Originally Posted by MKahrl
It was an even better magazine back in the 70's and 80's. Besides all the usual articles for beginners, and in the early 70's that was nearly everyone, they actually did testing of equipment. Frank Berto built a drive train testing system and would tell you how derailleurs shifted (late or early) and what impact that had for you and what it meant with indexed systems. He would produce tables to show you chain wrap, cog range and cog upper limit a rear derailleur could handle. When was the last time anyone has seen that? He wasn't afraid to point out problems no matter how much advertising that maker had in the magazine.
They used to have identical frames built of different tubing and leave off any identification and have the testers see if they could tell any difference between the rides.
My favorite bike magazine now is Bicycle Quarterly. It's head and shoulders above all the rest.
Not only did they test equipment, they actually gave good advice on touring, commuting, advocacy, etc. I have an article from March 1980, that I still use for wheel building. I haven't seen anything like it since.
But (and I've had a subscription since 1979
) I do have to say that they are better now then around 5 years ago. An editor back in 2000 or so, decided that it would be nice to do away with words and we got complete 5 page spreads that contained a maximum of 200 words. Was like looking at a web page. I've seen children's books that had more words in them!
At least now they do articles that require some reading ability. The articles on the Flying Pigeon, the little red bike and, my favorite, pavement were really pretty good. I didn't like the article on clydes so much, however...especially considering that what they consider to be super heavy, frame crushing, component busting riders is anyone over 180 lbs (their testers seem to all be tall and skinny too). They implied that anybody over 160 was in serious danger of having the bicycle collapse on them. What was most amusing to me about the article was that I read it while riding a bike loaded with me (220+) and 60lbs of gear along the Lewis and Clark Trail. Bike survived just fine
