Hillxxxx clearly didn't come up in the era many of us did. Fever for hand-made steel and titanium frames is hard to shake, once infected.

I raced on and loved my high-end steel starting in the mid-1960s and continuing to the late '80's, when I finally moved on to aluminum bikes.

Sixty years of riding great bikes, and what what have I come to believe? Large-diameter aluminum tubing offers slightly more torsional rigidity, and I like the effect on handling. And comfort is almost exclusively a function of wheelbase; the frame material matters little.

Hill, you undoubtedly own some expensive stuff that you'd be hard pressed to justify purely on the basis of utility. Hand-built frames are like that.

And on the topic of profit margins for hand-built MUSA steel frames: the majority of frame builders in the US have been hobby builders. And the majority of those who have tried to make a business of it have failed.

Very few who persist in the business for more than a few years make more than a mid-five-figures income per year, if that.

That said, I agree that it's the bow, not the Indian. Back in the 1980's, a friend told me that a friend of his was looking for a lead guitarist for his top 40 rock band. I'd been out of the scene for years and had only a little Fender Vibro-Champ amp and a guitar with a built-in speaker I'd bought at Toys'r'Us. Auditioned, was hired.

After we'd played a half-dozen gigs, I noticed that the rhythm guitarist was playing a low-end Fender Bullet guitar instead of his usual expensive Paul Reed Smith. When I asked, he said, "I felt like an idiot strumming away on the PRS with you tearing it up on your Toys'r'Us guitar."