Stumbled across and read all 18 pages of this thread, lots of great stuff to digest. Lurking here for some time but now thinking I should post and see if anyone can help.
Having recently moved to Wessex near the Ridgeway, I've decided neither my 700c CX race bike nor my 650b lockdown special "new" geometry hardtail is doing what I want a bike to do in riding all the gravel tracks and byways and bridlepaths round here. The former doesn't fit wider than 38mm tires, the latter is overkill (heavy and slow). So a lightweight retro 26er conversion or monstercross is what I want -- I think!
But I'd like to keep all options open while I experiment with it, so I'm looking for something fairly verstatile with post mounts AND disc mounts on the frame, sized quite small (13"-14" for my short legs and shortness in general) that will take both 26 and 650b wheels. So far I've found a few ~15 year old Scott Contessas that fit that description but wondering if I should be looking at any other framesets? Women's specific maybe?
When did MTB geometry really start to change to become long in the toptube, is mid 2000s still ok for finding a frameset that isn't too low and long? I haven't ridden my Giant Iguana circa 1993 in about 5 years so can't remember to compare to my latest MTB purchase.