That's where it can become a boring semantic debate. Somebody could say 'the Roadeo is a road racing bike that can take 32mm tires', and then point to a 1963 Jack Taylor that can take 32mm tires. Still, to me the Roadeo is unique. More BB drop, slacker STA, slightly upsloping TT, etc. Grant didn't copy anything when he designed the Roadeo. He identified a VACUUM in the road bike market and filled it. The Legolas is probably the model most similar to other cyclocross racing bikes. There have been nice steel cyclocross racing bikes that the Legolas is pretty similar to. You'd have to be in the small details to laud the unique details, but still I think they are there.
No production bike company ever has been so devoted to unique lugged bikes that they custom cast everything. Fork crowns, lugs, dropouts, all custom, because nothing else was right for what they wanted to do. More BB drop than anybody means a different BB shell than anybody. A slacker STA than anybody influences the BB and the seat cluster. The longest chainstays on touring bikes used to be limited by what an uncut Reynolds or Columbus chainstay happened to be. Riv had their own tubing made to push things that everybody else just passively considered 'unpushable'. Doing something new doesn't automatically make them better, but it does make them different and it does make it an additional choice for us that never existed, and it definitely makes Rivendell 'not-retro'. The other revolutionary thing is several Riv models use two or three different wheel sizes proportionally with frame size. That's never been done. Long Haul Trucker offers wheel size choices, but not proportionally with frame size, and the Long Haul Trucker is considered a budget Atlantis anyway. Nobody did it before Rivendell did. Again, that doesn't make it right, but again it makes Rivendell not retro. On Thursday, October 26, 2017 at 5:19:34 PM UTC-7, Orc wrote: > > > > On Thursday, October 26, 2017 at 4:21:24 PM UTC-7, Bill Lindsay wrote: >> >> I can't tell if this question is honest curiosity or the beginning of a >> semantic debate. I hope it's the former, because semantic debates are >> super boring. >> > > Honest curiosity. There has been a LOT of bicycle design in the last > 160 years, and it's a pretty bold claim to state that every design that > Grant has made is something bold and unique. I see Riv pushing at the > edges (tire gigantism, long chainstays & an almost religious faith in the > benefits of upright seating) but even models that I thought were pretty > unique (the Rosco Bubbe) have predecessors (in the case of the mtb RB, my > first half frame was based off a Trek 820 from '91(ish) that has almost > exactly -- the HT is much shorter on the 820, and the rear triangle is a cm > or so shorter -- the same geometry as the RB that was briefly in my hands) > in the field. > > The lugs are really distinctive (I wish that I'd stocked up on them > when Riv was still selling grabbag lugs from discontinued models!) and > Grant has an eye for matching lugs to frames to paint that I've not seen > elsewhere (and this is nothing to complain about. If I were buying > expensive frames -- and if Riv didn't have their religious faith in upright > seating -- I'd rather buy a pretty and marginally heavier Riv instead of a > carbon fiber frame.) > > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "RBW Owners Bunch" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/rbw-owners-bunch. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
