What I’m reading is that most of you concur that Grant is not right all the time (with regards to bike design). Big companies are not right all the time. He’s right some of the time, as are the big companies. Answer, as always, is somewhere in the middle.
I think it's laughable to think that there can exist such a thing as "right" with regards to bike design. It's always "right" for the intended rider's use. Some bikes have a very wide performance envelop or some users have a very narrow use case but demand perfection within that use case (think racers or downhill MTB folks). Not everyone will value the same thing. A beginner might not care for the refined Rivendell ride or even appreciate it for the carefully thought through geometry (which includes selection of tubing). An experienced rider might still consider weight far more important than the aesthetics that Grant values. I consider myself very fortunate in that my use cases match almost precisely with the performance envelope Grant designs his bikes for. It didn't take long after I first test rode a 1993 Bridgestone RB-1 that I'd realized that this was a bike I could live with forever. 30 years later, his follow on bikes ride very similarly and are (for my use cases) even better. But that's a good 30 years in which I wasn't a Rivendell customer and was happily riding various other bikes (one of which is still my favorite 1993 Bridgestone RB-1 geometry with minor tweaks). But I have no illusions that what works for me works for others. My wife tried a Cheviot and immediately bought one because it felt like the bike she'd been riding all her life. My friend Arturo tried a Roadeo and immediately tried to buy one but since the wait time was too long ended up with a custom Lynskey built to the Roadeo's geometry. But a third friend tried my son's Roadini, and said something like: "Oh. It's in between my Trek FX2 and my Canyon Ultimate." She didn't think it was anything special and I think that's OK. What matters is that Rivendell bikes aren't everything for all people (and even for myself a big Rivendell fan, not all Rivendell bikes are for me). -- 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 rbw-owners-bunch+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/rbw-owners-bunch/e396e20c-81e7-4ac5-aced-223941438bbcn%40googlegroups.com.
