Review: e*thirteen Sidekick Hub

You’ve got to ride it to understand it.

If you’ve spent time on internet mountain bike forums (or the wrong dive bars) in the last few years, you’ve probably heard folks discussing pedal kickback, and the various remedies for it. It’s been a hot topic of late, with products like the OChain, Rimpact’s chain damper, high pivot bikes with idlers, and the e*thirteen Sidekick all designed to reduce the impact of your drivetrain on your bike’s descending performance.

I’ve watched these discussions take place from the wings. There’s a contingent of folks, armed with graphs and diagrams who claim that a bike has to be moving very slowly, in a very easy gear, to actually create pedal kickback through the chain with modern suspension platforms. And there’s another group who argues that we should all just run lower engagement hubs and stop caring so much about points of engagement.

Those two groups have left me fairly skeptical about pedal kickback, and its actual effect on my day-to-day riding. Isn’t this just another imaginary gremlin invented to sell us more bike parts we don’t really need? So when the opportunity came to take Stash’s demo Sidekick wheel for a spin, I was, to put it lightly, skeptical. In the back of my mind I was pretty sure that this was a problem looking for a solution. Luckily though, I got to try this thing out for myself, and came away with a different perspective.

• Degrees of Float: 12, 15, or 18° degrees

• Stated Weight: 450 g (hub only)

• Spring Rate: 550 lbs, 20 PSI
• Bike and Rider Stats: 2025 Specialized Stumpjumper 15 alloy, 6’2” 200 lbs
• Price to demo: $25

Stash uses the same demo process with the Sidekick as with their demo shocks . Message ahead, make sure that they’ve got the Sidekick ready for you, and then swing by with your bike. The guys at Stash will help move your cassette, rotor, and tire over to the demo wheel,run you through how it works, and how to adjust it. Pay your $25, and go ride your bike. If you post a quick review (positive, neutral, or negative) on your Instagram story and tag Stash, they’ll give you a free water bottle.

I threw the 27.5” Sidekick on the back of my Stumpjumper with a familiar tire, and my typical GX Transmission cassette and 200 mm brake rotor. I started out in the 15° setting, and then tried both the 12° and 18° settings as well.

The first thing I noticed about the Sidekick is how smoothly it spins. Even without a tire installed, the wheel spins for ages with a slight push. That’s because there’s effectively only one pawl dragging. That one pawl is connected to the “Pawl Pusher” , a red trilobed part that, when engaged, disengages all the traditional pawls in the hub. That Pawl Pusher is the driving force behind the Sidekick. Its shape allows you to fine tune the hub’s float, and then it always delivers the same amount of float, before pushing the other pawls off of the 60 tooth ratchet ring.

So, short version: this hub rolls fast, smooth, and damn near silent when you’re coasting.

As I mentioned in the intro, I was skeptical. And climbing up to Galbraith from the house didn’t do anything to allay that skepticism. The float between putting power to the pedals and it reaching the tire is noticeable. Luckily the pickup is fairly quiet and smooth - it’s much less loud and violent than, say, an 18 tooth DT Swiss ratchet ring. And, as long as you keep some level of power going through the pedals, you don’t find that free stroke often. But, as soon as you stop pedaling, to coast, or to ratchet up something techy, you’ll have to push through however many degrees you have the hub set to before your pedal stroke does anything.

I’ll get into this deeper in the next section, but I’d say the Sidekick ranges from almost unnoticeable on purpose-built climbing trails to pretty frustrating on techy, weird moves.

But this hub is all about the down. I like to think my Stumpjumper goes downhill pretty nicely, and I’m not convinced that pedal kickback is doing much when I’m actually moving at the speeds most trails demand. But I noticed the Sidekick in the first hundred yards of trail.

I was riding SST, which is fairly fast and smooth, with plenty of smaller square-edged chatter. And that chatter disappeared. I didn’t hear it, I didn’t feel it, it felt like someone had smoothed over this trail that I know very well. I carried more speed into the first jump line than I’m used to, and then floated out through the root ball into the woods. 

