Vorsprung Tuning Hub Volle Kontrolle beim Dämpfer Tuning

@Steve_Vorsprung :
Your tuning hub platform is a huge benefit in my eyes. In a quick comparison with my calculations it seems quite legit! (regarding spring rates)
So in other words: When a competitor or frame producer gives you a setup, is it like 60% from "ideal"? Is yours then at around 80-85 % from ideal?
Ideal means in this case a setup with the help of data aquisation.

If it is like this, I am quite courious about this and would make a full test of your shock in a frame with a stock frame and OEM shock+setup.
Points which i would check:
1. quality of stock OEM setup
2. setup of OEM shock with data aquisation
3. test of Telum shock with tune hub data
4. if necessary: fine tune of tune hub data
5. point out the differences between all steps

Then we can see how close you are to the "ideal" setup in my specific case.
I have to write "specific" because every person has a different riding style and weight distribution on the bike.

Thanks for the kind words! It's hard to give percentages like that, but the trend there is basically correct - we can give you a setup with a higher probability of being much closer to "optimal" for a given application. The term "optimal" itself is obviously up for some discussion, and I would say there are multiple forms of an "optimal" setup:

1. Optimal for a single race run, on a single track, for a single rider, on a single day, in one set of conditions. This is DH WC race type setup, and generally it is a relatively extreme setup because we can be fairly sure that speed is all that matters, and things like comfort only matter as far as they facilitate more speed. It can be very tiring to ride extreme setups, but in this situation we also accept that it's ok for the rider to be exhausted after a few minutes, as long as they can ride fast the whole time. If the rider's hands hurt at the end of the run, it doesn't matter much unless it's affecting their speed or ability to control the bike. However because the level of specialization here is so high (terrain + line choice + weather + rider fitness + fatigue management + track condition changes +++ ) there is just no substitute for on-track testing & setup. Rapid Revalve means you can make more changes and do them much faster, and the Tuning Hub will help you quantify the changes so you don't need to guess, but the Tuning Hub's recommendations for damper settings are less useful as a predictive tool in that situation, simply because it could be heavily affected by things like how big the holes in the corners are getting and whether you'll be faster with a bit more compliance for tight off-camber corners at 20km/h or being able to hit massive holes in berms at 60km/h. It's totally acceptable for this kind of setup to suck on other trails as long as it's fast on this one racetrack on this one day in these specific conditions.
2. Optimal for speed for a fairly wide variety of trails/terrain, like an enduro race. Rider comfort/fatigue, safety and preferences start to matter a lot more because what lets you ride one 30 second segment the fastest might be too tiring to be fast for 60 minutes. This is highly subjective, and the Tuning Hub will be more useful as a predictive tool here than for a DH race because it can account for that a bit more, but there's still a need for on-track adjustment and quite likely also use of the Rapid Revalve setup.
3. Optimal for everyday riding on natural singletrack, where the rider maybe cares a bit about speed, a bit about how playful the bike feels, a lot about harshness and a lot about how enjoyable and predictable the bike is.
4. Optimal for bike park riding on high-speed trails with big berms, jumps and lots of big singular compressions. These tend to warrant firmer setups than natural singletrack, but have to deal with a lot more braking bumps, more vertical per day and more consideration for fatigue, all while managing safety and support as well.
5. A mix of 3 & 4 - a single good setup that works quite well almost everywhere outside of specialist race setups. This is what 80-90% of our client base seem to be looking for, and what the Tuning Hub was really built to be a useful predictor for. Most people aren't looking to change their suspension setup every lap of every trail, and having a good solid setup that doesn't suck anywhere is usually more of a priority than it being as fast as possible for one particular 3 minute trail.

Hi Steve,

I'm really impressed with the concept and technical solutions you've come up with and your presentation of the damper. It warms my engineering heart

On your website you already listed service parts such as seal-kits and tools, which I think is pretty awesome.
Will it also be possible to buy larger spare parts (e.g. damper rod, reservoir head) if you ever need them? Either by contacting you directly or your distributors?

