U.S. Built Custom Bicycles in Titanium and Titanium-Carbon Mix
The Hightail is an entirely new mountain bike design. Every element of the bike is different from what's come before. From the head tube's internal routing ports to the dropout interfaces and everything in between, we've updated each aspect of the classic hardtail mountain bike. Some of the elements are visibly obvious, while some are subtle but no less important.
Super everything.
We've packed more features and innovations into the Hightail XX than any other bike we've ever offered.
| Element | Specifications & Details |
|---|---|
| Frame |
Model: Hightail Material: Titanium Tubeset: XX custom multi-butted |
| Frame Upgrades |
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If this specific bike doesn't seem to be your perfect match, check out the rest of our mountain bikes. We're confident we'll have the right bike for you. Questions? Contact us. We're here to help you find your perfect bike.
These are all excellent kits we've hand chosen to confirm that the parts are compatible and work seamlessly together regardless of the kit spec.
Size Specific & Gender Specific: We match components to the size of your bike, including crankarm length, handlebar width, stem length, and stem angle. We'll provide you size recommendations.
If you want something that's not shown here, contact us. We can probably accomodate.
Tough, utility, low replacement parts cost, best value.
This is our best value buildout. Every single component is handpicked from well known brands that offer the highest quality components. Whether you're racing every week or doing all day endurance riding, this build will keep you riding. Very durable. Not the lightest.
This is a great race-centric parts kit. Grams per dollar it's our lightest kit offering. Great for racing because the replacement parts cost is reasonable.
| Component | Specifications |
|---|---|
| Shifters | SRAM GX 1x 12-speed |
| Derrailleurs | SRAM GX Eagle, mechanical, rear |
| Brakes | SRAM Guide T Hydraulic A1, post mount, 160 mm rotors front & rear |
| Crankset | SRAM GX Eagle 1x 32t or 34t chainring, crankarm length is size specific |
| Cassette | SRAM GX Eagle, 10-50t 12-speed |
| Bottom Bracket | Wheels Manufacturing T47, 73 mm width, black |
| Chain | SRAM GX Eagle, 12-speed |
| Component | Specifications |
|---|---|
| Fork | 29" Fox Step-Cast 34, travel 110 mm, Performance Edition, no remote |
| Headset | Cane Creek 40, black |
| Wheelset | 29" Industry Nine aluminum 1/1 Trail S, 28h, microspline freehub body, with 160 mm rotors front & rear |
| Tires | 29" Vittoria Mezcal XC Race 2.25", 120 tpi, tubeless ready |
| Handlebar | RaceFace Aeffect, aluminum, 10 mm rise, 760 mm width, 35 mm clamp diameter |
| Grips | RaceFace Half Nelson, lock on, Black |
| Stem | RaceFace Aeffect, aluminum, 35 mm clamp diameter, length is size specific |
| Seat post | Fox Transfer dropper, Performance Edition, 30.9 mm, includes left side under bar dropper lever, cable actuated |
| Saddle | Men's: Fizik Vento Argo R5, black
Women's: Fizio Vento Argo R5, black |
| Headset Spacers | 2x 1.0 cm aluminum, black |
| Pedals | Not included but we're happy to supply. |
Contact us to reserve your own Hightail XX Titanium Archetype Build.
Light & durable, utility, set it and forget it.
What we ride. Seven's favorite parts. A balance of light and durable.
A perennial favorite, Shimano's latest M8100 kit design is better, lighter, and smoother shifting than ever. It may be the best balance of features, price, and durability.
| Component | Specifications |
|---|---|
| Shifters | XT M8100 mechanical 1x 12-speed |
| Derrailleurs | XT M8100 mechanical rear |
| Brakes | XT M8100 Hydraulic with 160 mm rotors front & rear |
| Crankset | XT M8100 1x 32t or 34t chainring, crankarm length is size specific |
| Cassette | XT M8100 10-51t 12-speed |
| Bottom Bracket | Wheels Manufacturing T47, 73 mm width, black |
| Chain | XT M8100 12-speed |
An excellent balance of lightweight and durability.
