Gravel / Gravé / Gnarmac / Groad / ATB

pinnacle gang..... ASSEMBLE!

seriously that looks badboy. You're going to love it.

Sequoia has the hunt 650b wheels on and the ubiquitous WTB horizons on. It's lost a shit ton of weight over the stock wheels, resulting in a sprightlier ride and easy to pop the front wheel up over kerbs and stuff. Excuse the mudguards...they were thrown on to stop a bit of crud flying. Seems to have lost some "momentum" though....doesn't seem as quick overall?

Do like though

1 Attachment

Could be a cheap phone camera lens

Stigmata is a cross bike no? Not a grauwlour biek

tyre choice would suggest otherwise

+1

Color me colorblind.

Another option. New to me.
http://www.veloheld.de/veloheld-iconx-frame

^ but the head tube / fork interface is so ugly

why would anyone let that off the paper and even into prototyping - let alone production

Because its a steel for for touring when you need eyelets. You wouldn't notice with its loaded. The rest of the time you can use a carbon fork, and it looks fine:

its the first unicrown flat mount thru axle fork I've seen .. if only they had sorted the HT to fork transition like Tonic

Because its a steel for for touring when you need eyelets. You wouldn't notice with its loaded

all true - but to my subjective view, it doesn't excuse the ugly of the current fork headtube transition. Especially as they have clearly had to do something non-standard to make it work with an oversized headtube.

its the first unicrown flat mount thru axle fork I've seen ..

Except maybe Specialized Sequoia?..

ah yeah true, didnt know it as thru axle .. it also suffers from the ugly HT to Fork crown transition ..

And because a tapered steerer rigid steel fork is just plain daft

Still end up with a waaaaaay heavier fork than necessary with that beefy crown

And because a tapered steerer rigid steel fork is just plain daft rad

;-)

I'm not going to disagree with the headtube/fork comments, it is ugly but aside from that this frame seems like a good option for the money, ticks a lot of boxes for me!

Because you want to offer the option of a carbon fork. And those tend to be tapered nowadays.

what would the diff be? Its a steel/heavy frameset anyway ..

Adding weight (to arguably an already heavy fork) /// Aesthetics

You could probably argue on a bike like a Tonic aesthetics wins. I guess it comes down to what you deem important at the end of the day

I like a stiff front end on a front loader, seems worth experimenting with 1 1/2. Make more sense to me than on a road bike, except for the whole cf fork market moving towards 1 1/2 making it difficult to spec something else as end user

I agree.
Coming from a old Kona P2 with cantis to moderne disc brake fork I definitely feel a lot less flex when I load the rack.
Personally, I like the the HT-fork transition on Sklar bikes.