Middleburn sadly closing

Sad news for anyone who has ever been a Middleburn aficionado: https://cyclingindustry.news/uk-cycling-brand-middleburn-components-closes-down/

Made some seriously nice gear. Hope there's a future of some sort for great Brit brand.

Bummer :(

I really hope that's not the case... have got a fair bit of Middleburn stuff and even have some RO1 arms on order at the moment! I saw the site was hacked the other week and has been down since... :/

Nooooo. So many '90s MTB memories. I always wanted some of their cranks, now I may never live the dream.

Website is down so it doesn't look very optimistic.

Oh, that's sad to hear :-(

Sad news indeed.

I sent them an email early August to place order and haven't received any reply yet.

Having purchased R01 crankset with proprietary DUO chainring set two years ago, it may be good idea now to get hold of spider to be able to use with standard chainrings in the future.

Sad news. Many memories of lusting after some RS7's as a kid doing trials riding

Same here, always wanted a Middleburn crank back in the day... they were THE cranks to have

All went downhill after they helped out a polo tournament.

Very sad, you could almost build an entire single speed bike with made in england components. It looks like that task is now harder. The brand holds a value so it probably reappear in far eastern made guise much like sturmey archer etc all.

How have the Italians managed to maintain a thriving cycling industry when we in uk can't.
I suspect it is financial most of the Italian companies miche and campagnolo are still family owned for many years and probably only take on debt to finance expansion and R&D. Here in uk we have an obsession with floating companies and refinancing them to extract every last penny of value, so all it takes is a little don't turn in the markets that the companies either folds, bought out or moves production abroad.
Brooks is owned by selle Italia but still made proudly in Birmingham and fully exploiting it's British credentials.
Many British companies don't move with the times. I'm sure royce will dissappear once the founding fathers retire, but it's expensive products are the best in the market.
Hope technology have thankfully modern and kept up with changes and new manufacturing methods and maintained profitability. And vitally market themselves well, not just a trade secrets for those in the know, that nerdy engineer in lab coat churning out products from trusty vintage lathe out of a shed is really no business model.

Cliff at Royce bought the company from the original owners, so is not the founding father.

Great company I hope it will expanded and blossom not go down the middleburn route.

Interesting

Middleburn lives

Don't know what their source is though.

Sweet!

Someone from BETD/Goldtec has commented about UK manufacture, not contradicting/denying it's happening so hopefully pretty legit.

Very good news if it's true, love their kit.

I told you so. (See RIP thread)

Where's my [3DV ano] trophy?

http://www.bikerumor.com/2016/10/20/british-company-betd-carries-middleburn-crank-brand-line/

confirmed

Did they buy Goldtec too, way back when? Or were they Goldtec?

Bit of tricky organisation to get, BETD, from a consumer perspective.

I've started eyeing up Middleburns for a couple of future builds as I quite fancy a nice square taper chainset on at least one of them and like the idea of being able to polish parts to their former glory.

Info is scant on the BETD site. What are the different cranksets BB standards? RS7 seems to be square taper and RS8 some kind of external BB.... and would UNO have a lower q-factor than the above? Most likely candidate would be a 1x build.

Uno is the ring, not the arms.

The RO1 and RO2 arms had a narrower Q factor than the RS7 and RS8 respectively but I don't know if they actually ever made any or are still making them.

Nice one. So as I understand it, RS7s will work with any ISO BB? Something I saw seemed to suggest it might be a proprietary system, but I find that quite hard to believe.

Not ISO, JIS

I ran 3 sets of RS7's on assorted length Shimano UN55 bbs without any issues.

Yeap, UN55 for me too and I still have my set of cranks stashed away somewhere! :D