Originally Posted by
revchuck
I've currently got compacts on my two main bikes, but the mutt build will have a 52/39 Shimano 105 crankset. If I decide it's a good idea, I'll just switch out the chainrings on one or both of the other bikes to 52/36.
At one point I was thinking that 52/36 with a 11/12-32 sram cassette might make sense as well although now I'm leaning toward 50/34 11/12-28 - doing a lot of climbing in the mean time to convince myself that I won't be crying for the smaller gear.
As for the build, I got started down this path from looking at a Rodriguez steel frame (I have 3 kids in Seattle), but I decided buying a bike long distance wasn't a good idea for me.
So I found a guy in Santa Cruz that builds custom steel frames that I'm committed to working with.
I was also looking at the customization you can do with a Trek Domane frame trekbikes.com/projectone - but that got out of control price wise very quickly.