Specialized Control 29 Carbon Wheelset Carbon/Charcol 29"

It’s not often that “affordable” and “carbon” appear in the same sentence, but our Control 29 Carbon wheelset was designed to change that. Using many of the same techniques used in the development of the SL iteration of the Control 29, these wheels provide the lightweight XC performance you need at a more attainable price.

Creating a successful XC wheelset isn't as easy as you might think. Often times, keeping a wheel light, stiff, and strong requires an unlimited budget, so when we were asked to create a wheel that had low inertia and weight but was also strong enough to take on rocks and roots, wide enough so that the tire profile was optimized for both traction and rolling resistance, and most importantly, was affordable, we knew that we had our work cut out for us.

We started with the notion of keeping these wheels as close to their SL brethren as possible. With this, we explored what made the SLs so awesome in the first place and implemented nearly every aspect of them. Starting with the rim, we kept our renowned Zero Hook Bead that allows for continuous fiber layup across the sidewall and rim bed. We then paired it with a wide 22-millimeter internal, 27-millimeter external profile makes it resilient to impact and creates a tire profile that’s conducive to low rolling resistance and incredible traction.

On the trail, these technical traits translate to a wheelset that many XC riders have grown to love—quick accelerations on punchy climbs, swift stopping that lets you leave braking till the last second, and unprecedented reliability. Combine this with our easy to set-up 2Bliss system and you have a reliable XC wheel that’s as easy to climb on as it is to set-up.

To go along with the rim, we made sure to keep the lightweight, reliable, and affordable features in mind when building the wheelset, so we took our proven alloy hubs that feature DT Swiss 350 internals at the rear and hand-laced them with 32 DT Swiss revolution spokes. Finding hand-built wheels is becoming more and more difficult, but we're fully vested in the power of the human touch. When a wheel is machine-built, there are certain margins of error that are built into the system that result in inconsistencies. With a real person building your wheels, you're sure to have a wheelset free of imperfections. And even better, the Control Carbon gives you this in one sub-1600-gram, trail-ready wheelset.

If you’re on the hunt for a wheelset that meets both your riding and financial expectations, the Control Carbon 29 is a trophy find.