Upgrades from the Archetype Build are bold.
| Component | Specifications |
|---|---|
| Fork | 29" Fox Step-Cast 34, travel 100 mm, Performance Edition, no remote |
| Headset | Cane Creek 40, black |
| Wheelset | 29" Industry Nine aluminum 1/1 Trail S, 28h, microspline freehub body, with 160 mm rotors front & rear |
| Tires | 29" Vittoria Mezcal XC Race 2.25", 120 tpi, tubeless ready |
| Handlebar | RaceFace Aeffect, aluminum, 10 mm rise, 760 mm width, 35 mm clamp diameter |
| Grips | RaceFace Half Nelson, lock on, Black |
| Stem | RaceFace Aeffect, aluminum, 35 mm clamp diameter, length is size specific |
| Seat post | Fox Transfer dropper, Performance Elite Edition, 30.9 mm, includes left side under bar dropper lever, cable actuated |
| Saddle | Men's: Fizik Gobi M3, black
Women's: Fizio Gobi M3, black |
| Headset Spacers | 2x 1.0 cm aluminum, black |
| Pedals | Not included but we're happy to supply. |
Contact us to reserve your own Hightail XX Titanium Factory Build.
Race-tuned, durable, super light, performance above all.
What Seven's Race Team rides. In all conditions, every day. Very light with no sacrifice in durability.
Spec'ed in conjunction with our partners at Shimano, this component group provides the lightest, most technically advanced, abuse-taking Shimano kit ever made. When it's time to ride without incident, XTR is the kit. The 1x gear system increases all of the kit's great traits.
| Component | Specifications |
|---|---|
| Shifters | XTR M9100 mechanical 1x 12-speed |
| Derrailleurs | XTR M9100 mechanical rear |
| Brakes | XTR M9100 Hydraulic with 160 mm rotors front & rear |
| Crankset | XTR M9100 1x 32t or 34t chainring, crankarm length is size specific |
| Cassette | XTR M9100 10-51t 12-speed |
| Bottom Bracket | Chris King T47, 73 mm width, black |
| Chain | XTR M9100 12-speed |
Durable, light, serviceable. Top shelf Chris King, Fox, and Industry Nine. This bike is race ready right out of the box.
Upgrades from the Factory Build are bold.
| Component | Specifications |
|---|---|
| Fork | 29" Fox Step-Cast 32, travel 110 mm, Performance Edition, no remote |
| Headset | Chris King, Inset 7 black |
| Wheelset | 29" Industry Nine Trail 270, aluminum 24h microspline freehub body, with 160 mm rotors front & rear |
| Tires | 29" Vittoria Mezcal XC Race 2.25", 120 tpi, tubeless ready |
| Handlebar | Thomson carbon, 20 mm rise, 800 mm width, 35 mm clamp diameter |
| Grips | RaceFace Half Nelson, lock on, Black |
| Stem | Industry Nine aluminum, 35 mm clamp diameter, length is size specific |
| Seat post | Fox Transfer dropper, Performance Elite Edition, 30.9 mm, includes left side under bar dropper lever, cable actuated |
| Saddle | Men's: Fizik Gobi M3, black
Women's: Fizio Gobi M3, black |
| Headset Spacers | 2x 1.0 cm aluminum, black |
| Pedals | Not included but we're happy to supply. |
Contact us to reserve your own Hightail XX Titanium Team Build.
The Hightail reads like a bunch of incompatible contradictions. Stiff and smooth. Light and durable. Fast and plush. Innovative and well-tested. A few years ago, we would've agreed. But now, with a series of significant inhouse capabilities developments, a few game-changing material sourcing solutions, ongoing industry component changes, and just being unwilling to stop, we've combined about two-dozen incongruous features into this one bike for the first time. Read on to see how these incompatible contradictions became what we believe is the best performance hardtail ever made.
The Hightail project began as many Seven projects do, having conversations with our race team, performance athlete partners, and in-house design team. The Hightail is the result of more than two years of designing, testing, tuning, ongoing feedback, and rethinking. This is what we call ART at Seven.
