That's not a robot right there.
Live music is better than recorded music. It’s a given. Having that connection, where you’re sharing the same space as the artist is a unique experience that can’t be replicated on a plastic disc. To receive the gift from the giver personally is a moment of intimacy not possible if it arrives in a package in the mail. To be able to garner instantaneous gratitude, be it by applause, cheers or a smile is the reward that the artist lives for, else they wouldn’t be there. Showing appreciation for the gift returns the favour in kind. The performance feeds the audience, and vice versa.
Vinyl records hold the same sort of appeal that steel bicycles do; both materials revolutionised their respective industries and held the mantle of the best, the only choice, for decades. Then both were usurped by smaller, lighter composite materials and while the convenience and perceived performance they offered took over on a wholesale scale, a handful of purists held on to their Electric Ladyland limited edition LPs along with their Colnago Masters and Merckx Leaders. Vinyl may have been suddenly deemed cumbersome, inconvenient to use and harder to source, but it still offered a timeless sound quality that just had something about it, something that CDs and MP3s would struggle to achieve.
Same with steel bikes. There’s an indisputable and indescribable feeling that comes in the first few pedal strokes on a steel bike, and like pulling out that dog-eared copy of Hunky Dory, you know exactly what you’ll be getting, and you’re gonna like it. Picking up a hand-built bike from the person who made it is like going down to the studio to grab a signed slab of wax that Nick Cave hands to you himself. Straight to you.
Where the vinyl record remains round, grooved and black, the steel bicycle’s tubes remain round, straight and flat. You can’t improve on what’s proven. What’s perfect. Only the touch of the hand of the artist can make each one unique, where things that are really just simple things (a record, a bicycle) can be themselves set apart by the signatures laid upon them by their creators, curating originality (Jagger, Jaegher). To say it’s pretty special to see your own bicycle being made, your name on the tubes as they come together to be joined forever by the heat of the torch and the deft touch of the electrode, would be a modest assessment. To finally ride it, might be impossible to describe.
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@unversio
Been there, done that...
http://www.velominati.com/etiquette/rule-28-dissenting-opinion/
@unversio
Surely this is exactly what N+1 is for.
I want them all, lugged steel, aluminium, mid carbon, HEC and then a Ti. 3 out of 5 so far
@Barracuda
Well, I must choose a sharpest weapon since I'm limited right now to one frameset at a time. I secured an MX Leader in 2012 and sold the Extra Corsa from 2010 (family compromise) which replaced the Montello (RIP) from 1992. My bike build equation is N+none for some time. Although I am currently collecting components for an 8-speed and when the right frame finds me, then I'll have an N and N2.
Oddly there are 5 wheel sets for the one frameset. 2 clincher (Open Pros) -- 3 tubular (Victory Strada, GP4, GL 330)
@Barracuda
Don't forget the bamboo! From the local guys at HERObike (really is a cool story to this: http://www.herobike.org/pages/about-us)
@Brett
Great analogy mate....it will be a sweet day when that thing of beauty is between your thighs!
Brett,
Many thanks for posting such a great gallery of your frame's time under the torch! Wish I had been on hand when mine were being built. Have never owned anything but steel, so I have no perspective. Would be interested in your thoughts after riding the new bike a while.
Best, Dave
@tessar
Sorry, didn't explain myself - I meant its the geometry that will decide if a bike is comfortable or not, not necessarily the material.
Can only speak for myself, but a bike built to fit me, for the way I ride and where I ride works better than an off the shelf frame, no matter how long is spent on a bike-fit. I'd liken it to a bespoke suit versus something bought of the rack. You maybe lucky and find something generic that just happens to fit you, most often though it doesn't quite fit or hang correctly.
I'm being lazy - I can walk to two places that will build me a custom steel frame, don't recognise any of these being in Peckham?
@markb
If we're going by the "what's local", then sorry, can't find custom steel in my city, or within 100km from me, either.
Difference between a bespoke suit and a made-to-measure bike is that a bike, if you strip away the romanticism, is three contact points between you and a set of rubber strips. Imagine if a suit only contacted you at the shoulders, waist and ankle. There's practically an infinite number of ways to place those three points in the same exact place, and while a certain combination might look more asthetic, actual differences in performance will be inexistent. With the vast range of stock frames available these days, almost any "custom" build can be matched with an effectively identical stock frame.
@tessar
I can take two bikes that I'm pretty confident have the same contact points with my body in space, one has a track frame. the other an audax frame. I can ride the latter with comfort for many hours over the lumps and bumps of country lanes and I know from experience that I could not do the same on the track frame. Both are made of steel, yet their geometry is sufficiently different to give completely different rides and responses.