Canfield Yelli Screamy hardtail mountain bike review

Full-suspension mountain bike designs come and go, but hardtails are forever. The Canfield Yelli Screamy made its debut in 2011, with the brand claiming it to be one of the first 29ers with modern, all-mountain geometry. In 2020, the bike saw major updates, though it kept much of the same character with short chainstays and a just-right 58mm bottom bracket drop.

I’ve been testing the Canfield Yelli Screamy over the winter and have found it’s a great choice for tight, technical trails and offers an efficient platform for putting in the miles. The frame is quite versatile and a home mechanic’s dream, though riders tend to either love or hate the look of the kinked top tube.

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Canfield Yelli Screamy key specs

• Hydroformed aluminum frame
• Geometry highlights: 424mm chainstays, 65.5° head tube angle, 77° effective seat tube angle, 475mm reach (size large)
• Compatible with 120-140mm forks, 130mm fork tested
• Price: $4,399.99 (on sale for $2,639.99 at time of publication), $799.99 frame only
• Buy from Canfield Bikes

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Short chainstays make the Canfield Yelli Screamy incredibly nimble

I had long given up on riding this particular section of trail without walking at least part of it. It’s not just the oddly shaped concrete blocks and abandoned railroad tracks, it’s the fact that the narrow, tree-lined trail twists and dips maniacally with seemingly little rhyme or reason. Despite having ridden this trail dozens of times over the past year or two, I had never cleaned the entire thing until I tested the Canfield Yelli Screamy.

But how? My first thought was that maybe someone had dumbed the trail down and cut back some of the saplings or smoothed the awkward dips, but that wasn’t it. Then it hit me: it’s the chainstays! The 424mm Canfield Yelli Screamy chainstays are 21mm shorter than the Stumpjumper I had just tested, and likely the shortest of any bike I’ve ridden. Navigating steep, tight switchbacks is notably easier with the short stays. And with my weight closer to the rear axle, I found excellent rear wheel traction, too.

Reviewer profile height: 190cm (6’3″) weight: 75kg (165lb) testing zone: Southeast, USA

Of course, there’s a point where a chainstay is too short, especially for a tall rider like myself. The Yelli Screamy is the first bike where I experienced heel strike on a derailleur. Since I ride flats, foot placement is an easy adjustment to make on the fly, though I worried I might accidentally kick the derailleur out of alignment on more than a few climbs.

Canfield is known for short chainstays, and the Nimble 9, the brand’s more popular hardtail model, features adjustable dropouts that effectively shrink the stays as short as 415mm.

On flat ground, the short stays give the bike a slightly draggy pedal feel. Of course, the upshot is it’s easier to manual and wheelie over obstacles in the trail.

A few hardtails have shorter chainstays than the Yelli Screamy, but not by a lot. The 27.5 Chromag Stylus and Kona Honzo DL both have 417mm stays, while the “regular” Kona Honzo and 29er Chromag Rootdown sit at 425mm like the Yelli Screamy.

Party in the front, party in the rear

The Canfield Yelli Screamy features matched 29er wheels front and rear, and the frame is designed around forks with 120-140mm of travel. The builds on offer, including the Core build tested, feature a 130mm fork, which places the bike in short-travel trail bike territory. On medium-speed trails, this is the right amount of travel for me, and paired with the 65.5° head tube angle, the bike handles well despite the slight rear-wheel weight bias.

With the short chainstays, the bike corners well, particularly when the trail requires abrupt changes of direction. On faster, wide-open descents, it’s clear the bike lacks some of the stability of a bike with longer chainstays.

Old-school look, new-school geometry

Mountain bikers have opinions about how bikes should look, and the riders I spoke with are split on the looks of the Yelli Screamy. When Singletracks wrote about the frame updates in 2021, one commenter wrote, “Not the prettiest bike out there.” A friend simply said the bike looks “weird.” The raw aluminum finish seen here doesn’t do much to soften the effect of the kinked top tube. Perhaps the biggest compliment I heard is that it looks “old school.” And to be clear, plenty of riders dig an old-school look.

Skimming the geometry chart below, the 424mm chainstays certainly stand out, as does the 77° effective seat tube angle. If you’re used to full suspension bikes, that number might not seem unusual, but it’s almost 2° steeper than the average “hardcore” hardtail, according to my research at the time of the Yelli Screamy’s last update. In fact, the previous Yelli Screamy had a 71.3° seat tube angle, so this represents a huge jump!

Even with the steep seat tube angle, there isn’t a lot of rear tire clearance. I can’t get a finger in between the 2.4-inch Maxxis Dissector and the seat tube. There’s probably enough room for a 2.5-inch rear tire, but it seems like a 2.6 would be pushing it, depending on the tire. Keep this in mind, especially if you ride in muddy conditions.

