Crankbrothers aims to blend compliance and stiffness with Synthesis wheels

The brand's Mello Bouwmeester and Jason Schiers talk about why they created Synthesis and how they should ride

We speak to Mello Bouwmeester and Jason Schiers about their Synthesis wheels

BikeRadar

Alex Evans

Published: April 30, 2019 at 12:00 pm

Although the Crankbrothers Synthesis wheels aren't anything new — they were released in Autumn 2018 — there are still a lot of questions about how and why their compliant front and stiff rear wheels work.

We caught up with the wheel's designers Mello Bouwmeester and Jason Schier at Sea Otter to discover how they reconciled their opposite views on the ideal wheel, in order to create a system that has bespoke front and rear wheels.

Tune in to hear the experts talk through the wheels' features.

Alex Evans

Senior technical editor

Alex Evans is BikeRadar’s senior mountain bike technical editor. He started racing downhill at the tender age of 11 before going on to compete across Europe. Alex moved to Morzine in the French Alps at 19 to pursue a career as a bike bum and clocked up an enormous amount of riding. Hitting those famous tracks day in, day out for eight years, he broke more bikes than he can remember. Alex then moved back to the UK and put his vast knowledge of mountain biking to good use by landing a job working for MBUK magazine as features editor. Since working for MBUK, Alex’s focus has moved to bike tech. He’s one of BikeRadar’s lead testers and knows how to push bikes and products to the limit, searching out the equipment that represents the best value for money. Alex is also a dedicated eMTB rider, and still dabbles in racing of a sort, doing his best to top the Strava leaderboard on the steepest, gnarliest and twistiest trails the Tweed Valley has to offer – just for fun, of course. Alex is also a regular on the BikeRadar YouTube channel and BikeRadar podcast.
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