When you're shopping for a New "new" bike, do you find yourself looking for classic-looking bikes?

I've been checking out all kinds of bikes recently as I searched for a randonneuring bike. Some just didn't do it for me. Fillet brazing is nice, but lugs are where it's at. Sloping top tubes? No thanks. I don't like road bikes that look like mountain bikes with drop bars.

Am I too critical and hard to please? Possibly.

Ultimately, I decided on a Masi Commuter. I found a few others though that I will probably end up buying at some point as well.

J.F. Wilson - from Sheffield, England. They have some nice "Off the Peg" frames that are selling for very reasonable prices. Many are lugged. I've been discussing purchasing one with Nigel (Wilson) for the past week or so.




Shamrock Cycles - a local (Indianapolis) frame builder who has some gorgeous frames. His prices are reasonable for a custom steel frame.

https://www.lugoftheirish.com

Do you know of any other brands/builders of what could be called Neo-Classics? Do you prefer true classics to new ones? Basically, do you like vintage bikes for their design (which some new ones share) or is it the vintage-ness itself that attracts you?

I would say it's the design for me. The Rivendell Rambouillet is a beauty of a modern bike, I have seen some from Vanilla that were very pretty also (pretty unaffordable).

No, I don't. I like a lugged frame bike. I really don't care when it was made. You really can't tell the difference between either of my Waterfords and any seventies/eighties bikes owned by forum members. They're made the same way and look basically the same.

I prefer a vintage looking frame with modern components. Indexed shifting and dual pivot brakes are the biggest improvements ever made in cycling. Other than those 2 improvements everything else the industry foisted upon us as an improvement were weight reductions. Which aren't bad but really didn't do much. A high quality steel frame is about a pound heavier than AL. WOW, that's a huge reduction in weight. Most of us could loose more than that by cutting out beer.

[QUOTE=PlatyPius;8160571]When you're shopping for a New "new" bike, do you find yourself looking for classic-looking bikes?

J.F. Wilson - from Sheffield, England. They have some nice "Off the Peg" frames that are selling for very reasonable prices. Many are lugged......

Buy one!
Or check Mercian.

That's pretty bold, I would have thought stuff like the invention of the safety bicycle, or pneumatic tires, or derailleurs would have been sorta important milestones as well. Then again, maybe an index shifted dual pivot braked penny farthing would be all anyone really needs.

On a more serious note, indexed shifting and dual pivot brakes were both invented around the turn of the last century, just like sealed cartridge bearings, threadless headsets and other features we are inclined to think of as "modern." The last real innovation in cycling was probably in 1964 with the invention of the slant parallelogram rear derailleur, everything else has been a re-design of something built in the victorian era. The only place we've really made progress is in the composition of materials.

Read of a place called Chuck's bikes that's going out of business and having a 30% off marked prices sale. They're selling a NOS Italian frameset that's unpainted which appears to be a top of the line Maschiaghi build, though these are unpainted. At $395 before the 30% off, these appear to be the bargain of the moment and I'd be all over it if I had the cash:

https://www.chucksbikes.com/

Click 'Online store' on the opener page, 'frames' on the left hand menu, 'Renaissance' frame.

Yes I do. The number one modern bike at the top of my list is a Surly LHT. Butted 4130 cromo, easy angles, bar end shifters, classic shape... I'd call if a neo-classic.

Why not come to NAHBS at the end of February and see for yourself? Seems like a great opportunity for someone living near Indy, and Shamrock will in fact be exhibiting there:

https://www.handmadebicycleshow.com/index_01.htm

You could also consider Ebisu:

https://www.jitensha.com/eng/aboutframes_e.html

Oh, I'll be there, along with the rest of the shop, on industry day.

I'm just glad Platy stopped posting that Massi Randee. It was serioulsy threatening household harmony, lol.

LOL!

Wait until I post pics of my Masi Commuter in a few days.....

I simply can't afford most of the current neo-classics, so I have to admire them from afar and daydream about finding Rivendells at the thrift store in 2030.

