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DREW GOES ON A BLIND DATE

Testing Shock Tunes With Specialized

January 5, 2026

When a brand is putting the final touches to its new mountain bike, one of the tasks it undertakes is to develop the tune inside the rear shock. The term “custom-tuned” gets thrown around, but often it is not given much attention. We were curious exactly how important a shock tune can be, and Specialized wanted to highlight the results of the hard work by their Ride Dynamics team. So, we met up to lap some Santa Cruz trails, and take some shock tunes on a blind date.

Throughout our Blind Date experience, the Specialized Ride Dynamics team equipped a Stumpjumper 15 trail mountain bike with a range of different tunes on its Fox Float X Genie shock. The fun part: Drew had no idea what shock tune he was riding on each lap. From the stock tune to extreme tunes at each end of the spectrum, Drew went on lap after lap down the same test trail to identify the strengths and weaknesses of each tune.

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By the end of the day, Drew had become extremely familiar with the trail and Stumpjumper 15 combination. He determined that the shock tune the Specialized Ride Dynamics team had developed for the bike struck a solid balance of handling characteristics. But, there was another tune that offered even better characteristics to suit his preferences…

Check out the YouTube video to see all that went down in this Shock Tune Blind Date feature.

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