Quote:
Originally Posted by velotel
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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When compared with a road bike, cross bikes typically feature a slacker headtube angle and higher BB height. Sometimes longer chainstays. In general they are designed to be more stable and less twitchy than a road bike.
As discussed above there is no definition for a gravel bike and there are many interpretations and opinions. But the stoner bike you've described sounds eerily similar to a cross bike, maybe save for the BB height which you haven't mentioned.