Mark W

Haha, what? OK, let's look at a modern example, the Black Sky. A shit-load of work has gone into that frame, and it's the most advanced trials frame available. Compare that to the most advanced DH frame you can get, or even the most advanced carbon fibre XC frame. Subtle price difference there, wouldn't you agree? Truvativ would be cheaper, but nothing they really do is 'better than trials components' for use in trials. Same as most other 'big' companies, trials IS so niche that they can't compete (or won't compete 'cos there's no monetary value in it), so that's naturally going to drive prices up because prototyping, contrary to your earlier post, isn't cheap at all. Your minimum quanitities for a production frame are also a fair way off. My comment about getting a lot of shit for your money is in comparison to other trials parts, where there's more work going on on the TMS than a lot of other frames out. Yes, that'll be the 'unique' you're talking about, but it's also arguably a better frame in precisely the same way you could spend £80 and get a cheap shitter full sus bike from Asda or you could spend several thousand pounds and bite Steve Peat's setup.

I had no idea what you were talking about.

You'd know about your stem being so loose it could somehow come right off in your hands by being unable to steer with your front wheel, I'd imagine? It'd be literally impossible for it to get so loose you could possibly pull your bar and stem off your forks without you noticing. Again, if you were that oblivious to how your bike was riding, you'd probably deserve the pain you'd receive...

Setup's also pretty tech on 24's - some people seem to get setups that they think will be ideal for the sort of riding they might want to do, but quite often it doesn't really work out the way you think it should do. Just remember you may need to chop and change a bit to get it set up just how you need it to be, you probably won't nail it first try.

If you were ever, ever in a situation where your preload bolt for your headset (which shouldn't be done up tight anyway) was all that was stopping your stem from coming off your steerer, you'd probably deserve all the pain that that would bring. I'd killed my BMX fork's topcap, and because they were an unusual size I just didn't bother running one and just borrowed a friend's topcap if I needed to take my forks off at any point. I ran that setup for about 6 months and had absolutely no problems whatsoever, and because I possess the ability to tighten a stem steerer clamp I didn't have to worry about my topcap stopping me from eating shit. Once you've preloaded the bearing and tightened your stem up, the topcap is basically just along for the ride.

Sweet double 'bold claim' to finish there, like it...

You wanna get a better stem maaaaaaaaate. But nah, it was fine on my BMX but that stem had pretty rad clamping power. Not sure how well it'd work for trials though, especially with the forces you put your stem under.

Actually looks kinda alright 'in real life', it was pretty sunny when Ads took those pics so it's made the shiny-ness of that paint job kinda come through and given it a bit of a glow to the gold. Some sorta nice touches on it, and the quality is actually pretty high on there compared to some frames we've had in recently. The plate is quite a nice touch as well, considering it's an expensive bike it's quite a nice thing to have on there, really give it a bit of sorta ownership.

Echo do a ti option.

That sentence blew my mind.

Yeah, definitely - all the BMX frames I've bought have been post-weld machined. I was just saying that the majority of BMX frames aren't, and they still work pretty well in any case. I can appreciate it's not the same though. And yeah, regarding industry standards, the size of cranks and spindles that all the different disciplines use vary so it doesn't really make sense to adopt one for all disciplines just because one of them does, otherwise it'd be a case of sort of retrofitting BMXs with a 'new' standard to replace the one that they created that other people are now utilising. I can't really see it taking off in all fields anyway. I agree they should be a standard, off-the-peg bearing, which is why I was saying I prefer Mid to Spanish

Your last bit's pretty true - one of the proper biffer T-Bone protos I had to try was weeeeighty, but the setup on it made it really 'light' to ride. Not sure on the warranty for it, Ads just said that he thinks it's 6 months, not covering bashing

I don't think it needs to be a universal standard just 'cos... well... it doesn't? Seperate facets of the bike industry should have their own standard maybe, but not like an overall one just because there's so much variation that it'd be pretty difficult, but also pretty pointless. You don't have to do post weld machining either, although it's a lot better.

The long one's a bit of a beast! That's what I ride and it feels rad. How tall are you? Just to give you a guide, I'm about 6' 1"...

Echo's site just got flagged up as an 'Attack Site' on this browser I mean, I know their site's shit, but I didn't think it'd try and hurt me... That's the Adamant one, but it's the same as the Echo.

A pair of links is 1", not 1/2", so your numbers are incorrect. Personally, I'm a fan of longer stays so I quite like the White Sky. The reason I got a Lynx was the 362mm stays (which are now around 365-ish at a guess on mine). I don't really like the feeling of shorter stays on mods for gapping and preloading for power moves, it just feels like you've not really got much to push against. Riding Ads's's's's's's's bikes it feels like when you kick to gap, the bike just flies out arse-first from under you. I guess it's something you'd get used to, and a lot of people seem to, but I just prefer the longer rear/lower BB feeling of mods like mine.

That'd vary according to your gear ratio...

Comes with the headset too, so that's about £70 worth of stuff free with it which means it's a shade of £600 of frame, if that makes sense. You do get quite a lot of frame for your money, although I agree it'd be a bit nicer if it weighed a smidgeon less. On the plus side, at least you know that your £600 frame should last for quite some time.

Why would they want to make a Spanish to Euro cup? Or d'you mean from the Echo-sized BB to a traditional MTB size? If it's the latter, then there'd not be muuuuch point, simply 'cos their system's quite a bit better. If you wanted to run a set of taper cranks, it'd probably be not much different money-wise to buying the Echo frame and some cheaper ISIS cranks rather than any kind of adaptor (which always seem to be quite expensive, if my US->Euro adapter was any kind of guide). Plus ISIS rules over taper I think the 'point' so to speak was that Echo's new system kinda blows normal MTB BBs out of the water, but it just needs to be incorporated by more companies.

To be fair, if you can tell the difference when you ride it you'd be a bit of a hero. Bearing in mind that the age of your chain and sprockets would mean that you're likely to have a greater fluctuation in CS length than Adam not being able to work out to the exact mm what a frame is, it's probably not worth worrying about...

Dave got a little enthusiastic with some caustic soda and a headset, resulting in a very slightly undersized headset that can be slipped into and out of frames without damaging/marking them, but without being really loose. We've also got a random set of Urban forks too, so we just slip the headset in, put the forks in and measure away

We've got one of them already, haha.

With difficulty, haha. Maybe drop us an e-mail and Ads can try and give you a bit of a step-by-step guide. It's a pretty fiddly job, and bleeding it's pretty tech too...