I’m considering going custom-made and am browsing Donhou, Saffron, Feather, Burls, Pegoretti etc…

Who has one (or another brand)? And any real-world rider/owner reports they’d care to share?

A friend is mid-build through Quirk Cycles. He spent about 2 years previously speaking to different framebuilders before going quirky.

I’ve had a Pego since 2008 or so, but when I bought the frame it was about half the price they are now – I’d not buy one at current prices. It took about a year to arrive too, though I think he’s putting out more frames nowadays; it’s a bigger operation. It was still in daily use up until a month ago when I broke yet another (the third) crank.

That Pegoretti is lush!

My personal choice would be between

Kevin Winter
Ted James Design
or a Cherubim from Japan

Enigma for me.

Basically a stock medium Elite HSS, but with a small seatube/rear triangle as I like compact frames. With hindsight I should have asked for the HT to be 5mm shorter, but 18 bikes knocked me up a superthin headset top cover and that’s solved the issue.

Not too spendy in the world of custom frames, very easy to deal with, especially Jaco the paint guy, no hard sell and they were open to a bit of haggling over the “custom” geo costs, and it turned up when they said it would. Rides like a dream. Overall very happy.

<<edit>> If I had LOTS of cash, no 2 ways about it, I’d be talking to Rob English…

I saw Titchmarsh at last years York Rally and they were *very* nice.
https://www.facebook.com/titchmarshcycles

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New Exp #PencilStay executed to perfection by our brother and builder @tedjamesdesign. Custom 10mm stays with custom 10mm flattened XCr yoke and exquisite welding work. We like! #GoAnywhereRideAnything #Explorateur #TravelWithEase @columbus_official

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I have a ted james, excellent. I do work for Bespoked and know the scene and builders pretty well…my UK choice:
Feather
Saffron
Field
Rourke
Talbot
Demon
Paulos Quiros
Donhou
Hartley
Shand

Euro ti:
Wittson
Mawis

All of these builders really know their stuff behind the paint.

Isn’t Roberts-the-younger in the business?

Have people forgotten Argos Racing Cycles, Brizzle?

Legend do some steel, http://www.legendbybertoletti.it/index.php?lang=ing

Dan Titchmarsh…………luuuuursh.

Ted James.
Builds great bikes, lovely bloke to boot, plus he helped me build my own custom steel creation at TBA.

I have a Reilly RS7 (stainless steel) arriving tomorrow!

I’ll drop some pics in here after it arrives – it’s taken around 6 months but hopefully worth the wait!!

Shand for me…

I have a ted james, excellent. I do work for Bespoked and know the scene and builders pretty well…my UK choice:
Feather
Saffron
Field
Rourke
Talbot
Demon
Paulos Quiros
Donhou
Hartley
Shand

Euro ti:

Tang… interesting list.. why Feather at the top? I’ve been looking at them and they do look pretty nice.. but better than Donhou, Saffron, Demon?

Paulos Quiros here. Jose actually wanted to go for a ride with me first to see my position, how I rode. I was described as pedalling ‘like a typical mountainbiker’ 😀

Know a few lads who ride with Ricky Feather. Not sure if it’s still the same, but a short while back there was around an 18 month wait for a frame.

Sorry, should have put ‘in no particular order’. Feather brazing is very good, and the attention that goes in even though it’s getting painted is incredible.
Shand have a top tig welder, Mathew at Saffron is also so tidy. Ted James mills everything himself, Caren Hartley has such a good detail on forks and bridges. Tom Demon spends 3 plus weeks on a frame and will bin it if it’s not absolutely spot on.
That’s another thing I love to see, builders who can make a good fork.

I have a Rowan Frameworks. His work seems to be in demand and the finished product is good.

Talk to Chipps of Singletrack fame; based on his recent article he knows his stuff 😆

Depends what you want and why, you won’t go wrong with any builder who has experience with the kind of bike you’re after. There’s a great choice of talented builders in the UK. They will all have specialisms and unique touches so you could pick based on that. It’s a personal choice.

I always wanted a Rourke road bike when I was younger and earning weekend job money. My local-ish shop back then. Still do want one, just no real need now. I’d need a good reason to talk to anyone but Steven Shand for the kind of bike I’d be most likely to order these days. Also like the idea of buying from a builder in Europe then riding it home, but Edinburgh will do, far enough.

Turned up today…..!!

Reilly RS7 Stainless custom build – 6 months build time – and man am I happy with it!! Spent the afternoon building it up….hopefully it’ll get a ride over the weekend

The fillet brazing is amazing…..paint perfect….love it!

I bought a Stoemper. Liked it so much I bought another one. Not British but sort of Belgian / American. Both frames are beautifully welded and amazing to ride. They do some quality paint schemes as well AND have a cool head badge (which is obviously essential)

As Jameso says, you’re unlikely to go wrong with anyone these days as the level is so high. I chose Richard Hallett to build my 953 track bike for a variety of reasons, one being that it’s a machine to be raced hard against carbon super bikes so I wanted to really talk through the engineering of every tube dimension; it was worth it! The brazing is also superb and on display.

Wow!

Just Wow!

Lovely frame Phil. Hallett used to be such a grumpy git when you raced against him. Helpfully he’s mellowed now as a frame builder. Good engineer though.

I believe he was taught by the much missed Cliff Shrub.

I’ve two Dave Yates frames – not sure if he still builds any more?

