How many Riv frames have you owned?
Mercian makes fine frames, I wouldn't rag on them at all, but to rag on Riv like you did is cheap and unwarranted.
Where did I say they were cheap? I said they don't offer the options or custom features for the same price. And Atlantis's are not built by one person, they were built in Osaka, Japan by Toyo, a 10-person custom bicycle frame shop and the lugs come out of Taiwan...that's where they were being built when I was deciding to buy mine, now their being built by Waterford of Wisconsin so it became more of a factory built bike instead of less. Regardless Mercian is build process and quality is better and you can select the tubeset and lugs, you can't do that with any Rivendell. But again just because you can't select the tubeset or lugs doesn't mean the Riv is cheap, it just means you have less options and you can't customize it for your needs or desires. There may be a few custom bike builders out there that can do fully customized bikes for the customer needs, and even fewer that have different tubesets and lugs you can chose, but no one use hearths anymore. Not saying it's a better way, but hear it explained from Mercian they believe it's better because it puts less heat stress on the frame.