For me it is much easier to be able to carry out a service or repair myself within 1-2 hours instead of having to send it in for a week or more.
I usually do small damper services like oil changes more regularly than service intervals.
Do you need special tools to open the damper and refill it? (eg. pressurize the IFP or while bleeding)
In the owner's manual you write that you can be contacted for instructions if you want to carry out the service yourself.
I always find it a shame when service instructions are not made public so that the customer can decide whether to do a service themselves or have it done by a dealer.

As you can probably tell, I am quite an advocate of right to repair. And as you also write on your website: “The Telum isn't our shock... it's your shock”
After you've bought it, of course :awesome:

Apart from that, I wish you every success with the shock and if everything checks, the Telum will be on my bike next spring.

Sorry I missed this previously. All parts and information will be made available to anybody who has, at a minimum, access to the proper tools for service (vacuum bleeder + nitrogen charging needle). We don't want to obstruct anybody from servicing their own Telum if they're capable of doing so, but "capable of doing so" requires those tools (and vacuum bleeders are not exactly cheap) and some experience servicing suspension previously. We have not yet published service information to the public because anything needing service at this point in time (keeping in mind I am writing this about 6 months after the shock first started shipping) is likely to be a problem covered by warranty rather than simply a shock needing routine maintenance, and we want to ensure that we hear about any problems so that we can ensure that they are properly corrected at whatever level of process (design, machining, anodizing, assembly, etc) is necessary to fix anything at the root cause.

Sorry I missed this previously. All parts and information will be made available to anybody who has, at a minimum, access to the proper tools for service (vacuum bleeder + nitrogen charging needle). We don't want to obstruct anybody from servicing their own Telum if they're capable of doing so, but "capable of doing so" requires those tools (and vacuum bleeders are not exactly cheap) and some experience servicing suspension previously. We have not yet published service information to the public because anything needing service at this point in time (keeping in mind I am writing this about 6 months after the shock first started shipping) is likely to be a problem covered by warranty rather than simply a shock needing routine maintenance, and we want to ensure that we hear about any problems so that we can ensure that they are properly corrected at whatever level of process (design, machining, anodizing, assembly, etc) is necessary to fix anything at the root cause.

No worries

i can totally understand your approach.
The Telum would be my first Vorsprung product so i wasn`t aware how you handle such things normally and after i searched your homepage i couldn`t find the answers to my questions i asked in my first post. These aspects i mentioned are a substantial part of my purchase decision because i am fed up by many huge companies (not only MTB related) that they do anything in their power to prevent the enduser to buy replacement parts e.g.

I hope you didn`t take my first post badly it wasn`t meant to be that way.
And after what you said i'm pretty confident the Telum will be my next shock of choice 👌

No worries

i can totally understand your approach.
The Telum would be my first Vorsprung product so i wasn`t aware how you handle such things normally and after i searched your homepage i couldn`t find the answers to my questions i asked in my first post. These aspects i mentioned are a substantial part of my purchase decision because i am fed up by many huge companies (not only MTB related) that they do anything in their power to prevent the enduser to buy replacement parts e.g.

I hope you didn`t take my first post badly it wasn`t meant to be that way.
And after what you said i'm pretty confident the Telum will be my next shock of choice 👌

Understood! I'll get that added to the FAQ on the Telum page as you are not the only person who's asked.
Our priority is that our riders are happy and that the products work as intended. We are a little protective however, because occasionally difficult conversations arise when the riders are unhappy because the products don't work as intended because the rider made a mistake and damaged something - and that happens more often (across all products, not just ours, and not just MTB) than I think most people realise.

We are also a very small company with a customer service workload to manage, and there have been times in the past where it would have actually been quicker for us to simply service a fork/shock ourselves than to answer 50 emails from somebody who's trying to service it themselves, which is probably not a good situation for us or the rider to be in.

So to mitigate those concerns, and because we are small enough to handle these kinds of enquiries individually, we are trying to ensure that people are realistically capable of servicing the shock before we provide them with all the tools and information to do so. It can be hard to balance, when we are trying to communicate "Hey, you need to be really careful with this process, have all the right tools available, and follow the instructions exactly, or something will get damaged and that will be your responsibility" without it sounding like "Hey, you're too stupid to be allowed to work on your own bike"