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These are my thoughts on the subject, thus purely personal, may or may not be useful for you. I now have two Eriksens, both obviously custom since that’s all Kent does. The first was a pure road bike but I ran fatter tires on it, up to 28 mm Vittoria Paves. Anything wider wouldn’t fit. I rode that bike on lots of dirt roads, in general way rougher roads than what I’ve seen in most gravel bike posts here on the forum. Never had a problem, nor a flat.
Then my son and Kent decided I really needed a true fat-tired road bike, what I call a stoner bike because I dislike gravel, treacherous stuff that gravel, but stones and dirt and bedrock are wonderful. So, a new bike, build by the same builder, custom as usual. I told Kent that I absolutely did not want the bike’s performance on pavement compromised. Most of my rides that include dirt will be 80-85% asphalt, rarely as much as 60%, with a few exceptions, like a huge ride in Italy in the mountains that was probably 90% dirt.
Thus my stoner bike is truly a road bike and I can attest that its performance in screaming downhills on pavement is easily equal to my first Eriksen’s performance. But, on the dirt, oh man, a game changer. I’m way faster, vastly more stable, with vastly more maneuverability, as in quickness for dodging around obstacles. What Kent did was shorten up the front end a wee bit, slack the head angle by half a degree, maybe a degree, I’ve not paid much attention to all those details, not really important to me. My old bike already had a relatively high handlebar but the new bike’s is a wee bit higher. The result of all that is my hands are closer and I am most of the time in the drops, where I love to ride and where I really want to be on the dirt. Way more security and strength there than anywhere else. Brings my arms into the game when I need to drive the bike up some technical, steep pitch.
I’ve not checked by I think the chain stays are a wee bit longer. He also built the frame with bigger chain stays, oversized down tube, fatter top tube, really fat head tube with a tapered, oversized Enve fork. I can run up to around 40 mm tires on this frame. But it totally remains a full-on road bike.
The following is purely opinion on my part. From what I have come to understand, as a rule cross bikes are a bit steeper in the front as one of the objectives is super quick handling. They’re racing bikes. My impression is that some producers of gravel bikes have simply decided to use a cross frame and call it a gravel bike. My suspicion is that isn’t the ideal solution. For me a stoner bike is a subtle melding of a mountain bike with a road bike which means that if you want a sweet ride in both mediums, getting one that was built by someone with loads of experience in (and on, as they’re riders, not just builders) mountain bikes and road bikes is the trick. Gravel bikes are not simply a road bike wearing fat tires or a cross bike wearing fat tires; it’s a bike designed for optimal performance on the road and on dirt roads. They are not mountain bikes. But that said, I’ve seen already how young riders are pushing the perceived limits of what can be ridden on this new-but-not-really new genre of bike.
My advice is concentrate on the frame design, the components you’ll run on it are the easy part. I’d also strongly say between a pure road bike and a stoner bike, get the latter. It’ll do everything the road bike will do but when the blacktop ends, the bike keeps going. In short, stoner bikes rule.
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