mtnbke

The differences between low end steel and hi-end engineered frame sets is much much narrower than most people are comfortable actually acknowledging.

If you put some of the most discerning cyclists on a bunch of Centurions and had them ride everything from the Cinelli made Equippe and then the other Tange 1 through 5 bikes, all other things being equal most of the cyclists couldn't identify which was which. I promise you the feedback would be guesswork in terms of which climbed, sprinted, and rode best and which handled best. It wouldn't actually correlate to which tube set was on each bike, if you didn't let people pick them up.

Most of cycling is vanity and cache. Which is kind of funny when talking about good ol' rusty heavy steel. People love the projection of brand identity. Was Nuovo Record good kit? Not really. Any Suntour derailleurs would out shift the Campagnolo bits. Aluminum and Carbon are lighter, stiffer and stronger and build up better bikes. Now many cyclists idolize steel and project onto it all this yesterday-was-better nonsense. Many aging cyclists naturally prefer the overt flexyness of steel bikes because they are a "half step" to a comfort or hybrid bike as their bones and bodies become more brittle and lose the flexibility. If you're riding around on a Pinarello you don't feel as geriatric as if you were riding around on a bike with front suspension. Many aging cyclists prefer steel bike as defecto "comfort bikes" and don't even realize it. They no longer ride fast, nor do they want a performance rocket race bike that a stiffer carbon or aluminum bike would give them. They want Cadillac not Ferrari at their age.

Where it becomes funny is trying to make variations of steel tubing seem like the variances between titanium, magnesium, carbon and aluminum. There is SO MUCH more variance between frame materials than there is between the perceived differences between steel tube sets. That's not to say stovepipe isn't indistinguishable from Reynolds 531, but most people love to wax on about artistry and craftsmanship of their vintage 531 SL bikes but don't realize that most venerated builders were incapable of actually being able to work with Reynolds 753 tubing (heat treated 531) when it debuted. All those "craftsmen" and "artisans" built with steel because it was cheap and had a low entry to production. Basically you just needed a jig, tubing, torch and some silver and anyone can learn to braze a bike. In fact people to this day sign up for build-your-own-frame courses that run about a week (in residence) where you walk away with a bike you build yourself. Even "master" frame builders failed to be certified to build with 753. In fact, if you really want to embarrass a "master" frame builder who has been around for a good while ask him to show you his Reynolds 753 certification. At one point only there were only five frame builders in the entire US that had the frame building skill to handle the precision and accuracy required for 753:

http://www.classicrendezvous.com/Bri...lds753artl.htm
http://bikeretrogrouch.blogspot.com/...ds-tubing.html

Why? Simply because when a frame builder works with normal steel tubing everything can be "close enough." As you braze-up a steel bike you can tweak or bend everything to fit on the jig when in reality the frame wasn't properly aligned or brazing or welding tubes changed the alignment. Reynolds 753 is kind of the closest thing to welding titanium or aluminum, that steel bike builders ever got a taste of. Back in the day building up an aluminum frame or a titanium frame required master welders with comprehensive knowledge and experience. Many big name frame builders were absolutely humbled by Reynolds 753. You can't "cold set" a Reynolds 753 frame in the rear spacing. If the frame builder doesn't have the requisite skill you can't just bend everything in the jig for "close enough." Many of the top names in custom frame building talked customers out of 753 bikes, even though they could be up to 1.5lbs lighter on the frame set. The reality was they weren't able to be certified because they didn't have the frame building skill to manage to get everything to align precisely.

So the next time someone gets all snobby about Reynolds 531 SL laugh at 'em. Reynolds 531 dates back to 1935. The good stuff was actually 753 which didn't debut for another forty years in 1975, but the reality is that almost every frame builder in the world didn't have the skill to actually be able to build with 753. Make no mistake, a 753 bike will ALWAYS be lighter, stiffer, and stronger than a 531 bike, period (read faster, better climber, better sprinter).

There is so much false narrative in the cycling community. The reality is most cyclists couldn't honestly tell you the really good stuff from the not quite so good stuff. I'm not talking stovepipe junk Schwinn to Olmo, but the tube sets in between. The reality is that the cost differences in the "good stuff" from everything else wasn't as much as the price points would have everyone believe. Libertas used to sneak Reynolds 531 main tubes into some of their most low end bikes, even women's mixte step-throughs.

At some point steel is just steel. Sure 753 made a great bike, and the thin wall tubing almost rivaled the performance of the thin wall aluminum bikes that would change the paradigm. However, at the end of the day most frame builders just couldn't work with it for the same reason they couldn't work with titanium, magnesium, or aluminum. It required an expertise, aptitude, and skill level beyond the "close enough" standards under which most steel bikes are built.

I like this thread. I'm a HUGE fan of good vintage lightweight bikes. The reality is that the cheapo Craigslist Miyata, Panasonic, Centurion, Peugeot, Rampar, Viscount, Univega, Azuki, Raleigh, or Motobecane is much much closer to the performance that can be found in the "grail" tube sets than really anyone cares to admit. Largely, the differences are almost entirely in weight. The snobbery and the "narcissism of small differences" that accompanies the revered 531 tubing and its SL variant is wholly undeserved.

Whenever I see someone posting all vain about their SL vintage bike I think to myself first its beautiful, second if it was good kit it would have been built of 753 instead, and then that the venerated label on the side probably didn't have a single builder competent enough that could actually manage to competently build a 753 bike.

Its all small differences, regardless of the false narrative people would want to believe. For the most part once you move beyond stovepipe, its all vanity and very little performance variance. What differences there actually are lie in weight savings mostly. You want an epic steel bike, talk Reynolds 753 or other heat treated thin wall steel engineered tubing. The problem is that all the cost efficiencies of building steel bikes (cheap to build) go out the window when you require a frame builder with the skill level required similar to what is needed to fabricate using the exotics (aluminum, titanium, magnesium).

There are differences. You can't begin to compare the performance of a 753 to its lowly 531 ancestors. However, it is all a narrow spectrum limited to still talking about just steel. So the gap between hi-ten and say 531 is, in my mind, much narrower than say the paradigm gap between a vintage steel 531 bike and a high end Cannondale or Klein, or modern carbon disposable bike.

Mostly though its all vanity, and very few cyclists are able to actually talk about frame material and separate out their agenda. Reynolds 753 in the steel bike cult is proof enough of that.