First Ride Review: 2025 Ari Signal Peak – Travis Engel | The Radavist | A group of individuals who share a love of cycling and the outdoors.

Ari Bikes, formerly known as Fezzari, occupies a unique corner of the high-end consumer-direct space. Sure, there’s lots of carbon and lots of electronics. Lots of mountain, all-mountain, road, and all-road. But there’s also domestic assembly, deep component customization, and decent value. And now, there’s the new Signal Peak XC bike. Travis had a couple whirlwind weeks of laps and lycra, and he’s here to talk about it once he catches his breath.

I love it when an underrated brand drops a banger new product, and the bike industry starts to take notice. One example I experienced first-hand was the Fezzari La Sal Peak. It arrived at my doorstep in August of 2018, just in time to get packed on an Air Canada flight for Crankworx Whistler. It was a 150 mm rear, 160 mm front, full-carbon all-mountain bike with a 78° seat-tube angle and two bottle mounts. I hadn’t even burned in the brake pads yet when I loaded the then-unreleased model onto a helicopter to get dropped off atop Mt. Barber with a few other journalists. I remember seeing the surprise in some of their faces as they read the downtube. “Fe-zzari?”

This was in the early days of high-end consumer-direct bikes reaching North American buyers. Canyon and YT paved the way, aided by their very sleek brand presence. The first thing you might think of is the angular logo flying off the downtube of a Canyon Speedmax triathlon bike, or the horror-themed launch video of a YT Capra. The second thing you might think of is how to buy one. With Fezzari, though, I wasn’t sure what to think besides “what’s with the name?” Truth is, it’s made-up. Like Häagen Dazs. But technically, all names are made-up. Including the new name they chose about a year ago, “Ari.”

The La Sal Peak eventually grew up into a full-on enduro machine, with the Delano Peak then sliding in under it. But they’ve always covered multiple categories. The Shafer is their progressive carbon gravel bike with lots of mounts and lots of tire clearance, and the Kings Peak is their progressive carbon fatbike with even more mounts and tire clearance. These models were dropping while the name was still “Fezzari,” and each one added refinement to the lineup. So it made sense that the name would eventually get refined, too. “Ari” does what it needs to do, and it does it quickly … Kinda like the new Ari Signal Peak.

Ari Signal Peak Quick Hits:

110 mm rear travel, 120 mm front
Carbon frame only
Flex-stay linkage
2.4” rear tire clearance
Available in four sizes, SM thru XL
Assembled-to-order in Utah
Optional 23-point body-measurement process to choose sized components (cranks, cockpit)
Wide component customization options upon request
Weight as tested (XL frame, no pedals): 28.2 lbs
Complete builds start at $3,799
Frame and SIDLuxe Ultimate Remote shock available for $2,999
Frame, SIDLuxe Ultimate Remote shock and SID Ultimate fork for $3,499
$5,599 as tested with SID Ultimate suspension and SRAM GX Transmission drivetrain
Sold consumer-direct at aribikes.com

I first rode a Signal Peak back in 2019. Speaking of made-up words, it was around the beginning of the “downcountry” boom. That generation of Signal Peak was available both as an aggressive 100 mm-travel XC race bike, and the 115 mm rear / 120 mm front version I rode. But in the years since, cross-country has been catching up with downcountry. So, the new Signal Peak is committed to 110 rear and 120 front. Although there are outliers in the cross-country category like the 80mm-rear-travel Trek Supercaliber, most World Cup XC race bikes have at least 100 mm in the rear. And teams riding the 110mm-rear-travel Giant Anthem and 120mm Scott Spark are both currently in UCI’s top five rankings. Point being, the new Signal Peak would feel right at home in a high-level XC race. But I sure as shit wouldn’t.

