Please believe me when I tell you steel tandems suck. I've got three tandems in the garage right now. A steel Arriva Santana, and two Cannondales. Steel tandems are just not good bikes. The stoker compartment is completely cramped because it has to be because to build an effectively long stoker compartment like on a Cannondale would leave the frame so completely flexy as to be absurd. Secondly, they already are so completely flexy to the point of being absurd.

You can buy a steel Burley tandem on Craigslist for about $300-$400 for a reason. Even the low and mid-range components on those Burleys can be sold for more than you paid for them. Tandem wheels, cranks, etc. all those proprietary and special bits like stoker stems are expensive. Especially if anything was ever upgraded.

Classic and Vintage bikes can be fun, and I'd totally recommend something like a vintage Schwinn tandem with a kickback 2-speed. However, for a serious road tandem I can't think of anything less enjoyable than a vintage tandem. The rear wheel spacing is going to be insufficient to build a strong wheel. Good tandems use 145mm rear spacing and Santana says to heck with chainline and uses an egregious 160mm rear spacing just to get a symmetrical wheel that isn't dished, or at least wasn't during the 9-speed days. With 11 speeds I wonder if 160mm and a bad chainline even makes sense anymore?

You really need to test ride some Cannondale, Co-Motion, and aluminum tandems. I always tell people that you should try to ride every tandem anyone will let you ride. Friends, people in your group ride, any shops that sell tandems if they will even let you test ride one (most won't). Find a tandem specific shop, but even those usually carry very very few bikes. A Santana Test Ride shop might only have one steel and one aluminum bike in your size.

There are people who have vintage tandems. That couple on these forums in Waltham Massachusetts has done Paris-Brest-Paris on theirs. They might have a different opinion. However, there is a tandem portion of these bike forums. You'll find a lot of people that think they love their steel tandems. What I will tell you is serious tandem teams ride on aluminum and carbon for a reason. Its a point of argument whether steel singles are relevant anymore or real, please believe me when I tell you steel does not ever build a good tandem.

Also, it has nothing to do with who is taller in terms of who the captain is. It has everything to do with who is heavier. If she is significantly heavier it makes it very difficult to captain. There are many tandem teams with fat stokers that are a point of contention for hard core cyclist husbands that are very thin. The first "real" tandem I ever saw was in Rochester, MN in a high end shop. The guy had rode his tandem in to have some work done on it. He was literally ranting in the shop. He had ridden the bike up a hill in town and he never had realized what a great climbing bike it was. Climbing on a tandem is just awkward, and learning to time standing together can take literally years, and many very experienced tandem couples NEVER figure out how to coordinate it. We can't'. This fellow realized his wife was literally not contributing anything to neutralize her, apparently significant, body weight. She literally was just sitting back on the climbs letting him pull her up the climb. Now I'll admit that it feels like that when you ride a tandem single. The bikes are so adept and climb well with only you on them. It is such a different thing climbing on a tandem. Both my wife and I feel the other person is never contributing. Its just so inefficient. Which is strange because a tandem is so much faster and more efficient all the other times. We are two fat people on a tandem. Its hilarious because you can literally pass a UCI Div I roadie on a pro team (we live in Boulder Country where several teams are based) and literally drop them on the rolling flats. They just can't possibly generate enough wattage to keep up with a couple hammering on the tandem on the rollers. Now the very second the rollers become a climb, the tandem can't keep up with any single. Unless you have two very coordinated and fit cyclists. Even with teams where both race singles, its hard to coordinate climbing. Natural cadences are different. Getting crank length perfect matters so much. Most people don't even know their optimal crank length. Bike fit is magnified a thousand times more on a tandem than a single. You unweight and unseat and stand up on a single hundreds of times without realizing it. You have to coordinate all of that on a tandem. Using the identical position, saddle, stem, bars everything can leave you with a very comfortable road single and a miserable fit on a tandem because you are literally stuck in your position for so much longer. You can't just stop pedaling without communicating, you can't stand or unweight without communicating. The tandem is freewheels with a normal cassette free hub, but the two cyclists are connected like they are on a fixed due to the timing chain. Its a very intimate feeling, but tandems have led to more divorces than most people realize.

When I bought my first tandem the salesperson was an experienced captain. He expained the tandem would magnify everything that was good in the relationship by ten. He said it would also magnify everything in the relationship by a hundred that was negative, dysfunctional, and any problems with communication would exacerbate to the point of threatening the relationship.