	SM	MD	LG	XL
Top Tube Length (Effective)	571	597	624	650
Reach	425	450	475	500
Front Center	736	763	793	820
Stack	630	635	644	649
Standover	677	709	746	769
Wheel Base	1,154	1,181	1,210	1,237
Head Tube Angle*	65.5	65.5	65.5	65.5
Head Tube Length	105	110	120	125
Seat Tube Angle (Effective)	77	77	77	77
Seat Tube Angle (Actual)	76.4	76.4	76.4	76.4
Seat Tube Length	380	420	460	490
Max. Seatpost Insertion	280	320	360	390
Chainstay Length	424	424	424	424
Bottom Bracket Height	316.5	316.5	316.5	316.5
Bottom Bracket Drop	58	58	58	58
Rider Height***	5’2″-5’7″	5’5″-5’11”	5’9″-6’3″	6’1″-6’6″

The 500mm reach on the extra large size frame I tested is in line with most trail bikes of this size. Some brands might be tempted to stretch the reach a bit given the short chainstays, but Canfield does not, resulting in a bike with a shorter-than-average wheelbase overall.

The 316.5mm bottom bracket (BB) height is pretty much spot on average for a modern hardtail, and this measurement has remained unchanged since the first version of the Yelli Screamy. With proportional crank lengths, pedal strikes are few and far between, even with the longest 170mm cranks on my test bike.

Yelli Screamy frame design

Canfield only makes metal bikes, and the Yelli Screamy frame features dependable 6061 aluminum alloy tubes. There are three sets of bottle mounts on the frame, and all cable and house routing is external, with the exception of the seat tube routing for the dropper post cable.

Most bikes that we test are delivered in a box 95% assembled, with only the handlebars and front wheel removed for shipping. The Canfield Yelli Screamy, to my surprise, arrived as a frame and a box of parts. Lance Canfield tells me this is how bikes are shipped to customers, too.

Fortunately, I found the bike to be very home mechanic friendly. The external cable and hose routing is frustration-free, and Canfield even included the right number of zip ties to attach everything. The threaded bottom bracket is another nice touch that amateur wrenchers will appreciate. All told, I had the entire bike assembled in a couple of hours, and everything I needed was included in the box.

The only snag I ran into along the way was, well, a snagged dropper post cable. It seems the seat post inlet had some burrs inside that scratched and nicked the housing pretty good as I slid the post into place and adjusted the cable.

The Yelli Screamy is available in three finishes. In addition to the raw aluminum shown here, there’s also “Purple Haze” and “Translucent Copper.” The frame features Boost rear spacing and is not UDH-compatible.

No mistaking it’s a Canfield mountain bike

There’s no mistaking the Yelli Screamy is a Canfield, and I’m not talking about the frame. On the Core build you’ll find a Canfield saddle, bottom bracket, grips, stem, cranks, and even tire sealant. A lot of those parts are simply co-branded — for example, the saddle is an SDG Bel Air III — though the crankset stands out for its quality machining and the fact that it comes with crank arm lengths that vary from 155-170mm, depending on the frame size. The crankset feels great and proved to be creak-free and silent throughout muddy winter testing. (Even if you don’t buy a Canfield bike, you can order the Canfield AM cranks online.)

I’m a big fan of the RockShox Pike Ultimate fork, and it feels like the right fork for the Yelli Screamy. After riding SRAM Eagle Transmission drivetrains almost exclusively for more than a year, I was worried GX mechanical would feel like a letdown, or at the very least that I would curse the installation and setup procedure. I was pleasantly surprised that the setup did not suck, and it proved to be incredibly quiet and reliable throughout my test rides.

Canfield is using an e*thirteen cassette instead of SRAM, and it works great despite having an unusual way of attaching to the hub body. The wheels are e*thirteen LG1+ Enduros, and the alloy rims remain dent-free and airtight after riding many miles of jank.

The TRP Slate T4 brakes provide good stopping power, though they’re a little underpowered compared to other options like SRAM Mavens. I also found them to be noisier than average in wet and gritty conditions.

The one miss for me when it comes to the build is the SDG Tellis dropper post with 175mm of travel. With 3-4 inches of exposed post, I could easily fit a 200mm dropper post on an XL Yelli Screamy frame. The post never felt fully out of the way on descents, and on top of that, the action feels a little slow and mushy.

How does it compare?

In my opinion, the Canfield Yelli Screamy is an approachable, middle-of-the-road hardtail. A lot of hardtails seem to be positioned as overly hardcore, with comically long forks and exaggerated geometry that look rad on paper but feel a little weird on the trail, like the Marin El Roy I tested a couple of years ago. The fit and function is somewhat similar to my Orange P7 hardtail, though the aluminum frame on the Yelli Screamy isn’t quite as forgiving.

I’m not surprised that the Canfield Nimble 9 outsells the Yelli Screamy, with longer travel and a steel frame (Canfield just added a titanium option too). The Nimble 9 also features sliding dropouts, which adds a singlespeed option and makes the chainstay length adjustable. And the Nimble 9 has a straight top tube and a curved seat tube brace.

Pros and cons of Canfield Yelli Screamy

Pros

• Short chainstays make for a nimble bike that’s easy to manual and is a dream for technical trail riding
• Solid build kits
• Home mechanic friendly and a bomber frame

Cons

• Polarizing look
• The flip side to short chainstays is less confidence at speed and limited rear tire clearance.

Bottom line

The Canfield Yelli Screamy is an unapologetically rough and tough hardtail that doesn’t shy away from technical trail riding.