Pick-a-Part

This 40mm-rise handlebar and 2.5” DHF tire are not standard spec on the new Ari Signal Peak. I picked them out myself, along with a few other components. Ari bikes are built-to-order in their Utah headquarters. A lot of high-end brands do their assembly in their destination country, and they usually just offer a different wheelset or maybe suspension spec at checkout. But Ari takes it several steps further. The buying process starts with a size and style questionnaire that helps determine handlebar, stem, crank, and dropper-post dimensions. You can also make specific requests if you already know what you want. And that includes things like the tires and wheels, and often even the drivetrain and brakes.

This is the build I’d choose if I were buying this bike myself. I started with tall bars and a long dropper, of course. The tires are moderately aggressive ‘cause I like the peace of mind, but the brakes are straight-up moderate because I knew I wouldn’t be pushing this bike too hard. The wheels are DT’s wider XM 1700 instead of the narrower stock XR 1700 because they paired better with my tire choice. And the drivetrain is GX Transmission because knowing me, I’d rather save money than weight. I also could have gone with a cable-actuated XT drivetrain, or electronically controlled suspension, or even a power-meter crank. But in the end, I was happy with my choices. Every ride had me learning exciting, sometimes unfamiliar definitions for the word, “fun.”

Ari Signal Peak Ride Impressions: Descending

I was refreshed to see that Ari sizes the Signal Peak with about a 40-50mm stem in mind. I understand why some dedicated XC racers might be better off with a shorter wheelbase and longer stem, but we’re over a decade into The Geometry Revolution. Most riders have adapted to modern trail-bike geometry. Those handling techniques transfer to XC just fine. Even having just come off a much slacker and squishier bike, I wasn’t met with any unsettling twitchyness on the Signal Peak.

The other side of that coin is frame flex. Handling short and steep bikes at speed wouldn’t be so challenging if they were a bit more laterally stiff. I remember some Cannondale and BMC frames of just a few years ago feeling a bit unpredictable when making forceful direction changes in rough terrain. And I’m not saying the Signal Peak feels as stout as a trail bike. I haven’t ridden a ton of XC bikes lately, but the current Scott Spark is the only one I’d call “stout.” What I am saying is that Ari found the right balance.

This bike happened to arrive alongside some very precious Southern California rainfall. There’s much better traction right now than there usually is. So, instead of cautiously dangling my inside foot around a loose corner, I could trust my front tire would hold and my rear tire would follow. On the Signal Peak, that meant I could be more aggressive with my leans without things getting unpredictable at the apex. Less robust XC bikes often rebound me into a weird oversteer before straightening out. That’s especially true if I don’t have my lean angle right or if the rear wheel bounces off traction for a second. But on this bike, those types of aggressive maneuvers are much more predictable, even if my line and lean aren’t always perfect. I could make a mid-turn corrective flick, and as long as I was at reasonable speed and on reasonable ground, the bike reacted promptly.

Of course, even with my 40 mm handlebar, I wouldn’t say I was in the ideal body position for these types of “aggressive maneuvers.” Putting a lot of weight into the front wheel wasn’t as much a technique as it was a requirement. I’ve written a lot about being on the high-stack bandwagon, so don’t take that as a criticism of the bike. It’s just that I’m in the middle of giving an XC bike a lot of praise for its downhill performance, but that forward bias is an inescapable reminder that this is indeed still an XC bike. Well, the forward bias and the suspension travel, but it gets more complicated there.

The current SID fork is tailor-made for a modern XC bike like this. Although the materials are thinner and the structures are slimmed down, it’s got the same-diameter (35 mm) stanchions used in the Pike trail fork and Lyric all-mountain fork. But it’s tuned for XC. Meaning it’s supportive and efficient. And I knew that, but I still was surprised at how difficult it was to bottom out, even with a deep-for-me 20% sag setting. I opened up the air spring to pull out a volume spacer, but there are none in the stock setup. Not complaining, just saying the front end really likes to ride high in its travel. And that’s a huge perk given the relatively low stack height.

