Presenting the new 3rd generation Soul: an update to the original long fork steel hardtail; the legend lives on.

A trail riding machine in the truest sense, the Soul has amazing adaptability and all round performance. Light, zippy, fun, interactive, durable, comfortable. It's happy ripping up the singletrack at your local woods or trail centre, crossing maps on your bivvy adventures, or tearing down mountains on your summer holidays.

Now with dropper seatpost compatibility, and tapered headtube.

Are you after a Classic Soul, that takes a 1.125" headset & 27.2mm seatpost? If so, click here...

The 3rd generation Soul brings in all the tubeset and design knowhow we’ve developed over the last 3 years to move the game on yet again.

Exclusive Cotic designed tapered head tube uses a 44mm bottom end for taper steerer futureproofing, yet maintains the traditional 34mm top end. It’s elegant, higher performance, and much lighter than a full 44mm head tube when combined with the Soul tubeset.

We developed a lightweight oversized 34.9mm seat tube for the Solaris and this is carried onto the Soul. It brings a dropper compatible 31.6mm seatpost size, it’s 10% lighter than the 28.6mm bulge butted tube we used up to now whilst being 15% stiffer. This is also a Cotic exclusive feature due to the proprietary manufacturing process we have developed to make use of this tube possible.

There is weight saved from the Ovalform top tube whilst maintaining strength, and dropper seatpost remote hose clips are included on the underside. The down tube is carried over to retain the inspiring ride feel and outstanding durability the Soul is rightly renowned for.

Cotic geometry and 100-140mm fork capability carries over unchanged. Several iterations of geometry were tested and we simply found that the current layout is balanced perfectly on the crux of all the competing requirements. After all, it's what made the Soul the legend it is in the first place.

• Reynolds 853 custom main tubes including Cotic exclusive 34.9mm seat tube
• Cotic designed 34/44 taper head tube
• Larger diameter thinwall tubing with Ovalform top tube and 34.9mm seat tube combine with ultra compact frame layout for a supple yet precise ride feel
• 4130 cromo wishbone stay rear end. Bridge-less S-bend chainstays with Cotic Hexten gussets for improved fatigue life and massive mud clearance
• Superlight custom machined and pocketed dropouts with replaceable mech hanger
• Geometry with commitment! Minimum 100mm travel forks, and handles great all the way up to 140mm travel

• Long top tube, short stem set up (60-90mm stems recommended) for super sharp steering whilst maintaining a comfortable day riding stretch
• Steep seat angle and short 16.5" chainstays give fantastic climbing traction, and negates the 'nodding dog' syndrome where badly designed bikes pop the front end up when running long forks.
• Sizes - 14.5", 16", 17.5" and 19". The frames are designed to be compact and chuckable
• Weight - 4.4lbs for the 17.5"

The chart is a guide to frame size. Ultra Compact Geometry means that the frames are small and long. You can take this two ways. You can either have a regular position coupled with a small and chuckable frame, or you could go for the next size up and go long and racey without feeling like you're riding a gate. You lot are just too different to say for sure, so drop us a line at size@cotic.co.uk and we'll be happy to discuss set up based on what you're riding at the moment.

Seatpost diameter: 31.6mm (wise to get a decent length one)

Front Mech: 34.9mm (Top Pull)

Bottom Bracket width: 73mm

Headset: 44m cup lower, 34mm traditional standard upper [click here for info]

• Bright Orange [gloss]
• Bright Green [gloss]
• Duckegg [semi-matte]

Mid 2001: Had an old school steel Kona converted with long (100mm!) forks and short stem/big bars was fun but needed improvements. No one was making a frame anything like what I wanted so started sketching a hardtail design in Reynolds 853 to take long forks properly, disc brakes, huge tyres.

Sept 2001: After measuring up the Kona, sketching it out on CAD and then moving things around to improve the position of the rider, handling and bike fit, had something I was fairly happy with. Reynolds sent me a catalogue and some strength figures for 853. Totally blown away by the high strength. Realised I didn't need a lot of this stuff to make something pretty damn tough. Getting more interesting.....

November 2001: Had a drawing. Started talking to Dave Yates about getting one built so I could have nice bike. That would have been a nice culmination of a nice project.

Early 2002: Via a random forum post on Singletrackworld I was introduced to Brant Richards who was running On One at the time. Mentioned I had a frame design, he said send it over. I sent him a full production spec CAD drawing (hey, I'm an engineer, it's what I do!). Brant was pretty impressed and told me he could get me a price for 100 frames. Still had no intention of selling them really, but figured getting a number couldn't hurt. That number turned out to be not too crazy, so Brant offered to get me a couple of prototypes, so in February 2002 drawing CTE-001 (medium) and CTE-002 (large) were sent to Taiwan (NB - CTE is Cy Turner Engineering Ltd, my engineering contracting company that became Cotic).