I do have a couple of the more down-scale modern bikes that hew to my C&V sensibilities. Surly, for example. I have a CrossCheck and a Karate Monkey. Nothing all that special about either bike really. But, I very much like that they are very versatile frames that allow me to reconfigure them in a wide variety of ways. In addition to liking to ride, I also just can't stop from tinkering with bikes. I got the Karate Monkey simply because I know I will eventually try it as a 29er (current set up), and a 26", and a 69er, and a SS, and fixed, and perhaps IGH someday. Right now it is a light-trail 1x9 with huge knobbies. I have little doubt that it will eventually settle in as something of a rough duty commuter. I can imagine it wearing fenders and dropbars quite elegantly. And I also got it just so I could try my hand at disc brakes. And so hopefully, it will occupy my tinkering time for a while.

I can certainly see the appeal of modern road and mountain bikes. The better examples of them are pretty finely thought out purpose-built machines. But, given how I ride and given how I like to play with bikes, they do not hold too much appeal for me. Give me an old rigid MTB to reformulate any day. Newer bikes that have this versatility hold the same appeal for me.

Maybe if I was a real roadie or a real MTBer I would want a real road or real MTB. But I am not either of those things. I just ride my bikes everywhere, and so I want everywhere bikes.

Here is an example of one of my typical bike rides. For a number of reasons, I have promised myself that I will not use my car for local shopping or errands. Most of these runs simply involve riding a couple of miles wearing a backpack. For that, any bike will do just fine. But grocery shopping is another matter. Because I am also buying for two children, the loads are often bigger than my backpack can carry (or the backpacks on my two boys; yes, they do it too). And so I have a trailer for that (converted kiddie trailer). To complicate things, the quickest route to the grocery store is actually mostly off the street through a mile or so of light trail. So, I need at least one bike that is robust enough to haul 80 pounds of food and 230 pounds of rider and 20 pounds of trailer through some bouncy woods. You can laugh at my gnarly old rigid GT with low fixed gearing and fenders (and studs in the winter), but I think one would be hard-pressed to find a currently-sold bike set up that could perform this function as reliably. And as cheaply. I think I got the bike for $15 through CL. And other than the studded tires, the rest of the set-up was picked out of dusty corners of my garage. I do not quite have the heart to use my brand-new Karate Monkey in this role, but it is perhaps one of just a few modern frames that I would consider using in this way.

jim

Check out the new Tommasini Tecno:

https://www.cyclofiend.com/cc/2008/cc438-nickp0108.html

De Rosa Neo Primato

Wow, that Tommasini ... kinda gorgeous.

I can do without either. I used Dura-Ace SIS for a while when it first came out, but eventually reverted to Simplex retrofriction levers and Huret Jubilee derailleurs. I don't have any issues with my single pivot brakes that would lead me to replace them.

OTOH, modern clipless pedals *ARE* a nice innovation. Anyone else remember using the Cinelli M71 "Widowmakers?"

My new (2007) Waterford RS-22 in Reynolds 953 is my idea of neo-classic. Components are Campy Record Ergo 10, but the geometry is virtually identical to the early seventies P15 Schwinn Paramounts. It weighs six pounds less than the seventies Paramount.

I guess you could say that, but maybe I just like orange.



Also, not liking flat bar road bikes and sloping tubes is hardly picky.

Yes, yes it is. But - I think that threadless stem looks out of place on that bike.

Fortunately, or unfortunately depending on how you look at it, my LBS also houses a framebuilder who has a fair amount of neo-classic steel on the floor at any time. Always interesting to see what customers are ordering...
https://davidsonbicycles.com/steel.html

Well, I got my Neo-Classic today/yesterday (depending on your time zone).

https://therandonneur.com/node/9

I kind of like this



Marty

The Master X-Light is one of my dream bikes.... I work at a shop that sells Colnago and I still can't afford it at the moment, though. Maybe someday....

Meh, it's not even Root Beer and Cream.

Looks like it's going to turn out rather spiffy. In an attempt to quench my thirst, I've gone a parts buying frenzy. It's kind of a stress releated binge thing.

What? That old thing?

A Colnago is on my must have list. Of course, so is DeRosa, Masi, Pinerello, Lightspeed, Merckx, etc, etc, etc.