After reading all the helpful comments I would like to narrow it down.
An easily available in the USA, not custom, mid price, quality steel endurance road bike frameset.
Mechanical Campy 12 speed will be my groupset , with Growtec mechanical disc brakes.
Fit tires 30-35ish. Again, I will be buying the frameset only.
Thanks fellow members !
There are a bounty of good options fitting your criteria:
Ritchey Montebello, All City Zig Zag, All City Cosmic Stallion, Fairlight Strael (depending on tariff situation), Stinner Carrizo, Gunnar Fastlane (perhaps more than you are looking to spend.
If you get on the geometry the Carrizo is domestically made and an incredible value. The Strael is super compelling for the variety of geometries available.
All things being equal my preference would be for a frame made from some flavor of Columbus or Reynolds steel rather than mystery metal.
There are more budget options available too from Soma etc, but my Soma was pretty flexy in the bottom bracket. I will concede that was many years ago so Iām not sure about the current offerings.
See James Huang n-1 January 7 for his informative review of Stinner Carrizo.
All my steel bikes have issues with external rust. My 1993 Litespeed just keeps on. Just an amazing material that you donāt have to worry about. The Growtac brakes really are good. I have them in flat mount and post mount now. @Dave_Ide
Given your criteria for being available in the US, and not wanting a custom frame, I would add Soma Smoothie HP: Smoothie HP (Endurance Road Disc) - Soma Fabrications and Chumba SOCO: Chumba SOCO Steel / All Road Bike 700c | Chumba USA Bikes; both available in stock sizes, though the Chumba is more than twice the priceā¦.
Iād be happy to offer a 20% Escape Member Discount on one of my US Made Pine Rasa Framesets if youāre interested. In my very biased opinion, Itās one of the best lightweight steel endurance/allroad frames available. Frame weight for the 54cm is 1712g (painted, without bolts, axle, and inserts) which i am incredibly happy with. The Allied fork I use is also much lighter than most at 320g (uncut) bringing the frameset weight to 2023g
If you havenāt already dove into bike insights to compair geometries and fit to your current bike and others, I would highly recommend it.
As others have mentioned, Stinner Carrizo and Chumba SOCO are also amazing US Made options. Taiwan Made options like the Fairlight Strael and Ritchey Montabello are fantastic considerations as well.
Feel free to DM with questions!
Whilst no budget has been suggestedā¦recommend you look at Rob English for custom steel if the goal is as light as possible (as you say).
+1 on Rob based on the pics Iāve seen online, but Iām in Australia so itāll never happen.
For those who might prefer Ti I can recommend Waltly, who can do both stock and custom Ti frames: waltlyti.com
If it can be done, they will do it, and I was very pleased with my custom before it was stolen. The next one will be significantly less stiff though; I canāt imagine a 50mm downtube being okay (shudder).
Rodeo labs makes a couple good bikes. The TD4, which I own, is carbon, but 16000 miles of gravel riding and racing and a touch of single track would be on my list. They do a Ti bike as well. Super good to deal with.
Singular cycles does a couple very interesting frames that would definitely fit the bill. I know Sam a bit and the US distributor is a very good friend. Itās another great option.
Iāve had a Moots, personally would never buy again, but Iām definitely in the minority.
The Ritcheys are always good suggestions, love the look, the history and have had a breakaway for travel. Unfortunately, I didnāt travel.
And Stinner makes some super stuff custom and some sized frames.
For me, Iād look to Singular first, Stinner, then Rodeo labs. Mostly as I know the Singular folks and truly they are great folks, met the Stunner guys at Made a couple years ago and they were people that ride bikes and then Rodeo labs.
@Stephen_Poole - I live in AUSā¦love my Englishā¦
Maybe one day, but I had no issues with Waltlyā¦
Nice @Stephen_Poole ā¦I have two mates considering Waltly now.
Waltly sounds tempting, but if Iād find an off-the-shelf bike that comes close enough Iād go for that since someone will have thought through the design. Only issue is across all the marketing, itās very hard to find how the bike will end up between the three different types @Not_Fast_Enough_To_Keep_Up post on the different tubings.
Would be great to have a Wiki here to collect the knowledge on steel and titanium bikes and how they are built!
Thereās an EC member who is having Waltly build him up a frame with pretty extreme āmeme fitā geometry, and heās been discussing this on the EC Discord server. This highlights the double-edged sword of going with a fabricator like Waltly: theyāll build whatever you want, which is great if youāre very knowledgeable about frame design (he is), but dangerous if you just have some weird ideas.
