It's that time of year again when the major manufacturers unveil their shiny new stuff. Few manufacturers come more major than Specialized, and there's always an impressive slab of newness emerging from Morgan Hill. Here's some highlights of the forthcoming 2010 range.

Stumpjumper FSR

The Stumpjumper FSR has been through a number of incarnations since its debut in the early 90s. For 2010 there's another all-new frame, with travel bumped up to 140mm at each end. The 2010 S-Works FSR pictured here comes in at a claimed 22.4lb, despite that extra travel. Inevitably, the frame is carbon fibre, using Specialized's FACT IS construction. The front end is made in two parts, with the top, head and down tubes being one and the seat tube and bottom bracket the other. The chainstays and seatstays are also made in one piece.

Notably, the suspension layout has switched to the under-top-tube shock configuration that Specialized introduced on last year's Epic. The FSR still uses an inertia-valve Brain shock, but it's returned to Fox to manufacture it. A neat touch is that the shock only has a conventional eyelet at one end - the other end features an integrated yoke that runs directly to the seatstay upper link pivots. So that's one pair of shock bushings you'll never need to replace.

While the shock is from Fox, the fork is Specialized's own. The Future Shock S140TA punts out 140mm of travel (adjustable down to 115mm). The fork weighs either 3.95lb or 3.49lb depending on which bit of Specialized's blurb you read, with the help of the one-piece carbon fibre 1.125in/1.5in tapered steerer/crown. Inside there's an air spring and another Brain inertia valve with Brain Fade compression adjustment. Perhaps surprisingly, the S140TA uses a conventional QR, although the dropout faces and end caps of the Roval wheel are designed to give an extra-large stiffness-enhancing interface.

The other notable feature of the S-Works FSR is the FACT carbon crank. This first appeared on Specialized's high-end road bikes, before an MTB version was included on some Epic models in 2009. The arms are something of a marvel of carbon fibre construction, with each arm including half the BB spindle. Rather than making arms and bonding them to the spindle, each side is made as one piece, with continuous CF strands running from the end of the crank to the end of the half-spindle. The two halves of spindle join together via a Hirth coupling - there are serrations on the ends of the spindle halves that interlock. Specialized say that the FACT carbon mounta crank weighs 684g (including bearings), or 97g lighter than XTR.

Enduro SL

When Specialized launched the Enduro SL, sub-30lb 150mm travel all-mountain bikes were somewhat of a rarity. These days, while still not exactly growing on trees, there are rather more, so it's not surprising the Specialized has come up with an all-new bigger-better-faster-more Enduro SL.

The original Enduro SL was notable for its actually fairly normal appearance, with a conventional front triangle. The 2010 bike, though, is somewhat more adventurous, with the top tube, seat tube strut and extra tube that the shock mounts to forming an X in the middle of the bike. That lets Specialized increase standover clearance while also making the seat tube longer for greater seatpost adjustment range. On which subject, the Enduro SL comes equipped with Specialized's own Command Post remote adjustable seatpost offering 35 and 100mm drop options.

Again, there's a new fork, with the original twin-crown E150 consigned to the recycling skip of history. The new E160TA is a single-crown 160mm fork with a 135mm travel lockdown. As with the E140 there's a lightweight carbon fibre steerer/crown, but no Brain inside this one. The E160 isn't entirely bereft of internal trickery, though - you get a Spike Valve compression blow-off doohickey to suck up the big hits. The E150 had a unique 25mm through-axle system, but that's been ditched in favour of a 20mm Maxle as found on RockShox forks.

Out back there's a custom-tuned version of Fox's RP23BV shock that features the Boost Valve position-sensitive damping from the DHX shocks. Specialized has also come up with a new 2.3in Eskar tyre with bigger side knobs with which to equip the Enduro SL, and you also get a 22/36 double chainset with Gamut chain guide. The whole lot comes in at a claimed 28lb.

Epic

No major changes for the Epic for 2010, but Specialized's own-brand shock is again dropped in favour of a Fox-manufactured unit. Other than that it's just spec changes, with new wheels, tyres, bars, stems and pretty much everything else. There'll also be a new M5 aluminium 29er Epic.

Stumpjumper 29er

As well as the Epic 29er, there're also Stumpjumper 29ers in FSR and HT flavours. They're generally constructionally similar to their 26in counterparts, except that the aluminium 29ers get tapered 1.125-1.5in headtubes that are only found on the carbon fibre 26in bikes.

Pictured is the top-of-the-tree S-Works Stumpjumper 29er, featuring a 1,150g carbon frame, custom RockShox Reba S29 fork with 90mm travel and carbon tapered steerer/crown, S-Works carbon cranks mated with SRAM XX chainrings and new Roval Control 29 wheels.

And if that's not niche enough for you, Specialized will be doing a limited production run of S-Works Carbon singlespeed frames...

Those are the high-end highlights of the 2010 Specialized range, with bikes like the popular Pitch and P-series hardtails falling into the "not broken, leave largely alone" category save for spec and colours. It's interesting to note that with the Stumpy FSR going to 140mm of travel that Specialized has left something of a travel gap in its range. With 120mm bikes being very popular in the UK, it'll be interesting to see how that pans out. Clearly the FSR isn't suffering any particular weight penalty in its longer-legged incarnation, though.

These bikes will be available at various times towards the end of the year. Keep an eye on www.specialized.com for further details.