Umm not much, there are some really great ones in Cardiff, truth is that the biggest barrier is time, I can either try to go when I’m in work, or carry in 2 kids with me who bring their mates chaos and mayhem with them wherever they go. Online is click, click, click and it turns up the next day, to my office.
As for types of carbon frame… Spesh have been saying for as long as I remember their S Line alu frames are lighter, stronger etc than their complete bike frames, I assume they say the same about their carbon ones, frankly I don’t believe them and unless I find the time to personally strip a Santa Cruz CC bike and weigh the frame along aside an otherwise identical C frame I’ll never believe that they’re different either. It makes no sense to have 2 production lines to make the same thing in a slightly different way, it’s 2 different sales processes, not 2 different production processes.
One of the LBS in Cardiff told my mate they did just that and it’s a pound lighter – about twice what SC claim the difference should be, but then they once told me they’d fit new springs to a DH bike I was buying so it was right for me, they didn’t, they changed the oil in the forks instead (possibly) and my first go at DH was terrifying at best.