Aluminium Frame Builders

Sold it when I was saving for mortgage. No ragrets.

Legend by Bertoletti Giau

Stoemper Darrell

Standert Kreissäge RS

Vynl

Squid Cycles

Most illogical spacers / stem combo possible?

I’m not sure what makes this

Any more hh than this

The latter being a £150 brand x frameset.

Lol so true

Fair-ish point from a cursory aesthetic pov but Frank Wadelton is a legend in aluminium welding and a bit of a cult hero in mountain biking circles. There's really no comparison.

There's really no comparison.

Objectively, there is. They're basically the same thing, just that one is made in Taiwan by either nameless master welders who weld more frames in a year than most framebuilders in a lifetime, or by robots who arguably weld as good as it gets.
Subjectively, reputation and romanticism makes the spooky "better" along with some misplaced patriotism for made in the US stuff.

I'd be very pleased if they were made somewhere else...

I agree that there are probably many welders in TW who are on par with FTW but the tubing used in the Brand-X isn't the same or even close... there's a c.500g difference between the two frames. It's like arguing all steel frames are the same, all carbon frames are the same etc.

Yeah I'm just playing devils advocate really. It's 10% of the price. I don't imagine the brand X is actually an amazing frame but I still don't get the spooky hype. They look plain and agricultural imo

in fairness to the FTW the top tube looks multi shaped/hydroformed/butted and probably cost nearly half the price of the bargain basement frame alone.

Similarly, I see that the Low frames do have very nice welding and are presumably very good, but really the hippity is 90% about the logos isn't it?

It works for a pair of pink crocks/doe eyed brand sycophants

Have we settled this then? Aluminium frames are just overpriced hipster slave rubbish unless they're £100 and unbranded?

Unless it's a 20 year old Cannondale race frame, in which case @Howard will tell you to put it in the bin

Yeah, I’m not going to rip into what FTW does because clearly he’s very good at it and respected as such but I think that unless you’re smoothing the welds out like Cannondale, the welding all looks much off a muchness.

That leaves stuff like tube shape to give a frame it’s hip hop-ness and the Spookies that have been posted don’t seem to be doing much in that regard.

Aluminium frames are just overpriced hipster slave rubbish unless

... they are Trek ALR/CAAD/Spesh E5

a real hip hip thing to do is build that Brand X with decal 'Kooky'

Cinelli Zydeco?

This may be the best idea you've had on here... Brand-X with Kooky decals and Lightweight Meilensteins/ THM Clavicula etc.

100% back that

There's another German brand much like Standert can't think of the name sure it begins with D if any one knows. Theses look nice https://www.cicli-il-massimo.com/aluminumframes. Just found this brand really like the colour on this one might and those welds look great might be worth asking if they do frameset only https://pearl-cycles.com/pearl-magic?lang=en