High end steel frames: are they worth it?

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lb1dej
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High end steel frames: are they worth it?

Post by lb1dej »

I called into Longstaffs yesterday (to look at a second-hand bike) and had a look around their shop. Longstaff conventional audax frames with a steel fork are now £1150, which is around twice as much as a number of other reputable builders e.g. Mercian, Ellis Briggs, both of which I have.

They are not the only ones - Argos and Witcombe are a similar level with Roberts a little cheaper, and of course there are some enhancements to frames like cast lugs which cost more.

It's unclear to me to what extent the premium price is for custom fitting as this is available from Mercian etc.

So what do people think about this? Has anyone had one of the above premium makes and found it superior to the cheaper ones? Or is one paying for the name?

The few s/h bikes that Longstaff is selling are expensive too, though their prices are set by their owners not Longstaffs, so they're in effect a private sale. They don't make that many and s/h ones are relatively rare.

BTW: I'm excluding here the Taiwanese imports (like Thorn and Hewitt) which is a different option - cheaper but also good.

David
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speedsixdave
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Post by speedsixdave »

There was a long moan about Witcomb on one of the other forums a while back - it seems they got a consultant in who espied the 'fixie' craze* and saw an opening. So their prices virtually doubled overnight.

£1100 for a steel frame seems rather a lot - was it 953? But there are increasing amounts of steel bikes going this way - Pegorettis, Colnagos, and Duell, seen on Bikeradar yesterday.

I am slightly ambivalent about this (can one be slightly ambivalent?) - on the one hand I can't afford £1100 for a steel frame. But if British hand-made steel cost a bit more, then perhaps fewer builders would have gone out of business. I know Alan Pongo Aende Braithwaite, who built my first (and only) custom, eventually sold up because £350 653 frames were not paying the bills in 1995. Excluding his inconvenient lateness, would he still be in business now if he could get away with charging £1100?

Of course all that is fine as long as you can actually sell a frame for £1100. I have a nasty feeling that when fixies stop being the sign of the scene, and road bikes cease to be the New Ducatis, those of us who are left will continue to be reluctant to pay £1100 for a British-built bike when you can get a taiwanese or czech frame of indistinguishable quality for a third of the price. And then Witcomb and friends will suddenly find they can't pay the bills at all, and that'll be the end of the British framebuilder.

And are they superior? Well, assuming it fits and it doesn't fall apart, how much better can one 853 frame be than another? Is paying for a really good neat finish any different to paying for a prestigious name? And who says what's prestigious? Would you look twice at a £1600 Duell frame? Do tourists care about Colnagos? Do roadies care about Mercians? Does a Witcomb mean more to a Londoner than a Dave Yates does to a Geordie?

Hmm, probably ought to do some work now.



*Last time I was in London I saw a chap riding a 1980s Aende low-pro with 24" front wheel, fixed (or single), and six-inch-wide flat bars. Now I'm all for the broad and catholic church of cycling, but really. Do we have to?[/url]
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random37
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Post by random37 »

I think when you consider the markups the big players have on far-eastern mass produced frames, £1100 for a frame individually built with skilled British labour in a factory with British overheads is actually not bad value.
Of course, what SpeedsixDave said is right, though, whether people will actually pay that kind of money for a frame is a different story. Consumers have stupid ideas about value these days.
glueman
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Post by glueman »

It's hard to argue with high prices if it was a genuinely bespoke bike and included custom racks, stems, bridges and such like or it came in an exotic material.
The market will ultimately decide what people are prepared to pay - if it's twice the price of an equivalent frame, the very best of luck to them. I've got my Mercian frame kitted out with XT equipment, Brooks and quality touring gear for well under the price of that frame alone.

