Pic: Niall Flinn

Cotic has built its reputation on sweet-handling hardtails in steel and titanium. But its latest launch breaks the mould in a couple of key ways. First, it's made from aluminium. And second, it's got a shock in it.

The Hemlock is a project that Cotic's Cy Turner has been working on for several years. While it may look like quite a departure from other Cotic frames, it has a key thing in common - it's designed as a versatile all-rounder.

Cy's penned an extensive tract on the thinking behind the Hemlock that we're not going to repeat here - it's on the Cotic site if you want the full background. In a nutshell, the Hemlock is intended to be able to do almost anything that you'd want to do on a mountain bike. To that end, the four-bar back end will be available with either short or long rocker arms delivering either 105mm or 150mm of travel - quite rampy-uppy for the short travel, more linear for the long. With 10mm shock sag, both rockers give the same static geometry. Up front, you can run anything from 120-160mm of travel. So you can go long at both ends for all-mountainy kinds of things, short at both ends for XC/enduro or mix it up - we're particularly drawn to the idea of long at the front and short at the back for a kind of "super-hardtail" effect.

The whole idea is to let you build the frame up for what you want to do (and make it easy to change if you want to do something else) rather than force you to decide up-front what riding you want to do and choose a frame accordingly.

Claimed weight for the Hemlock frame is 6.5lb with a RockShox Pearl shock. There's scope for building something pretty light out of it, though - Cotic/Bontrager rider Kate Potter will be racing Mountain Mayhem on one kitted out with a DT carbon-canned shock that comes in under 24lb complete.

Price will be £950 including a Hope QR seatclamp, shock pump and delivery, or as a package with both rockers for £1,000 (additional rockers are £75 separately). There's one colour option (grey front, black anodised rear) but a choice of three colours for the top tube decal in traditional Cotic style. More at www.cotic.co.uk.