Mythical Cush: RH Rat Trap Pass review

Some janky stream of consciousness coming.

Tldr: I don’t think they’re amazing, but I’ll probably buy at least one more set in the future.

I don’t know about y’all, but for me there was some sort of mystique about Compass/Rene Herse tires. Jan is very enthusiastic in his writing about his products and the path that took him to take the dive into getting it all made.

I waited to bite the expense till after I read & heard reviews from people who were like me in being former bmx and/or fixed gear hooligans. They said RH tires, especially the ~55mm ones, make the road bumps disappear.

My main bikes are 700c and always have Conti GP5Ks, either 23mm (80psi front, 90psi rear) or 28mm (55psi front, 65psi rear) and both are reasonably smooth little magic carpets to whip through my dilapidated city year round, with a third of the year being below freezing.

I fit these RH RTP tires onto my early 80s rigid downhill MTB this morning after doing ~30 miles around Chicago last night on some 45mm T-Servs (~50psi). With the T-Servs it felt not terribly different from my road bikes, a bit slower and a little heavier, but still firm, nimble & responsive. With the RTP’s I was immediately struck with the reality that this frame was definitely designed around the 1.75” (45mm) tires that it came from the factory with back in 1984.

Where the bike’s steering was telepathically neutral before and all I had to do was lean to turn, now I have to twist the bars and actively manage the bike through every carve & corner. It might change if I crank the psi up to the 55psi max, but I’m on tour and only have a mini pump right now. Purely guessing, they’re in the 35-45 range. The mental workout was a bit like playing piano.

So the steering is ruined, do these magical tires eat up all or most bumps as advertised? Blasting through the grass portions of the Chicago lakeside, yeah it floats pretty good. Undeniably faster through that than any of my other bikes would be or this bike with the T-Servs. But on the cool bicycley highway and through the city streets, there’s no forgetting that you’re definitely still on a regular rigid frame bicycle. My princess feet & hands still felt every cement seam, every pavement pothole patch… I still had to Ride the bike as trying to do the ole Sit-N-Poke like as if I were on a Dutch Bike with a sprung Brooks saddle still was a bit abusive on the taint & spine. I guess I’m princess who can feel a flax seed under a stack of a hundred matresses.

But I built this bike up primarily for speedy commuting once a week with my week’s worth of work clothes and some prepped lunch, some weekend trail blasting, and a couple short tours per year. It’s not a Beach Cruiser.

This morning’s ride was still pretty fun, not having any cargo on the bike. While the sedate miles of pacing old roadies & lycra gravbike riders this morning had me filled with a bit of remorse about being suckered into some dumb expensive tires, the first thing that made me think this may not be my last set of RH tires is the bunnyhops. I gotta check my rear psi at a bike shop when I get off the train- no other tire has felt like it actually contributed to launching me up in the air like this one. They are usually on a spectrum of robbing a little pop to robbing a lot of pop. And the landings were just so satisfyingly smooth. I regret waiting till I was a mile away from the hotel to do a hop. I started hopping every blemish in the road. I know they have to stretch & settle in still, kinda like strings on a guitar or violin, this Fresh Outta The Pack feel may deaden out after a few hundred miles but it sure is sweet in this context for now. We’ll see.

Might-buy-another-set realization #2: Packed up with 10-12lbs per pannier on the way to the train station, now the steering neutralizes. Now I can just focus on traffic. With the T-Servs and fully loaded front rack the bike was a bit of a handful, almost too nimble. Now it’s feeling about just right.

How do they look? Cool, I guess. I think this bike wants blackwalls. And knobs. Next spring I may put some Conti RaceKings or whatever on and put these onto a dark colored frameset that’s in the shed waiting to be built back up.

Some people spend $900 on a single Pokemon card. Others spend that much every month on alcohol.

For me, these tires were not a waste of money.