The Hightail XX has the stiffest drivetrain we've ever designed. By about 3x.
We accomplish this through a combination of some very oversized tubing, our proprietary dropout system, and a few tricks. Our new design is nearly three-times stouter than the average drivetrain of our most popular hardtail. This is a gamechanger.
We start with a massive 44 mm down tube diameter that doubles the stiffness from our most popular Sola SL design. Next is our new one-inch chainstay design mated to our exclusive dropouts that are three-times stiffer than the industry's most popular dropouts. We anchor the entire system with Chris King's new oversized T47 bottom bracket system.
Seven also alters a lot of our standard details. We use our Fastback chainstay design, which makes the dropout and chainstay interface stiffer. Seven then shrinks the dropouts — what we call Awesommetric — as much as possible so they're as stout as we can make them. We've done more forming of the chainstays than ever before. This enables us to use the one-inch size without sacrificing tire clearance or a short rear end. We've included every frame stiffness trick we've learned over the past thirty years.
The Hightail eats the trails, so you won't.
The rear end of the Hightail XX provides five-times the vibration damping of our most popular mountain bike.
How can we claim such a stiff drivetrain but also achieve the smoothest ride? It's simple, just not easy. We're able to isolate the vertical compliance — the static suspension of the bike – from the frame's lateral stiffness, essentially the climbing prowess of the bike. The stiffer we make the drivetrain, the more latitude we have to allow more plushness in the rest of the frame.
We've combined three exclusive features in new ways, which together provide nearly five-times the vertical compliance of Seven's legendary smooth ride.
The Hightail XX frame is among the lightest designs we offer. The only frame lighter than this is our Sola XX frameset. However, the Sola XX doesn't offer the same stiffness benefits the Hightail does.
Seven's XX tubeset: Any bike that Seven designs, and that has lightweight as a primary target, begins with our proprietary XX multi-butting techniques. Our Bantamweight seat stays are the newest and most important addition to the XX program.
Awesommetric rear triangle: We've taken our cyclocross race version of the Offsymmetric system and pushed it further with the Hightail. Ever lighter, the Awesommetric rear triangle pulls weight out of the dropout system by using asymmetric dropouts — an innovation that Seven brought to the industry. This process saves ounces off a typical frame. The seat stays and chainstays also require modification to fully take advantage of what Awesommetric can offer.
Invisible details: We've shaved grams off every element of the frame, including the thruaxle system, seat tube sleeve system, head tube, bottom bracket, and more. Most of these changes are hidden, subtle elements of the frame. Regardless, grams add up quickly and help make the bike feel like it's floating underneath you.
The Hightail XX pulls together a lot of features that make for a clean, fast looking bike. This is a modern progressive aesthetic. Some of the definin visuals include:
Internal cable routing: Clean headtube entry points. Contemporary design. Just looks fast.
Our newest decal system called Trifecta. These decals are visible from nearly any angle but also clean and a bit of fun like mountain biking should be — whether racing or adventuring.
Oversized: New massive down tube and chainstays, oversized dropouts, and the new T47 oversized bottom bracket shell.
Awesommetric rear triangle: Everything is asymmetric, off-center, and optimized for performance weight savings. It looks unique and combines our Bantamweight Moto seat stays, and our thruaxle new dropouts.
New chainstay design: Includes massive one-inch more aggressively 3D shaped chainstays.
Fastback chainstay-dropout interface specifically designed for Seven's internal routing. Removes every gram of unnecessary weight.
Clean lines, contemporary, versatile model compatibility
Seven's uniquely clean internal routing works with everything: hydraulic brakes, cable shifting, electronic shifting, dropper post, light wiring, and anything else you can think of. Our design has entry ports on the headtube and is fully internal until it exits near the rear hub.
Available only on our XX series of bikes.
Seven's internal routing system includes a lifetime warranty.
We developed and sourced a new tubeset for the Hightail XX. This includes a massive 44 mm down tube, one-inch chainstays, oversized dropouts, and the new T47 oversized bottom bracket shell. We had to develop new processes to bend and shape these tubes. The result is a 3x increase in drivetrain stiffness.