The defining word here is “quiet.” The bike was literally, and figuratively quieter with the Sidekick, it’s got a much more subdued sound while coasting than any other hub I’ve used. The Stumpjumper is a fairly “slappy” bike - with SRAM Transmission installed I get a fair amount of chain noise, and I’ve experimented with extra rubber, and even magnets to quiet down that noise. The Sidekick shuts it down much more effectively. It was a little jarring to realize how much noise my bike was making before in its absence with the Sidekick. I can still get a little chain slap, if I run into something big at speed, or case a jump, but mostly, that sensation is gone.

The bike also feels quieter through my feet. There’s less feedback coming through my pedals, and it almost feels like my suspension is set up softer, with more travel, so that I’m hoverboarding over bumps that I’d usually feel. It’s a pretty cool sensation that’s unfortunately a little addictive.

I experimented with all three deadband settings, and ultimately, I prefer the biggest 18° setting. It makes the biggest impact on the way down, and isn’t drastically worse on the way up.

I’m pretty convinced that the Sidekick makes my bike ride better, but I’m not convinced that’s because of pedal kickback coming through the drivetrain, at least in the traditional sense of how people use that term. It’s easy to drop a bike in a parking lot for an Instagram reel, or compress its rear end on the shop floor and show the suspension pulling the pedals back, but that doesn’t really translate to most real world riding situations.

Instead, I think the Sidekick might be doing a much better job controlling chain slap and flop, and eliminating the yank that a few hundred grams of chain being whipped around translates to my feet. Watch any slow motion video of modern bikes being ridden hard and you’ll see that even though derailleur clutches and narrow/wide chainrings do a good job keeping the chain from dropping off the ring, it’s still moving around a bunch. Imagine riding with a chain dangling off your hip pack. It would pull you around, and amplify every bump you hit.

The Sidekick takes that flopping, unruly chain, and gives it some room to float around in. Instead of pulling on your feet, it can move the cassette within that deadband and leave you free to ride your bike instead of reacting to its motion.

That all sounds great, where’s the catch?

Well, lots of folks like high engagement hubs. They like the instant delivery of power from their feet to the rear wheel. If you got all hot and bothered when Industry Nine announced that Hydra 2 has even moreinstant engagement than the original Hydra hub, this product is not for you. Incidentally, the Sidekick weighs about 150 g more than the Hydra 2, and costs $30 more at $499.

But beyond that, I think its benefit comes down to where, and how you ride. Since Stash is a Bellingham shop, I can give local examples. If you typically ride directional climb trails on Galbraith (the Ridge, Bottoms Up, Up 2 Something, etc) you probably won’t have issues with the free float of the Sidekick messing up your climb. You can just spin a solid cadence and go to the top. The same goes for folks riding off-Galbraith trails that are primarily accessed via logging roads. And those sustained descending trails will let you reap the benefits of the Sidekick on the way down.

If, on the other hand, you like to get weird in the Chuckanuts, linking together janky climb trails and technical descents that include lots of ratcheting and trials-esque moves, the Sidekick might not be for you. I recently rode a Ridge to Hush Hush lap and was struck by how uniquely unsuited to the Sidekick those trails are. There are so many ratchety, weird moves where you want your hub to engage instantly, and very few prolonged descents where the Sidekick will shine.

So, in short: put the Sidekick on bikes that you use to spin uphill, and then charge back down, not on bikes where you pick your way up, down, and around jank all day.

The Sidekick is a unique product. It really does need to be ridden to understand its impact on your bike, both up, and downhill. Some riders might find that they really don’t get along with the extra float at the beginning of a pedal stroke but I think a lot of folks will immediately notice a positive difference, and potentially become addicted to that silent, smooth sensation. And if you do, that’s great, Stash is happy to sell you a complete wheel or lace you up something custom around a Sidekick hub.

Either way, it only costs $25 to  demo a Sidekick and find out for yourself.