It begs you to stay off the brakes
The carbon Scales are some of the lightest bikes around, and the significantly cheaper alloy versions are still seriously low-weight race weapons. Is there enough extra performance to justify spending £200 more than its rivals here, though?
The frame
If the Trek looks like it might be carbon, then the seamless welded Scale is even more fibrous in appearance, with a big box-section front end and other hollow bracing boxes at chainstay and seatstay tops.
The tapering, squared-off tubes are subtly fluted and profiled along their length. This adds vital surface stiffness to a tin skin that's so thin you can actually squeeze it inwards with your fingers in places.
This is an unashamed race bike, so mud clearance isn't great you'll struggle to get a chunky 2.2in tire through a clay race field. The bolted clamps for the continuous outer cables under the top tube keep your control lines weather-sealed, albeit at the expense of shouldering comfort. Twin bottle cages are fitted. There's the same big leap between medium and large frame size as there is with the Trek, though.
The ride
The SCOTT is not only gorgeous to look at, it rides beautifully too. There's a blindingly immediate response when you press on the pedals. It feels far faster than the Trek, despite a smaller weight advantage than we would have guessed from riding.
This real race-winning zip is obvious whether you're surging forward up a steep climb with every pedal stroke or skimming field-side singletrack in the big ring. In fact, every test ride on the Scale seemed to unavoidably turn into a lung- searing, take-the-longest-climb-at every-opportunity thrash-fest.
It's the ride quality that shocked us, though. With its uncompromising flat bar, head-down position, relatively skinny 2.0in tires and the ultra light boxy frame, we were expecting a harsh ride that prioritized speed before comfort. What we actually found was a bike so smooth and buoyant that we stopped several times to check we hadn't punctured. But no, it really did suck out the sting, shrug off the hits and hang onto traction round the corners and rattly root sections that well with 35psi in the tires.
Despite a relatively long (105mm) race-style stem and narrow bar, the steering felt steady and well balanced rather than ponderous. It certainly can't chase fading traction or whip round trees as well as the Kona, but the SCOTT has a confident, assured feel. Even on what we'd planned as “social” rides, it begged us to stay off the brakes, drop our knee and rip through stuff at race speed.
Add the facts it feels both smoother and more rabidly rapid the harder you launch it out of corners or mash gears up climbs, and it's no wonder most Scale sessions ended up with us alone way out front, exhausted but gagging for the next excuse to go out again.
Just in case people aren't clear what the kickback of such unashamed speed-biased handling is, it was a nerve-wracking, hesitant, plinky-plonky apology down steep step sections or slow technical rock-fests. Give it a bit of smooth, though, and the frame float and Fox fork made it a real skimmer down anything safe enough to be expected on a race course.
The kit
With a frame this good, you're bound to expect either kit compromises or serious price hikes. To be specific, had we been testing the £750 Scale 50, we'd have been talking about a heavy, clunky Tora fork, not the sublimely smooth Fox F100. That's not a budgeting move we can recommend in terms of stifling overall potential, and even at £1099 the Scale is begging for a lighter set of wheels to fully release the potential of the frame.
On the plus side, we've no complaints about the Shimano transmission or hybrid Juicy 5 lever/ Juicy 3 caliper Avid brakes, while the SCOTT Ozon tires impressed us. The Scott finishing kit is good, too, with the narrow diameter bar definitely helping to reduce sting and hand ache on longer test rides.
Summary
If you're looking for a bike that'll blow your previous race pace and overall enthusiasm for speed to pieces, the Scale is one of the best fast frames we've ever ridden. It's no singletrack swerver, but the beautifully floated ride and velocity of its character makes it perfect for long, fast, flat-out fun. We recommend you save up for the 40, though, because the 50 has too many component compromises to let it shine like it should.
