Trsnrtr

And can come unglued at the joints. I owned one. POS

TexMac

2014 Pinarello Dogma 65.1.
Comparing this to bike i have/sold.. Felt F,cannondale supersix, propel advanced 3, s-works venge, ridley noah fast, specialized roubaix, colnago clx 3.0

IcySmooth52

Best 'overall' is a tough one to answer. But I'd have to say it's a tie between the Fuji Altamira and Lapierre Xelius EFi. Altamira was a touch better at comfort, but the Xelius is a more confident one for sharp turning.

A list of my other road experiences at least 500 miles:
-Specalized Allez of mid 2000s
-Jamis Sputnik (when it was far nicer real track bike with 631 tubing)
-Jamis Xenith Endura
-Scott Speedster (previous tube profiles)
-Felt F5
-Trek T1
-CAAD 9
-80's Club Fuji
-80's Holdsworth Mistral
-70's Schwinn Varsity

Dave Mayer

The Vitus 979 was stiff enough for Sean Kelly. Nuff said.

The tubular tires on my Vitus provide a big comfort benefit. With clinchers you have to run them at a high enough pressure to prevent pinch flats. Since you do not pinch flat with tubulars, you can take 10 psi or more out of them.

Just another reason why clinchers simply suck.

merlinextraligh

1) you ride what your sponsor gives you in the vast majority of circumstances.

2) it's the motor not the chassis.

3) stiffness can be over rated.

That said, it's beyond debate Vitus's we're wet noodles. And I have no doubt that's why you find it comfortable.

climberguy

Colnago C59. No other bike of mine has been close.

Voodoo76

My favorite "back in the day" bike, a Davidson Stiletto. Good crit bike, solid handling and highish BB. Stiff but the classic trade off harsh ride. It was a better bike than the early carbon stuff (OCLV, ect) felt more efficient and a little more precise. That said I'm not one to get all nostalgic about steel. It was a good bike in it's time but the newer CF stuff is on a whole different level.

Overall best bike I have spent time on is a Super Six (EVO HiMod). A little more responsive than the Ridley I'm riding right now and great road feel. I would like to put a few miles in on a new Tarmac, have heard good things about them.

Vitus, I could make everything rub on one of those. One of the few bikes I really felt I might be able to break just by jumping hard.

kbarch

You know, steel, aluminum and carbon SOUND a lot different, and I think that difference in sound is indicative of a certain difference in ride feel. Aluminum bikes clank and sound tinny. Carbon bikes either whisper or crackle. Steel bikes can hum.

Even as much as each material may be manipulated to provide equivalent stiffness or compliance in a frame, I suspect these more subtle qualities of resonance and 'tuneability,' as it were, are consequent to the molecular structure of each material and cannot be replicated from one to another. I can see how, to many riders, such differences may be insignificant matters of aesthetics, but even at that they are certainly felt as readily as they are heard (vibrations are vibrations), and to me they make all the difference in the world.

Doctor Morbius

I've only owned 5 road bikes in my life, so I can't really compare to a lot of what's out there. The one that felt the best was the Sequoia.

Early '70s Schwinn Varsity (stolen )
Early '70s Schwinn Le Tour (gave to a friend in the mid '90s who sold it for $10 )
2003 Specialized Allez Sport (bought used and sold it a few years back for what I paid for it. Kinda wish I'd kept it)
2004 Specialized Sequoia Elite (developed a crack in the frame. Spesh gave me a 2014 Secteur Elite frame )
2004 Raleigh Super Course (still have it. Very low miles. Thought about selling it, but never did. Glad I still have it as I've grown to love it)

Stucky

Very well-said!

Just like the other kid's Big Wheel I rode once, when I was a kid. You could "hear" every grain of dirt on the road through it....whereas my Ross was dead quiet, and yet had greater road feel AND was more comfortable. Tin roof vs. wood & shingle roof; china cup vs. plastic......

bt

tires

JonnyV

2009 Fuji Team RC. That bike was so comfortable to ride, I felt like I could pedal for days on it. There isn't a bike I've sold that I regret so much as that RC.