My Rourke feels like an extention of my arms and legs. I wouldn’t look any further.
.

i have Pegoretti duende, it’s currently back with Dario having a new coat of paint and a new fork (falz) fitted.
It’s 12 years old and time for a refresh. It’s the best riding bike I have ever ridden and wouldn’t part with it for anything.
It’s one of those bikes you forget about in that it’s not ‘zingy’ or stiff or some other adjective it’s just that no negatives jump out at you so you concentrate on the ride not what you are riding.
I also have a Chesini which while it’s a very similar tubeset it’s nowhere near as nice to ride and I wouldn’t recommend one, I would recommend a Casati though having ridden a couple and visited the factory.

TBH I’m not convinced by a lot of the new framebuilders who excell at fancy paint jobs and have little racing/riding experience or feedback from a lot of customers (who are buying a bike to ride not just to photograph and impress their mates) although it’s just a couple of triangles welded together it’s not that easy to make a bike ride well (my own 2 Columbus spirit tubed frames have shown me that)

I found this video which sums up why I personally wouldn’t buy the 5th frame out of a framebuilders workshop but the 5000th. “Design a nice website, get a booth at NAHBS, call yourself a framebuilder”
https://www.dorftv.at/video/26825

Choose your builder carefully, pick the builder not the paint job (this is assuming you want to ride it not weigh it and photograph it)

i have Pegoretti duende, it’s currently back with Dario having a new coat of paint and a new fork (falz) fitted.
It’s 12 years old and time for a refresh. It’s the best riding bike I have ever ridden and wouldn’t part with it for anything.
It’s one of those bikes you forget about in that it’s not ‘zingy’ or stiff or some other adjective it’s just that no negatives jump out at you so you concentrate on the ride not what you are riding.
I also have a Chesini which while it’s a very similar tubeset it’s nowhere near as nice to ride and I wouldn’t recommend one, I would recommend a Casati though having ridden a couple and visited the factory.

TBH I’m not convinced by a lot of the new framebuilders who excell at fancy paint jobs and have little racing/riding experience or feedback from a lot of customers (who are buying a bike to ride not just to photograph and impress their mates) although it’s just a couple of triangles welded together it’s not that easy to make a bike ride well (my own 2 Columbus spirit tubed frames have shown me that)

I found this video which sums up why I personally wouldn’t buy the 5th frame out of a framebuilders workshop but the 5000th. “Design a nice website, get a booth at NAHBS, call yourself a framebuilder”
https://www.dorftv.at/video/26825

Choose your builder carefully, pick the builder not the paint job (this is assuming you want to ride it not weigh it and photograph it)

fact

As per MrSmith, part of what you’re paying for is experience. Seems odd that all these new artisan framebuilders cost so much more than a Rourke, who’ve been building frames forever.

You need to find someone who can fit you and then take your numbers and build a frame to suit. Pegoretti build race frames that’re designed to be setup like Bob’s up there. If you don’t ride in that position, then you need to find someone who can get you sorted so you can, otherwise you’ll end up with a bike that handles badly.

If you’re considering a Pegoretti, have a wade through this. https://www.velocipedesalon.com/forum/f11/dario-pegoretti-4292.html

What do you hope to get from a frame by going custom?
I had a frame built for me by a low volume framebuilder, and it was not very good.
It had to go back to the framebuilder to have the seat tube reamed again so I could actually put a seat post in it.
When I did get to ride it, it kept trying to steer me into a ditch. Something about the geometry was very strange and I had no confidence going downhill on it.

The two nicest steel frames I have ridden (and still own) are a 1998 Eddy Merckx Corsa Extra (Columbus SLX) and a 1994 Colnago Superissimo (Columbus brain with master lugs).

Both mass produced frames but (crucially) from brands with lots of racing heritage.

Had a look at your link davidtaylforth and on the first page I’ve already shot my bolt, this thing is beautiful. Afraid to keep going on…

You need an account to view most of the pictures.

Waterford R33……it’s the most beautiful fast ride, an out and out race bike, they can do everything thing from lugged classics to crib bikes, mine was built to a Merckx style crit geometry, just stunning. It the one bike I’d never ever sell.

https://www.aureliuscycles.com/

Couple of gooduns
[img]http://i58.photobucket.com/albums/g260/paulhart612/Mobile%20Uploads/EFC5E939-07C7-4508-B4B7-5B442B71A207_zps5iiwkxd7.jpg[/img]

Completely agree with Mr Smith and davidtaylforth: too many of the custom builders named in this thread appear to have gone straight to the low volume/artisan end of the market, without having accumulated the experience of building lots of frames for lots of different customers. Many those artisan builders seem to spend a lot of their time on functionally useless decorative over-ornamentation of their frames to satisfy silly fads and whims of their own and their customers, who seem to value a frame that photgraphs well more than how it rides.

Pegoretti is famous for his fancy paint jobs, but the difference between him and the UK artisan builders is that the paint jobs are simply the icing on the cake (if you like them) on a frame built by probably the greatest custom steel race frame builder (the man who built Pinarello’s team frames for Indurain and many other top riders in the pro peloton, having himself served his apprenticeship under another italian master framebuilder).

Dave Yates used to run M Steel’s frame building workshop, and has built/supervised the construction of many thousands of frames. Like Pegoretti he was a racer himself, and he also was a mile eating audax rider who has completed Paris-Brest-Paris and London-Edinburgh-London, and that experience has strongly influenced what he recommends and builds.

You go to guys like these and Rourke and Shand for their experience and knowledge of what makes a great bike to ride, not for some fancy pointless decoration which took the builder half a week to make.

Invicta Frameworks out of Downland Cycles in Kent are worth a look. Bryan the builder there really knows his stuff and really cares about what you’ll use it for etc.

You would be amazed, but we at Bespoked deal with enquiries from people who have never built a frame for a customer, yet don’t want a new builder stand. Nice websites mind.