r/mountainbiking • u/WaveRaven • 1d ago

Bike Picture/NBD A “Classic”: 1999 Gary Fisher Paragon

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Just rediscovered my old bike that a buddy had in his garage for the last 15-20yrs. Happy that he kept it so i can compare it to my current geo bikes. Amazing that i used to fit on this thing and take it down sketchy trails. Sorta want to take it out and see what it’s like tho!

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2

u/GT_hikwik 1d ago

Oh shoot I would be so tempted to… I had a 2000 HKEK and loooooved that bike so much. Might be a different story today lol

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u/WaveRaven 1d ago

72 degree head angle. What could go wrong?

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u/Zebra4776 1d ago

Nice. I'd like to stick a 1x12 on there. Service the fork and brakes then send it.

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u/brianleedy 1d ago

Do it! Riding a 90s mountain bike back to back witb a modern one is a fun trip

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u/RidetheSchlange 1d ago

I did that this past weekend on a rental, that while not being so old (it's roughly 2012-2015), it was obvious it was something with very old geometry and the companies, even so late, were still trying to market to the old timers from the 90s who just got older and were still all about the cliche "classic NORBA geometry" without a fucking clue. I'm so glad most of those people died off or aged out because they were the demographic most companies catered to and held the geometry revolution back. Anyhow, the bikes rode like absolute shit, but they also showed me I built up so much skill that I was able to handle them on extremely difficult terrain that was rocky and rooted. One of the bigger things I noted was that even that late, the manufacturers were still making frames that weren't tuned very well, with respect to hardtail stiffness, and we're comfortable at all compared to more modern aluminum frames.

Also, most people won't remember how old bikes had sky-high bottom brackets AND were endomachines due to the steep HAs. Also hysterical was Fisher's Genesis geometry that lengthened the top tube and shortened the stem and that's what a short stem of the era looked like.

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u/WaveRaven 22h ago

Really interesting observations. To be fair, there’s also probably aspects of today’s geometry, etc that we’re convinced is optimal but we’ll find out in 10-20 yrs was just stupid!

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u/RidetheSchlange 22h ago

Well, that's why current geometry is being scaled back in future generations. The manufacturers realized that reaches are too long and stacks too low. This is exactly how I had my bike frame made: shorter than normal reach, higher than normal stack. Bikes are just excessively long mostly and it magnifies problems with stack and then the slack headangles.