There are a few guys out there who act as āconciergesā for overseas fabricators: you tell them what your ideas are and they translate that into a design that you (hopefully) wonāt wind up regretting. The one that I know of is Unicorn Cycles.
Most or all of those āconciergesā mentioned have their own theories and axes to grind, and their (usually fixed) geometries may or may not best suit any particular client.
As Waltworks says in their FAQ, there needs to be communication between the builder and the potential customer before an order is placed or accepted as āone of us may decide the other is insane.ā Builders do get people asking them to build some pretty eccentric things, but OTOH some builders are extremely conservative indeed, and one needs to find someone sympatico.
If you havenāt owned and/or ridden a lot of bikes, donāt know exactly what you require, arenāt particularly fussy, and canāt read and understand a drawing, then a stock frame will usually be the safer option, but if your proportions are unusual or if youāre unusually light or heavy, off the peg frames may not be a good fit. There are online resources to calculate reach, stack, and trail, compare frame geometries, calculate tubing deflection, draw up frames, etc, so it doesnāt have to be guesswork.
However, unless you have a pretty good idea of what the end result should look and feel like and how to get there, caution is advisedā¦
A couple of bits of information potentially pertinent to the conversation.
I am very intrigued by Dave Englishās beautifully crafted bikes and appreciate his thoughtful EC articles. As I understand it his lead time is over 2 years these days.
Additionally, folks have expressed some great nuance around custom bikes. I recently put down a deposit with Mike DeSalvo to have a custom Ti bike built. He reported his lead time to be 6 to 7 months but I imagine itās entirely possible things will take longer than that.
I chose Mike because he is a hell of a welder with reasonable prices and a ton of experience. A lot of companies seem to be offering more semi custom Ti than actual custom and Mike offering full custom is appealing. With that said having lots of freedom can lead to bad decisions . When it comes the geometry for instance, I will share some thoughts but be mostly deferential to Mike because he has built zillions of bikes.
If folks are curious, I use one bike for gravel, commuting, and wet winter intervals. I having a bike built with rack and fender mounts, clearance for 50s (for gravel) but that will handle well with slick 40s for commuting and bad weather intervals.
Thanks Escape members!
I have a nice Moots Vamoots cr with Campy 12 speed mechanical and rim brakes for faster road riding.
I donāt ride gravel other than the occasional dirt road.
So for more comfort and to acknowledge that I am getting quite old I think i will go with a Ritchey Montebello built with Campy Chorus 12 speed mechanical and Growtac disc brakes (mechanical).
Does anyone have this setup and if so, how do you like it ?
Thanks again, Dave
Canāt go wrong with either steel or Ti. Either one means you are looking at various small, boutique, and or custom buildersā¦as opposed to factory made plastic (ie: carbon) bikes. Good on you. I have about 15 bikes that would be similar to your description (minus the mechanical shifting), including Ti, Steel, and stainless steel. The road feel/stiffness of the bike are due mostly to size/shape/wall thickness of the tubes rather than each materialās physical properties, and of course has to do with the geometry as well. If you go custom, a good builder should be able to get you the ride feel you desire no matter what specific material they use. If you are deciding Ti because it wonāt rust vs steel because of the ride quality of a well-made steel frameā¦then go with stainless steel. Not every custom builder builds with the super-high-strength stainless steel alloys (KVA MS2, Columbus XCR, Reynolds 953, Tange, etcā¦) so you might have to look around. Or there are a few smaller builders that do size runs of stainless bikes, like the Otso Fenrir or Warakin. I have stainless frames from Chris Chance, Rob English, David Kirk, Erik Rolf (Alliance), and Otso and they are fantastic. The Chris Chance āNewā Slim Chance and Alliance were designed to be very stiff - they are. The Rob English and Dave Kirk are more buttery smooth and a delight to ride. The Fenrir is essentially a drop bar rigid mountain bike and rides a little more utilitarian.
Adding to my previous shortlist now that youāve aligned on mid-range steel easily available in the US:
Wilde (new project of former All City designer): Rambler - All-Arounder ā Wilde Bicycle Co.
I have taken one for a spin around the block and admired the paint but have never owned one or gone on A Real Ride. Angry Catfish in Minneapolis had lots on the floor earlier this year if you live anywhere near there.
I have a Fairlight (Faran) frameset on order for myself to deprecate a beloved Soma ES and weāll know it when we see it in this very strange year, but I expect a 0.3 / 30% import tariff (Taiwanese-made frame) on top of the ~5% longstanding import tax on road framesets. Which might break the definition of āmid-rangeā.
Hey @Stephen_Poole : my mates getting serious about his Waltly, any chance I could connect you two for a Q&A?
