Quote:
Originally Posted by sirvelo
I recently had an interesting chat with a discerning gentleman on the topic of dropouts.
As you'd expect from someone who has had an extensive experience with various custom bikes, he had some fairly strong opinions, but what struck me the most was him regarding any builder that uses hooded (breezer) dropouts to be inferior than those using proprietary "signature" dropouts.
His point was that using third-party dropouts didn't quite make the bike "100% custom", and in his view, having a "signature" dropout was what set the so-called "master builders" (Kirk, Sachs, Serotta, Firefly, Vanilla etc etc) apart from the rest. He went on to say that, although he's had a few Pegorettis, he never regarded Dario to be in the same leagues as Kirk or Sachs for this reason.
I think his point is valid to some extent, and of course there is an increasing number of brands now using signature dropouts thanks to 3D printing (No 22, Breadwinner, Stinner, Moots etc).
But I think it's a bit of a stretch to say that the builders who don't have a signature dropout to be inferior, especially when there are so many reputable builders such as Baum, English, Mosaic and Bingham using hooded (or variants of it) dropouts.
So - is having a signature that an important and meaningful standard that sets builders apart, or is this another look-at-me-I-know-more-than-you custom bike wankery?
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I get what the guy is saying - There are builders that can...
Hand carve/make lugs
Make their own forks
Make their own stems, decaleur, racks
machine their own small parts and fully integrate all kinds of stuff
Do incredible paint themselves and detail like crazy
Make or heavily modify the drop outs...
Brian Chapman is an example of the above - and has even made his own brakes on several occasions. Yes made BRAKES. JP Weigle, Bishop, Coast to a lesser degree (those guys don't do their own paint)
Those capabilities are awesome, but are just part of the picture. Plenty of excellent builders that don't check all the above boxes but may check others e.g. ti, carbon, disc, coupler, suspension, folding, cargo, tandem, trike, timelines, customer service, experience, price yadda yadda yadda...