The revelation 426 has an Air U-turn travel adjust, which requires winding down around 6.5 turns to get from 140 to 100mm. Of the five forks, we adjusted the travel on the Revelation the least because it took so long to do. We consider the U-turn as a way of balancing front and rear travel rather than a climbing aid. Ideally, we would like to see this fork get
a sort of positional travel adjust like a Two Step.

While things are about to change for 2010 the current Revelation is a little bit weighty but has a solid and stiff chassis. It gets the same lowers as the Pike, a forged crown, lightweight aluminium steerer tube and a 20mm thru axle for greater stiffness. SRAM fits a Maxle Lite to the Revelation but the 60g weight saving over a standard Maxle is somewhat irrelevant on a fork that weighs the best part of 4.5lb. Recommended air spring settings printed on the back of the fork leg and gradients on the stanchions make setting sag simple. The Dual Air spring is very comfortable and has lots of grip but we do feel as if we’re being supported by the spring rather than the damper.

There’s a precise point where the rebound felt right — too much and the fork packed down, too little and it skipped over bumps, losing grip. Compared to the Fox it also feels harsher on armoured trail centre singletrack but the extra stiffness of the bigger axle does boost steering precision.

We have a couple of little niggles: the rebound dial rattles in the bottom of the leg, there’s no dedicated hose guide and it still gets an older IS disc mount. It’s heavy but the reason it’s on a rung below the TALAS is because it has the least usable travel adjust and was less convincing when we really started to push it.

Mbr rating: 8