Originally Posted by
blickblocks
e.g., at what point will similarly aggressive framesets in all aluminum, steel, and carbon match each other's ride quality simply by changing tire size, or bar wrap, gloves and saddle?
Sheldon Brown, rest his soul, has a post about how you can achieve whatever ride quality you want with aluminum/steel/carbon. You just have to compromise for the weight/size of tubing. Aluminum is, for a given tube size/diameter not as strong as steel. But you can make a light aluminum bike with lots of power transfer with stiff oversized tubes etc. So to sort of answer your question you can smooth out a
stiff aluminum frame with a carbon fork, or make a springy steel bike stiffer by putting a Thomson stem/seatpost on it. . . I'm not really sure what you mean because you can't compare steel to aluminum or carbon--they are all pretty different. You can work around the limitations of each. . .or something. Go with steel.