I have similar thoughts on the rear suspension, but there’s much more to talk about back there. The SID shock, of course, has similar design goals as the fork. Supportive, efficient, yadda yadda. And I had a similar experience wanting to test it out with one less volume spacer, and finding it was already empty. It’s not just small and light, it’s literally designed for the job of XC racing. But Ari has some pretty neat witchcraft hidden in the frame linkage helping with the cause.

It uses a flex-stay, which is common in XC. Instead of having a pivot at the dropout, the carbon flexes to accommodate the small change in distance between the main pivot and the swing link as you go through the travel. But Ari molded the rear triangle such that the carbon was “resting” at sag, instead of at full extension like most other flex-stay bikes. This achieves a few things. For one, the force of the stays pulling back to that resting position near sag actually helps the shock into its travel. When the rear end is at or near full extension, like on a steep descent or in the air, the next small bump it hits will have an easier time breaking into the initial travel thanks to what is essentially a negative leaf-spring. But then, later in the travel, it starts to work the other way. The stays begin to help resist compression past sag, adding mid- and late-stroke support.

Of course, none of the above features made the Signal Peak’s suspension behave like that of a longer-travel bike. When I hit something hard, or went into a rock garden at speed, I felt it. That’s kinda why I was curious to see what it’d be like to have a little less ramp-up. Maybe if it more readily gave up those last few millimeters, I could tease out some longer-travel behavior. But I think the suspension, as-is, provided something more valuable. Although I eventually did find a pressure setting that allowed me to finally bottom out both fork and shock, those bottom-outs were never harsh. In fact, they were imperceptible amid the chaos of riding an XC bike at the edge of its intentions. That’s impressive given how and where I was riding this bike. Again, conditions have been stellar lately, so I was able to charge hard enough that I kinda regretted turning down Ari’s option to put burlier brakes on the bike. It was like there was a little forcefield hovering a few millimeters above max travel. It didn’t make the bike plush, but it made it predictable.

Another perk of this unique approach to a flex stay was that it naturally made the bike “want” to stay at sag, which made for calmer pedaling and a perfect segue into the climbing section.

Ari Signal Peak Ride Impressions: Climbing

This bike goes uphill fast. Duh. But basic-ass facts deserve basic-ass statements. Here’s another: Most XC bikes go uphill fast. Riding this bike has gotten me thinking a lot about exactly why that is, but it might be a topic for a Dust-Up someday. What’s worth diving deeper into for an Ari Signal Peak review is what that meant for someone who would probably never enter a traditional cross-country race.

On long climbs, “fast” meant that it was rewarding. Even on my personal bike, which has just 125 mm of rear travel, I can only mash so hard until I feel like I’m wasting energy. That’s not the case on the Signal Peak. Within reason, there was no limit to the return on investment. On my first ride, I ended up 23 seconds off a personal record for one particular hour-and-fifteen-minute climb. It would have been a PR, and maybe even bumped me up the leaderboard from 4th to 3rd, if I hadn’t stopped at the second switchback to slam my saddle forward. That’s a “me” thing, by the way. 76 degrees is a good angle for a short-travel bike’s seat tube. Especially because ARI calculates STA the right way, with the saddle at a reasonable height based on a given frame size. My body is just used to being far forward. And therefore, I slam.

The other thing “fast” means is that I would just go for stuff I normally wouldn’t. On that near-record-breaking climb I mentioned, I was one loose rock away from cleaning a section I literally never believed possible. I think that’s more because the firm shock and low stack were in my corner, and less because the linkage is magical in any way. Although I never felt any hang-ups when pedaling through rough stuff, there’s just too little travel for me to notice whether the Signal Peak’s frame design ever did anything special on rough, intense climbs. Like float with utter indifference to pedaling force in the way a DW Link or a CBF design can. The most remarkable thing was that I don’t remember feeling a single pedal strike. Kinda made me think the bottom bracket could have been a bit lower. But of course I would think that, given how many fire roads I climb. Bottom line is that suspension did the job of giving me all the traction and momentum I could reasonably ask for. Except when I turned the suspension off!