The dropped chainstay design allows us to provide significant tire and chainring clearance while maintaining short stays to ensure agile race-ready handling.
The drive side stay is dropped, and the non-drive side stay is inline, so the pair of stays is asymmetric.
Upcharge: $295 included in the bike price.
To learn more about Seven's chainstay offerings, visit our chainstay page.
Making the drivetrain system asymmetric and purpose-specific allows us to make a substantially lighter drivetrain while increasing stiffness, improving tire clearance, adding chainring options, and providing shorter chainstays. All good things and not possible until we introduced all of this asymmetry — what we call Awesommetric.
Our Moto seat stays allow for more aggressive cornering, more sure-footed switchback descents, and better terrain feel in the worst conditions. This seat stay design is an upgrade from our standard, dual-bend inline seat stays.
With these stays, we've been able to improve rear tire traction without reducing frame stiffness. We achieve these traction improvements through a combination of a more aggressive bend profile and bending in multiple 3-dimensional planes. What you get is a seat stay with a more dramatic shape that dissipates multi-directional force while minimizing weight.
Seven's Fastback design create a meaningfully stiffer drivetrain for improved acceleration, but it also means better disc brake performance and alignment because of the asymmetric nature of the Fastback system. No chatter, squealing, or vibration. The Fastback dropout design offers us more than twice the welding surface at the chainstay interface, and that gives us a stronger and 75% stiffer platform than the most popular titanium thru-axle dropout on the market. Lastly, the proprieary Seven asymmetric dropouts save 60 grams of weight over our conventional disc brake dropout system.
T47 is an emergent standard that provides a larger stiffer shell for the most contemporary oversized crankset spindles and most durable bearing systems. T47 helps futureproof your drivetrain system options and enables Seven's internal routing system to function perfectly.
The Bantam's diminutive tube profile provides a whole new level of shock absorption. These provide nearly five-times the vertical compliance of Seven's already legendary smooth ride. Like the small birds they're named for, our Bantam stays are light but supremely aggressive. In part, we're able to employ these stays because of the super-stiff chainstays. Every element of the Hightail XX is part of a larger system.
Durable, light, smooth, extremely tunable ride characteristics.
A well designed titanium hartail bike is about as good as it gets. The primary benefits of the 3-2.5 titanium alloy that Seven builds with include:
For more details and nuance about titanium's attributes continue reading.
Seven's Engineering Experience
Seven's founding engineering team has overseen the fabrication of over 60,000 titanium frames. More than 30-years of titanium framebuilding experience helps Seven delivery the most finely tuned highest quality titanium frames available. Our founding engineer has more years of continuous titanium framebuilding experience than anyone else on the planet. This knowledge and heritage go into every frame we craft.
Seven's Unique Approach with Titanium
Seven's method of titanium framebuilding is extremely personalized and very engineered. There is not a single piece of the frame that Seven's designers and engineers don't modify or work to improve. This is true not only with the tubeset but also with the other parts of the frame. We design every single element in-house including the dropouts, bottom bracket, and head tube. Having complete control over every piece of the design results in a better performing bike every time. In-house designs also ensure a more durable lighter bike.
Titanium's Defining Characteristics
Here are some of the universal defining characteristics of Seven's titanium hardtail frame designs:
The folklore of titanium's "flexiness"
Titanium is a misunderstood material, if it's understood at all. It's most commonly misperceived that titanium frames are flexible. There have been plenty of flexible titanium frames made – especially in the early days of titanium. However, because the material is so tunable and controllable we can actually make a titanium frame extremely stiff if the rider desires that. We've built plenty of track bikes and bikes for riders over 300 lbs. If you want stiff, titanium may be the ideal material with which to build your frame.
Just because titanium excels at providing a shock absorbing ride doesn't mean it has to be plush. If you want your teeth to rattle we can deliver.
Parts kits do not include anything that's not included in the words on this page. Bike photos are not representative of the exact bike and buildout that you may receive. Water bottle cage, fenders, racks, etc. are not included unless stated in the text.
Each component and price is subject to change based on ongoing improvements and parts availability.