I’ve had endless creaking problems with my 1-1/8” threadless Chris King Headset. It is a beautiful piece of workmanship, but the top-cap-to-steerer interface is a complete hack kludge. No bearing interface should be dependent on an o-ring for concentric loading! It was time for a change, so based on my exceptionally good results from the Double X One Point Five headset on my Chase, I had Jarrel bring me in the mechanically similar Solos for 1-1/8”.
On initial inspection, this 131-gram headset is well made, but a little roughly finished, especially considering the $100 retail. The forged and machined 7000-series aluminum cups house stainless-steel angular contact cartridge bearings. These, like the bearings in the Double X, are off-the-shelf Enduro bearings, so should be available as replacement parts if they go bad in the future. The cups have 150% longer frame inserts than the King so should anchor the bearing assemblies more solidly and more squarely in the headtube. The crown race is machined stainless steel, but is a little rough, especially around the edges. The top cap has a split-collet insert to center the steerer and take the concentric loads and a separate cosmetic cap with an o-ring seal at the steerer opening. Neither the bottom or top cups have any seals against the adjacent pieces, so the bearing seals are the only seals. Cane Creek describes the convoluted shape of the interfaces as “treacherous path” interfaces, but these will do little to prevent the entry of water or grit. The larger Double X headset has plastic seals with a “plus-sign” cross-section that ride in matching grooves in the cups and caps. Again, those probably do little to “seal” out anything, but may help prevent some grit from approaching the bearing itself. The overall stack height is a couple of millimeters higher than the King at 29.5mm, mostly below the headtube.
The cups pressed easily into the frame, but the crown race was a little difficult to get onto the steerer. This may be partially due to the roughness of the finishing. I ended up removing it and smoothening out the sharp transition at the chamfer so it pressed onto the fork easier and more squarely. On final assembly, there was some felt resistance. After a break-in ride, there was aluminum dust at the top-cap-to-upper-bearing cup interface. 
Disassembly revealed that the outermost “treacherous path” step on the top cap was contacting the matching surface on the upper bearing cup. The aluminum surfaces were galled and rough. A clean up with a square needle file corrected this. The probable culprit was the upper bearing cup. Either rough handling during the production process raised a bump or burr on the edge that interfered against the top cap, or lack of facing during the machining process left a rough, uneven mating surface. After cleaning up the galled edge, I ran the file across the top surface of the cup and it was very uneven. After reassembly, the headset was perfectly fine. End-load adjustment was easy and after the stem was locked down, the adjustment held and there was no concentric play or creaking.
Recommended with reservations. It is expensive for what you get – $100 is a lot for an offshore (Taiwan – not PRC) headset, but if you find it cheap, then it is a decent value. The finishing is poor considering it is supposed to be a premium headset. If you do what the factory should have done before it reached your hands and clean up the rough edges and check for interference, it will go together with no problems. In doing what I wanted, which was to eliminate the problems that the King it replaced had, it did so exceptionally. The other options for a premium colletted threadless headset that I considered were Race Face and Hope. At the time I ordered the Solos, Race Face was transitioning from the excellent Canadian-made RealSeal headset to a marginal offshore one, and the UK-made Hope was not available in the USDM. Even if the Hope was available at the time, it had a slightly higher stack height, which I wanted to avoid. Recently, Cane Creek has come out with a new premium headset to replace the Solos.
Further updates after more riding.
Initially rating 2.5 out of 4 Techno Monkeys
MSRP = $100
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