May 2002: They're here! Drove up to Sheffield and picked up two shiney new steel hardtail frames from Brant's business partner Dave. Blimey - a bike I designed in the metal!

Summer/Autumn 2002: Built up the frames. I rode the large, and I handed the medium out to pretty much any of my riding friends who fitted it/wanted a spin. Lot's of feedback, with much that was positive. I loved mine, and people who rode the bikes seemed to really click with them. Very exciting as I genuinely seemed to be onto something. With so many people liking it, getting 100 seemed less and less scarey.

Winter 2002: Commit! I have some very talented friends who could do a website and the graphic design and were willing to do it for bike bits to get things going. Eventually settle on Cotic for the brand due to Turner being fairly well known/used already ;-) Soul would be the product name. Finish production spec drawings with improvements from the prototype feedback incorporated. These included custom machined dropouts because the teeny Ritchey style drops on the prototypes wouldn't let the wheel out past the mech body, selection of size specific seat tubes to ensure butt lengths were correct for the dropped top tube frame design, minor cable routing revisions. Frames ordered!

Spring 2003: Head off around the magazines trying to launch the brand. Get very warm receptions by Singletrack and the Future mags. When Steve Worland emails to say he's really impressed, I'm very chuffed indeed and begin to realise the potential of the Soul.

June 2003 - Mountain Mayham: Launch!! Frames landed and due to a typing error on the order they turn up barbie pink instead of dark grey. Team races the last race at Sandwell fully Soul equipped. Sales begin once a UK powder coater is found to finish the frames in dark grey or bright orange.

Autumn 2003: Customer feedback on first frames is overwhelmingly positive, with some people suggesting minor changes. Taking these into account, V2 frame drawings are completed with s-bend chainstays to improve heel clearance for 'in swingers', down tube raised slightly to improve fork adjuster clearance with low stack headsets, and hose guides added to seatstay rear mech routing to improve the mud sealing of the gear cable leading to the now ubiquitous Cotic semi-outer gear cable run. Now working directly with a new factory, the dropout and disc mount are all integrated into one CNC'd piece at the suggestion of their production engineer. An XL size is also added for the second batch of frames with size specific tubing including stiffer down tube and wishbone compared to the other frame sizes. In addition to these changes due to field feedback, discussions with another frame designer and further research on frame design using the FEA models shows that the worst fatigue feature on the frame is the chainstay bridge. Deleting the bridge removes this problem and massively improves mud clearance, but it it also moves the stress 'hot spot' to the outer edge of the chainstay/BB welds. Addition of gussets at these locations solves this, and another now classic Cotic feature is born with the bridgeless chainstay design. Enormously proud of myself for this sweet little solution, it's only several months later that I discover Keith Bontrager had been doing the same thing on his steel frames since about 1990. A doffed hat to Mr B!

Summer 2005: Further small evolutions after 18 months of solid performance from the V2 design. The chainstays gussets introduced on V2 are slimmed down to save weight and improve fatigue performance and chainstay and seatstay butts are reduced by 0.1mm to reduce weight whilst maintaining performance.

Autumn 2006: The next set of changes were again largely in response to customer demand. The cable routing moved under the top tube, hose guides were changes to the clip in type from solid hoops, and a hose guide was finally added in the centre of the top tube (I still doesn't like this from a 'welding to thin sections' point of view, but does accept it's much quieter!).

Spring 2007: With the advent of the new external BB standard, we looked at taking advantage of the wider chainline to try and eliminate as much of the crimping of the chainstays as possible. Eventually a design was reached where no crimps at all were required, chainring clearance was good all the way up to 36t middle rings and the tyre clearance was only reduced by 1mm per side. At this point the BB shell width was also increased to 73mm, as again, the widespread use of external BB's with their fixed chainline rendered the chainline tubing possibilities of the 68mm shell somewhat redundant.

Winter 2007: The design of Soul currently in production arrived in December 2007. The dropouts were revised again to work better with the latest generation of rear mechs, and as riding and kit technology progressed we were finding the back end of the frame a little wayward sometimes, so the chainstays reverted to the original thicker butt profile. This combined with the new crimpless design improved the stiffness back to a level we were, and are, happy with.

Oct 2009: The Soul is made even better........

June 2012: UPDATED...