thanks for the responses, especially @
grolby with the very detailed answer!
i'm now kind of torn out of what i want out of this bike. i know i want a secondary bike that i can ride on the road because:
a) i want something to ride outside in the rain (i can ride my race bike in the rain too, but i'd rather have one bike i can get dirty which is less expensive)
b) i like having a bike i can lend to visitors/friends
c) there are some races (like maybe 2 or 3 in the year?) with bad roads/gravel where i'd feel more comfortable on a bike with more clearance and less aggressive geometry
I could get a CAAD12 to replace the CAAD10 I'm selling and take to opportunity to perhaps get discs or upgrade to ultegra and newer tech (internal routing, 11spd, etc). However, that doesn't buy me much over what I have right now. The reason I was considering a CX bike is that, hopefully, it would also give me the added possibility of maybe racing CX at some point (unlikely, but currently *very* unlikely) as well as providing the *option* of throwing on wide, knobbly tries and playing around in the dirty on occasion. I've throw on 28" knobblys on my current CAAD10 for a brief spell playing around in the dirt and it was pretty fun, I'm curious how it would feel on a 'real' CX bike.
Hmm, can I run a very negative stem to help get back closer to a road bike? I guess I already have a relatively aggressive position on my road bike, so if it would be hard to approximate on a CX bike that could be a dealbreaker.
I'm 6'0.5", and I'd probably be riding at 56cm frame. I imagine with the Stigmata and 28mm Conti GP4ks I'd wouldnt be too far off a road bike BB drop-wise?
The Stigmata C Rival option actually is 50/34 and 11-32. I'd probably want to switch to 11-28 which is what I ride on my road bike, but otherwise its identical gearing to what I race on.
From what youre saying I think I need to figure out whether I value the potential to ride cross (in which case I should consider the CX bike) or the potential to have a bike for rougher road races (in which case simply updating my CAAD would probably be the best choice). Either bike would be fine as a rain/spare bike probably, I was just hoping a CX with slicks would be not too noticeably different from a road bike that it could pass on demand. I guess if my road bike was like a Roubaix or something to begin with it wouldnt be as extreme, but given the position I tend to like it seems from what everyone is saying I might have trouble recreating it on a CX bike