scoot wrote:
Were they still building in the 90's?
Cheers,
Pasul
Hi Paul,
I've owned two Aendes, one custom-made and one second hand, and he repaired my Moulton speedsix after a crash too. The custom was a 653 fillet-brazed road bike ordered in July 1994, for a cost of £375. It had a long top tube and was a really beautiful bike in metallic red and silver, but with standard 1" tubes it was probably a bit laterally-flexible for modern tastes, especially if you're coming from a CF Giant.
Aende was just one man, Alan 'Pongo' Braithwaite, and all his frames were built from his workshop (the ground floor of a house) on Castle Boulevard, Nottingham. As foxy says he was best known for TT bikes - ultra-short wheelbase in the 1970s and early 80s, then low-pros in the late 80s and early 90s. He did make road bikes and also the odd touring bike and tandem too I think. He packed up and moved to the Philippines in late '94 or early '95, so mine was one of the last and if yours is 653 it won't be too far from the end.
There are lots of snaps of Aendes on
this flickr group, including some of mine. He was a proper old-school artisan builder, full of opinions on everything under the sun and especially other framebuilders' work. I'd buy it if I were you, Aendes are cult classics and vastly more characterful than most modern bikes.
)
