The bike with the best alloy tubing I own would be my Planet X Compo, which is a take on the Cobe Stiffee and has box-shaped Eastan Rad tubing. Not sure where that falls in the alloy tubing scale but at the time it was pretty much the mutt's nuts and most top-end DH, all-moutain, freeride etc rigs had it. The Compo is a hardtail with a longtravel front fork btw.
Since then I've been riding, in order of appearance: DMR Trailstar, Charge Stove, Charge Plug and also Venom, a 80s road frame with 631 tubing I converted to fixed. I also have an Orange Gringo with pretty basic alloy tubing. At the moment I am currently buying a Surly Pacer, again with fairly basic Cro-Mo tubing. None of my steel bikes have had particularly high-end steel tubing but I love their character, strudiness and look, which is why I expressed the derided opinion I did on this thread. It was only ever meant as an opinion, rather than a quantified, definitive analysis of relative tube types.
The main thrust of my argument is that a steel, purpose built frame is better for a SS build than an alloy geared frame, and that my personal preference is always for steel. That said, I'm a big bloke and have always prized sturdiness and reliability of steel over alloy. My understanding is that alloy has mainly superseeded steel because is cheaper and easier to form into more lightweight tubing, but steel can match its strength and lightness at the top end, but obviously at greater expense and a more complex manufacturing process. That said Carbon and Titanium seems to have trumped both.
I wasn't attempting to be an 'expert', just sharing my opinion and my experience of building singlespeed bikes out of geared frames.
And as for On One, in the Pompino and Inbred they have created two genuine singlespeed classic frames, so I would hope the Macinato is very much in this vein. The paintjob is bad, but I would hope is a very capable and enjoyable bike to ride which has made their other frames an almost cult like following. Witness the Pompino thread in this forum
The bike with the best alloy tubing I own would be my Planet X Compo, which is a take on the Cobe Stiffee and has box-shaped Eastan Rad tubing. Not sure where that falls in the alloy tubing scale but at the time it was pretty much the mutt's nuts and most top-end DH, all-moutain, freeride etc rigs had it. The Compo is a hardtail with a longtravel front fork btw.
Since then I've been riding, in order of appearance: DMR Trailstar, Charge Stove, Charge Plug and also Venom, a 80s road frame with 631 tubing I converted to fixed. I also have an Orange Gringo with pretty basic alloy tubing. At the moment I am currently buying a Surly Pacer, again with fairly basic Cro-Mo tubing. None of my steel bikes have had particularly high-end steel tubing but I love their character, strudiness and look, which is why I expressed the derided opinion I did on this thread. It was only ever meant as an opinion, rather than a quantified, definitive analysis of relative tube types.
The main thrust of my argument is that a steel, purpose built frame is better for a SS build than an alloy geared frame, and that my personal preference is always for steel. That said, I'm a big bloke and have always prized sturdiness and reliability of steel over alloy. My understanding is that alloy has mainly superseeded steel because is cheaper and easier to form into more lightweight tubing, but steel can match its strength and lightness at the top end, but obviously at greater expense and a more complex manufacturing process. That said Carbon and Titanium seems to have trumped both.
I wasn't attempting to be an 'expert', just sharing my opinion and my experience of building singlespeed bikes out of geared frames.
And as for On One, in the Pompino and Inbred they have created two genuine singlespeed classic frames, so I would hope the Macinato is very much in this vein. The paintjob is bad, but I would hope is a very capable and enjoyable bike to ride which has made their other frames an almost cult like following. Witness the Pompino thread in this forum