30th Anniversary vs. CDA

[Climb01742]

ever since dave n. posted a photo of the 30th anniversary serotta at his LBS alberto's, i've thought, darn, that's one sweet frame. but since a number of its lugs aren't, ah, really lugs, wouldn't a CDA be awfully close to the same thing? am i missing something? also, in the many discussions here of steel serotta frames, almost all the talk is of CSi and CIII. why does the CDA barely ever get mentioned? is it the red-headed stepchild of the serotta family? when i was talking to ben, i mentioned that i really dug my CIII, but if i had one tiny nit, it was that i wish it had a bit more snap. he said that they switched tubing suppliers (sorry, can't remember for sure name of new supplier, my mind was getting too full of other details) and that their steel tubes now were a bit lighter, with perhaps bit more snap. oh no. do i now NEED :p a new steel serotta? :crap:

[dbrk]

Climb,
Just by reading the specs it seems to me that the CDA is a CIII with a carbon rear. I would love to be corrected about this. But CSi/CIII/CDA share the same tubesets (or would for a given person, size, etc.) so it's lugs/TIG/TIG-CR. Taking half a centimeter off the chainstay length will give you more snap in a frame than the minor differences in a tubeset change, I'd wager ---though since about 98% of that is perception that would have no basis in quantifiable fact, it's hard to tell. Of course, you take off that much off chainstay length and you sacrifice something in descending. I'm always keen on how a bike descends: MUCH more so than on how it sprints or climbs. You can make up time on descents if you ride with guys on limp carbon frames and let _them_ be scared out of their wits, I say. Eddy had this idea when he made the MX Leaders, but seems to have gone on to sing the tune of alloy and carbon so as not to be too out of tune with the marketing of latest=greatest. Every tweak in design or material has its cost/benefit but most of them cost more than they benefit.

dbrk

[Climb01742]

douglas,
as ever, you're the voice of reason. on a purely personal basis, descending is my least favorite part of riding. based on least confidence. and probably way too many hairy crashes in my ski racing youth.

interesting insight about snap and chainstay length.

also in my talk with ben, he spoke about seated climbing (or sprinting) style vs. out of saddle climbing (or sprinting style). i have a pretty smooth seated technique. but when i'm out of the saddle, my technique is more "violent", much less smooth. ben said that depending on whether, while out of the saddle, your climbing/sprinting power comes from your legs or upper body, you can tune either the bottom half of the frame or the top half. for me, while standing, my upper body is pretty quiet, but my lower body has a decided left, right, left, right style, ben suggested tuning the lower half of the frame. i has never heard this line of reasoning before, but it makes sense. so that for me, to get more acceleration "snap", a framebuilder needs to know how i ride when trying to accelerate or climb.

there are so many parts to riding and frames. finding the right combo takes time.