the corner but at the same time soaking up the biggest of the ruts. Even on the bigger hits, the shock felt stable and controlled, right through to the end of the travel.
One downside we discovered is that, like the Marzocchi Roco, the Revox is available in a limited number of lengths. The Revox starts at 222mm eye to eye, meaning a lot of bikes with the most common 215mm length and below won’t be able to get one to fit.
The shock is reasonably priced, matching its rivals from Fox and Marzocchi – although we can’t help but feel that because the Fox and Marzocchi are such strong favourites and offer more for the price, the Manitou would benefit from being a bit cheaper. As with all shocks here, a titanium coil is available, but that bumps up the price even further, so should only be considered by those desperate to save weight.
Details: speed-sensitive platform valve does the business
Central to the new Revox is Manitou’s speed-sensitive Intrinsic Damping technology, which incorporates its Stable Platform Valve (SPV) system.
In a nutshell, the SPV valve is kept shut by the air pressure in the chamber, and so creates a pedalling platform. The only way it can be opened again is if the force applied to the shock is greater than the force keeping it shut – riding over rocks or roots, for example.
The shock has adjusters for both high- and low-speed compression, so that you can control the suppleness of travel on both small and large impacts. This is backed up with a four-position bottom-out adjuster – four being the firmest setting, and one being the softest.
At the bottom of the shock’s piggyback (the separate chamber for extra damping) is the air input which controls the SPV valve and the strength of the bottom-out adjuster. All the adjusters are clearly marked on the piggyback body, which is really useful, along with the correct way to turn them to either increase or decrease the damping.