We tested Canyon’s Stitched 360° hardtail a couple of years back and loved it, so we were itching to get our hands on this full-suspension version when the German brand sneaked it out under their freeride team last year. We knew the Canyon Stitched 720° could kill it on a slopestyle course but would it be equally at home flowing through small trails and pump tracks or finding hucks out and about in town?
Canyon Stitched 720° spec overview
- Rear Shock: RockShox Monarch RT
- Fork: RockShox Pike DJ
- Headset: Cane Creek 40
- Brakes: Avid Elixir DB 3
- Hubs: Stitched 360°
- Cassette: 11t
- Rims: Alex FR 30
- Tyres: Maxxis IKON eXCeption + Exo 3C MaxxSpeed
- Cranks: Truvativ Descendant
- Chainrings: 32t
- Chain: KMC Z510HX
- Bottom Bracket: SRAM GXP
- Stem: Canyon V16
Canyon Stitched 720° frame and equipment
The stiff aluminium frame delivers 100mm of rear wheel travel via a RockShox Monarch RT shock. There’s a tapered head tube up front and integrated chain tugs out back to keep the wheel in place in the horizontal dropouts and the chain tight. Ours did unwind themselves occasionally, so make sure you check regularly.
While the geometry charts may suggest a different ride to the hardtail version, most of the changes are to accommodate the rear shock and make very little difference to the handling. Because the main pivot is concentric with the bottom bracket (BB), the chainstays are only 5mm longer than on the Stitched 360°.
Canyon’s own Stitched 360° parts make up most of the hardware and are all well matched to the frame. The 31.8mm diameter, 760mm wide bar has a nice sweep and rise, and there’s plenty of space for the super-wide, mushroom-style grips, though we’d have preferred lock-on rather than slide-on versions.
Canyon Stitched 720° ride impression
Slopestyle bikes, like their hardtail cousins, dirt jump bikes, just unlock the big kid in us all, filling our heads with thoughts of backflipping, 360ing and tailwhipping through our local jumps — until we remember that, actually, we’ll be lucky to make it through without crashing.
A sticker on the shock lists the maximum recommended pressure as 275psi. We got ours as close as we could and found the back end still compressed under the weight of a 75kg rider, so we wouldn’t recommend running much less.
The feel of the rear suspension isn’t dissimilar to running your tyres a bit on the soft side, but without the uncontrollable roll that comes with that. This means you can run the Maxxis Ikon tyres at 60psi without the bike squirming around the berms or your feet bouncing off the pedals over every bump.
With the shock pumped up hard, the Stitched 720° is a ready-to-go slopestyle killer, but it’s equally at home flowing through small trails and pump tracks or finding hucks out and about town. The dialled geometry and BB pivot mean it rides more like a hardtail than any other slopestyle bike we’ve ridden, just with a bit of travel in reserve to take the sting out of big landings.
Canyon Stitched 720° early verdict
Not a bike we’d ride everyday, but one you can have endless fun on. Do we have to give it back?!