OldTryGuy

The ride, butt/ears/bones, in my son's '82 911 is great as was the ride in my wife's grandmother's '68 Caddy. Different strokes for different folks in that comfort is so subjective.

thehammerdog

Riding not racing......my current ride Bianchi C2C 928......comfycarbon

alexaschwanden

2011 Cannondale CAAD10-5 over 7,000 miles of fun.

garciawork

Best riding bike I had was my Lynskey R230. My current custom steel bike is like a magic carpet, but there was something about out of the saddle moments on that R230 that felt like the bike was alive. I prefer both the R230 and the steel to the Tarmac SL4 I had prior. Still want to try a newer, high end CF bike though.

Wileyone 

Best Riding Bike. My 1967 Holdsworth Italia. There's really nothing like a handmade English Steel Bicycle.

StanSeven

I can't agree more. I've had lots of bikes. I still love my steel Waterford but it still doesn't match the current CF. I had an aluminum Cannondale and it was a bargain compared to other high end bikes at the time. I went through lots of Ti bikes with long test rides on pretty much all before I finally decided. The Ti is also nice but still doesn't match my CF for all around speed and comfort.

HAMMER MAN

my waterford 2200

bikemig 

I don't own a carbon bike but I have a hard time believing that it isn't "better" than a steel bike. Better is in the eye of the beholder but I have to believe that the ability to fine tune the ride characteristics coupled with the lighter weight (and everything else being equal who doesn't want a lighter bike?) makes it a "better" material.

That said, my all time favorite bike--no doubt because it was my race bike for a long time--is my 1991 team miyata. It is on the heavy end for a steel bike with investment cast lugs, fork crown, and bottom bracket as well as splined tubing. That bike was a rocket that I could ride comfortably all day long. I"ll bet it weighed 23 pounds built up. Right now I'm totally digging my 1993 bridgestone RB-1 esp. after I put a triple on it to deal with some 20% grades I plan on riding pretty soon.

knobster

Best riding bike I've had was an old Eddy Merckx Titanium AX. Thing rode beautifully but was a size too small so I sold it. I just got a 2013 Spec Roubaix Comp that so far am loving, but I haven't gotten more than a couple hundred miles on it yet.

Stucky

No matter how ya tune it (By varying the thickness of the tubes; their shapes; orientation of the fabric, etc.) we're still talking materials which have vastly different physical properties and characteristics. Seems to me, what they're when designers tune a CF frame, is to try and get it to more closely match/behave like a metal frame. But definitely, the preference as which material one likes better, is purely personal- as with food or music. (And CF isn't necessarily lighter than good metal. There are many CF bikes out there in the low and medium-end ranges which are heavier than many steel, AL or TI bikes. And when it comes to the high end CF frames vs. the best metal frames...put the same components on the metal frame, and there would be little difference)

halfspeed

No. Just no. CF doesn't suffer from the limits and compromises that designers of metal frames have to deal with. That's a big reason why it's such a good frame material. Light? Stiff where you want it to be, compliant where you don't? Yes! A CF frame designed to ride like a metal one would be a loser.

There are no points to score for metal over CF in the weight classification. That's a big reason ferrophiles like to talk about unmeasurable qualities like "ride quality".

As for the topic of the OP, the only frame that I've ridden that I might prefer over my carbon Torelli was a SuperSix. Of the bikes that come immeidately to mind, the Domane was disappointing, the Madone was quite good, the Cervelo RS handled weird at speed, the Scott CR-1 was really good, the CAAD 8 was pretty close to carbon quality, and the Gunnar Sport was probably the best of a whole raft of steel.

Ride quality is always controversial for a couple of reasons, there's a lot of strange emotional attachment to frame materials and people don't always mean the same thing when they talk about "ride quality". If your riding consists primarily of pedaling along alone at a steady speed, you're not going to care much about the feel of acceleration of a light bike with a stiff rear end. If you avoid hills, weight seems an overblown concern and you won't understand how a bike should feel descending a mountain pass.

If you enjoy metal, I'm happy for you. But don't pretend carbon is the end of the world and a step backwards for the sport. It isn't.

curbtender

I'd have to agree with you on the Ciclo on comfort. Like the carbons at higher speed.

Stucky

No one is saying that. CF is just different. Whether that's good or bad, is in the ass of the beholder , but you can't deny that the various materials have inherent differences and properties. If you like CF, you tune a metal frame all you like, and it will never feel like the CF- and vise-versa. I happen to like metal. There's no need for me to try and replicate what I like about metal in CF, since I can just get a metal frame and have what I want.....just as there is no reason for someone who loves CF to replicate that feeling in metal.