When you see a cool-looking steel or titanium full-suspension frame floating around the Sea Otter Classic expo grounds, you often can’t tell if it’s something that’s commercially available or if it’s just someone’s graduate thesis. The Sage FAF we saw at this year’s event certainly feels like a finished product, and it just reached a major milestone.
Sage has been around since 2012, positioning themselves as a premium-tier manufacturer working exclusively in titanium. Since 2014, Sage’s frames have been made in their Portland-area facility in Oregon using American-sourced tubing. And for the past three years, they’ve been incorporating 3D-printed dropouts and chainstay yokes. The FAF ups the ante with 3D-printed suspension-linkage hardware, and is the culmination of Sage’s off-road evolution. But it still wasn’t technically for sale … Until today.
Sage is now taking pre-orders for the FAF, which is actually just a working title. The final name, full geometry, and exact price won’t be revealed until the Made show this coming August, with delivery expected in Q1 of 2027. The specifics Sage has shared thus far are that it’s a 115mm rear-travel, 120mm front-travel flex-stay frame with a 66° head angle and an aggressive XC disposition. Sage also shared a price range, and it’s pretty shocking. But try to reserve judgement until we’ve covered some of the details..
The FAF has been in development for three years. At one point, it was going to use carbon tubes and titanium lugs. But the prototype didn’t meet their demands for lateral stiffness. Anyway, Sage is a titanium brand. They’ve been welding the stuff for over a decade. And they have a head start in the growing field of builders using 3D-printed frame elements.
Sage founder, David Rosen, is a bit of a nerd on the subject. He’s a bit of a nerd in general, as we learned when he pointed out that the simplified owl logo etched on his frame or embossed on his dropouts took inspiration from the Recognizer, a giant floating sentinel from the movie, Tron. Rosen told us about some secret sauce in the 3D printing process used on the FAF that we can’t even talk about yet, but it makes for a more consistent final product.
Sage is just as granular when picking the tubing for the FAF. Their DFARS-compliant (Defense Federal Acquisition Regulations Supplement) material is about as pure as you can get. And they shape it in-house with their own molds. That’s done either to marry seamlessly to the 3D printed junctions, or to achieve specific stiffness and compliance profiles. The horizontal ovality in the seatstays and vertical ovality in the chainstays work together to make the FAF’s flex-stay rear end work as intended.
There’s also a lot of intentionality behind the shape and size of the machined aluminum swinglink. On top of being tuned towards a racy, supportive ride, it’s thicc. That makes for a wider bearing stance and improved lateral stiffness, but Rosen also says it helps send the message that the FAF is not a light-duty XC bike. And yet, it’s still pretty sleek. It helps that the pivot hardware and bolts were all designed and manufactured to Sage’s specs.
That seems to be emblematic of how Rosen approaches design. He sweats the small stuff. The FAF puts the tech first, and lets the vibes follow. And that painstaking approach isn’t gonna come cheap. Again, Sage isn’t announcing an exact price today. There are still too many variables at this point. That includes the size of the first production run, which will probably be relatively limited. That, paired with Sage’s painstaking attention to detail, is why this frameset (frame, seat collar, rear axle, and Sid Ultimate rear shock) may cost $10,000 to $15,000.
Presumably, that high ceiling is to make totally sure that Sage won’t have to surprise early adopters with a higher-than-advertised price. But if you put down the non-refundable $1,000 deposit for an FAF, be ready for that to potentially be the final bill. Or you can put that towards one of Sage’s existing hardtails, road, or gravel frames. They’re only $6K.
We’ll keep this post updated as Made comes around and there are final details to share.
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