I don't approve of the retro-exotic route firms like Witcomb have taken. I wanna lugged steel bike because I like them, not to fulfil a marketeers dream.
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speedsixdave
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Post by speedsixdave »

From current price lists:

Witcomb - Custom lugged F&F in '531, 653 or 875' or Columbus - £1160

Dave Yates - Classique racing frame, custom, lugged or lugless, 631 or 725 - £755

So there's a premium for Witcomb of about 50% - you might call it 'London Weighting'
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glueman
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Post by glueman »

The Mercian frame was about £550, roughly twice the price of my first one 28 years previously. That's pretty good, especially compared to house price rises in the meantime.
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speedsixdave
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Post by speedsixdave »

glueman wrote:The Mercian frame was about £550


And given that my recent respray and some bits of brazing at Mercian came to £250, that's not bad at all!
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andrew_s
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Post by andrew_s »

The cost is high compared to off the peg Mercians and such in a fair part because it includes the custom element of the frame design. The fitting will take about half a day, and then there's the translation of that to the design of the frame on top. You are effectively adding in about a day and a half of an expert consultant's time on top of everything else, and that could easily be £3-400.
There will also be an element of trading on the name, though how much that's worth since George died I don't know.

In summary, worth it if you have unusual requirements - you are a funny shape, or you want something very unusual. Not worth it if you want a fairly standard MTB/race/audax/touring bike and you are of normal body proportions.
(things like braze-ons, clearances etc count as standard).
rogerw
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Post by rogerw »

I have had Longstaffs and Mercians over the years. Last time I bought a Mercian, I was actually in the shop for a good half day sorting out the fitting and the design. I spent about the same time with George last time I had a Longstaff. There was nothing in it in terms of build quality although I prefer the feel of the Mercian.
In my view Longstaffs, and by extension, Witcombs are grossly overpriced and in the case of Longstaff I believe, as someone else said, that they appear to be trading on George's name.
thirdcrank
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Post by thirdcrank »

I don't think anybody has mentioned the tendency for increasingly rapid changes in bike equipment.

If we discount people with money to burn, many people who shell out big £££ for quality, not only on bike stuff, do so because they think that in the long run, it will repay the initial cost through its durability.

Anybody who has done that with a bike frame over the last few decades may well have ended up widening the back end, moving cantilever bosses, rerouting rear mech cables, etc., as well as seing the head set system become obsolete and the bottom bracket shell now going in the same direction.

These things are not insuperable, but this does form part of the answer to the thread subject for anybody who looks after the pennies. (I do know a steel frame is easier to modify than other stuff, but you can often buy a new off-the-peg frame for the cost of renovating a steel lightweight.)
PH
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Re: High end steel frames: are they worth it?

Post by PH »

lb1dej wrote:Longstaff conventional audax frames with a steel fork are now £1150, which is around twice as much as a number of other reputable builders e.g. Mercian, Ellis Briggs, both of which I have.


I think you should compare like with like. In terms of construction and finish, the Mercian equivelent of the Longstaff Audax would be the Pro Lugless, which costs £940 in Reynolds 853. And there's a few things that are included in the Longstaff price that are extras from Mercian.
As to whether either are worth it. I think you do get what you pay for in terms of workmanship and service. But anyone who thinks a frame with silver soldered joints will feel any different to one TIG welded is deluded.
glueman
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Post by glueman »

The only poor riding frame I ever bought was one where I tried to tell the builder exactly how I wanted it. The ones where I left it to them came out sweet handling.

I take thirdcrank's point about recent frame changes but it's not a new thing, it was uncertain in the late 70s/early 80s whether 27" or 700c was going to win the Betamax/VHS war and harder to fix if you changed your mind. Then there were the Suntour single brazing top mount levers (who remembers them?) or Campag standards.

British made lugged steel frames have gone from 'normal' to 'lux' in fifteen years, it's important they're not seen as rich men's toys by purchasers or sellers.
garygkn
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Post by garygkn »

I think a bespoke Mercian looks to be terrific value and honestly priced. There is a cost with buying a cheap import from the far east. The money is going out of our economy. Another issue to consider is how honest and ethical are the terms on which these cheap frames produced. When you buy one who are you rewarding?
leftpoole
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Post by leftpoole »

Hello,
As good as the Longstaff frames are, they are in my opinion no better than Thorn or Hewitt or indeed Roberts Mercian et al.
The cost is not because the frames are better-it is because the sellers overheads are too high. This includes as I have mentioned previously, high British wages.
John.
glueman
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Post by glueman »

Dunno if it's UK wages being too high or far eastern ones being unsustainably low. It tends to be the shop rather than the individual builder who makes all the dosh importing and selling bikes.
Not many British frame makers have a yacht in Monaco.
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