I love lockouts. Especially remote lockouts that can get really really firm. That rewarding feeling gets notched up significantly when I suddenly have a hardtail in my hands. I rode a Scott Ransom for quite a while, and I was conditioned to use its Twinloc system quite regularly. It all came right back to me on the Signal Peak. I’d swap between modes without the slightest internal debate. It’s sort of a bummer that the grip-shift-style lockout used by RockShox can’t work with my favorite lock-on grips, but the stock push-ons aren’t the worst I’ve wrapped my fingers around. And yeah, there are extra cables to look at, listen to, and eventually replace. But, hey. At least Ari didn’t route any of them through the headset.

Design, Spec, and Value

The Ari Signal Peak thankfully uses tube-in-tube guided internal cable routing. And it uses a good ol’ threaded bottom bracket. Regular Boost dropout spacing, and a regular 31.6 mm seatpost diameter. Good, normal choices. No boats were rocked, no feathers were ruffled. Then there are the two bottle mounts in the front triangle, present on every frame size, and a down-tube mount I used for one of my essentials kits. There’s no in-downtube storage, but that’s probably a good call on a lightweight race bike. It’s also comforting to know that brands are still allowed to release a bike in 2025 without it.

Although my test bike strayed pretty widely from the stock build options, it wasn’t because I got special treatment. Ari isn’t like a snooty Los Angeles brunch spot. They allow substitutions. Again, there’s the size customization that allows you to get touchy-feely with your touchpoints. And at checkout, there are on-menu options like upgrading to carbon wheels or electronically controlled suspension. But you can talk to someone at Ari before making your purchase and discuss changes like the ones I made. You don’t have access to every single component on the internet, but it’s still a lot like building a custom bike at a bike shop, except much cheaper.

That makes it hard to compare value on the Ari Signal Peak, on top of a few other reasons. For one thing, Ari’s domestic assembly is a value-add in itself, especially when it’s not coming to you through a bike shop. Plus, their 30-day return policy is for real. There are conditions, like the bike can’t be returned if damaged, and you’ll have to pay shipping both ways. But they mean it. And the lifetime frame warranty for the original owner is pretty normal, but the one-year frame warranty for the second owner is pretty not-normal. Also, it’s sold consumer-direct, so it’s not really fair to compare pricing to something you’d buy at a bike shop.

The entry-level Signal Peak is $3,800 with a Deore drivetrain and base-level SID suspension. Not bad for a carbon XC race bike. I couldn’t find anything from a traditional shop-sold brand that came close. Canyon has a Lux World Cup CF7 that’s “coming soon” and pledges to undercut that by $400, but there are no concrete component details, and no info on when “soon” will come.

The Signal Peak I tested would go for $5,600. The nearest consumer-direct bike I could find was another Canyon. The Lux Trail CF9 retails for $6,200 with the same drivetrain and brakes, but less expensive suspension, more expensive wheels and dropper, and more travel. Apples and oranges, sure, but it seems like Ari has an edge. Then look at the Santa Cruz Blur GX AXS at $6,600 or Trek Top Fuel 9.8 GX AXS at $7,000. Pretty similar builds, with slightly cheaper suspension, and still an extra thousand bucks or more. Cannondale and Specialized have similar entries in that same price range with carbon wheels, but Ari offers a carbon upgrade for $800, which means the Signal Peak still beats them on price.

It also beats them on a level that I don’t normally care about, but kinda makes me smile: The Ari brand is a blank slate, especially now that they dropped the “Fezz.” There’s just something so unpretentious about them. They’re function-first, from the sizing, to the customization, to the 30-day returns, and even to that seemingly minor one-year second-owner warranty. If you ever sell the Signal Peak, you can put that one-year warranty right there on Facebook Marketplace. That’ll probably be years from now, though. Maybe all the helicopter shuttlers will have one by then.