I gave a tandem to my father. He and his second wife loved it. She was an ultra-endurance runner. He was a strong and powerful cyclist, and they had totally different training paces. The tandem allowed both of them to get their sweat on without one of them feeling left behind. They usually rode their bikes alone. Or she'd run and he'd ride. With his third wife she hated it, and she was a runner. She was also a vicious evil control freak. So there's that. There are a lot of stokers that truly couldn't ride a tandem. They could never get past the feeling of giving up control. You can always find tandems cheaply because of how many stokers literally refuse to ever ride the bikes again with their captains. I've never been a stoker, I can't say if that's really a tough transition or not.

However, with steel tandems and tight cramped stoker compartments, the stoker really can't see anything but the captain's butt and back. Aluminum tandems have significantly large stoker compartments, Cannondale being amongst the longest. This gives a much more comfortable view of the scenery, and the stoker isn't' just staring at the captain's backside. Captain's never think about how a steel tandem or an aluminum tandem is a different experience for the stoker based on them literally not having a vision field to look at anything on tight compartments.

Enjoy your new tandem, but please test ride stuff. I would never ever encourage anyone to buy a steel tandem, and I own one just for friends to ride. They are always the wrong choice. They are much much cheaper though. Many tandemists on the tandem part of this forum disagree with me. They have steel tandems, including some classic & vintage ones. On a steel tandem the team literally has to alter their cadence to avoid biopacing, the frame flex is that bad.

My advice is stick with known main brands: DaVinci(aluminum only), Cannondale, Co-Motion (aluminum only), Calfee, Paketa, Santana (aluminum only). After that Trek and Burley, but MUCH after that. The niche tandems from vintage famous framebuilders are usually pretty horrible tandems.

The punchline of tandems is just how important frame stiffness is. Its everything! Lemond is famous for saying stiffness was overrated. When Lemond wanted a tandem he wanted a Calfee carbon tandem for the combination of other-worldly stiffness and lightweight. Yet Lemond also absolutely wanted the unique independent pedaling system unique to DaVinci tandems. Greg Lemond succeeded in bringing the two companies together on their Carbon-fiber JointVenture which DaVinci now sells. When Greg Lemond starts asking a company that makes steel and aluminum tandems to consider the sacrilege of letting another company work with them to provide a superior carbon tandem with even more stiffness using their unique independent drive system, you know stiffness matters on a tandem. More than in ANY context in cycling, even more than racing on a single, stiffness matters on tandems.

The Stoker is usually on a suspension seaport like a tamer or a Thudbuster ST, anyway, even on a steel tandem. Riding in the back of a tandem is like riding on the back of the bus, not matter what the material is. Stokers do NOT like riding without a small suspension seat post, and they really don't like it when captain's don't call out the bumps. You get pinched. Santana used to license the Softride beam for their tandems, which is the one place I think it really made sense.

Last thing. With height disparities, one of the cyclists can actually be significantly stronger than the other. One can feel like the other is just dropping the pedals out from under their feet. Most teams don't consider it, but you can ride 90 degrees out of phase, that way each of you are contributing wattage during a separate part of the spin. My wife and I are going to switch to out of phase. You can't go 180 degrees out of phase. Its dangerous. Bad things happen with the harmonics and you'll crash. However, 90 degrees out of phase has a big following. Well a small following considering how few tandems actually exist, and how few actually ride out of phase, but those that do love it. A lot of teams tried it and hated it.

Ideally I'd like a DaVinci independent pedaling system tandem. If you go to the DaVinci website they claim only one customer EVER has asked them to lock out the independent pedaling system. I've actually met an older couple that was riding on the diagonal in Boulder County on a DaVinci. They hated the Independent pedaling and had it locked out. Apparently I've met "the one." They love their bike, they hated independent pedaling. The point of independent pedaling is they have to be careful to not end up 180 degrees out of phase. Anything else is fine, as long as the captain is significantly heavier.

I'm about the biggest captain around, at 6'7" and close to 400lbs. I'll tell you it is disconcerting when even little stokers start wiggling around back there, and I dominate anyone's size/weight. On a steel tandem its a nightmare. All the serious tandem couples I've ever met did NOT have a steel tandem. However, steel tandems are cheap, and for thousands of people the budget dictates. However, you can ALWAYS get a used Cannondale tandem for about a thousand dollars if you look. As long as they have a 1 1/8" or larger steerer and 145mm rear spacing you're good. You'd prefer the 145mm rear spacing over the now obsolete 140mm rear spacing. You don't want a 1" steerer on a tandem, not safe. Also you never want a hyper light weight road bar for the captain, or his stem. Pictures of captains holding broken bars or stems always seem to be circulating.