Mark W

The 'distributor' is Onza themselves, effectively - Onza don't do the Zoot frame kits any more so that's that. They seem to just be focussing on the MTB side now. There's been talk of a new range of bikes, but they've got virtually no stock left of anything now and seem to be winding things down. Zoots aren't the most durable of frames anyway so it may be worth seeing what else you can find. For second hand stuff, it seems like you're more likely to find a complete bike than just a frame. You can get some absolute steals second hand on here (just ask Luke about his Arcade deal :p), but checking out some of the trials groups on FB might help too. Every single trials group out there seems to have just devolved into a FS/WTD group now, so see if you can join them and post up about what you're after

Could get ti barbed fittings? The Carthy lever just has a few nicer features like the indexed TPA and bushings around the lever pivot, but the regular Sport lever is a beast too so I don't think you'd really need to go for the Carthy one if you're buying a bunch of them. I seem to remember Carthy used a proto with the Sport style pivot arrangement and even after extensive use it didn't develop play. Obviously if you want The Best then the Carthy one would be the way to go, but if you want a cheaper, still just as functional lever then the Sports would do the job fine.

It's an old Ozonys. He was riding the Curve around that time too from memory. Resprayed King of Dunce frame or something?

The brakes I've used with Trialtech levers have all felt way better than the 2005s. I know '05s have this mythical status, but I think a lot of that is rose tinted glasses coming into play. The TT lever improves on them in every way, pretty much. I think you'd like the feel of them as they do feel a lot stiffer than most other levers, especially when you compare the new Racing Line levers with the super long but thin blades for example. In terms of splitters, just for ease of fitting the TT splitter would take it every time for me. It's a lot easier fitting some barbed fittings to separate hoses rather than having to try and mash them onto a splitter. For slaves, anything would be fine really. Most slaves are all similar in terms of performance so you won't notice as much of a difference switching from one brand of cylinder to another as you would one lever to another.

That's not what Instagrams and vlogs are sezin.

Relevant. There's nothing inherently wrong with using new, jazzy camera equipment (there are videos out there that do), but quite often it just becomes an exercise in using new, jazzy camera equipment for the sake of using it, or just to 'Look Pro'. Overuse of drone shots is a prime example, such as the slew of drone-only trials videos that came out when they first became more affordable. Similarly, depending on how they're used gimbals can quite often mess up composition - I've seen a bunch of videos which become frustrating to watch because although the footage is super still and level, you don't always want to be looking across perfectly horizontally when someone's riding. There's definitely a happy middle ground between lo-fi and high tech, in just the same way there's a happy middle ground between 'avant garde' and more standard stuff. Related to the 'avant garde' thing you mentioned before Flipp, it's always going to be the case that there are more people in the mainstream rather than doing that kind of thing. To use your Van Gogh example (even though from my understanding he tried being commercially successful in his own lifetime, and still did commissions/sold work while he was alive?), how many Van Goghs were there? Or Picassos? Or... and so on. There will always be the people who lead, then the people who follow, then the people who take elements from the leaders and elements from themselves and synthesise them to create their own new thing, and the cycle continues. I definitely get what you mean about the 'mercenary' aspect of it, but at the same time I think it's just because a lot of people don't really think too much about videos as to them it's now just a simple commodity rather than trying to make a statement. For some people as well they just want to make videos that look like their favourite filmer/editor/riders videos, and there's nothing really wrong with that either. As an example, your videos stand out from most others on here stylistically in terms of filming/editing, but then I've seen a couple of videos from people who admire you that clearly take a lot of hues and elements from your videos, from shot composition to clip length to music choices. That's cool too as it's just someone who is into what you're doing and wants to follow the new path you're creating.

You ride with the wrong people - you can get general loud mouth c**ts too. Definite non-fanny:

Nah, your videos are cool I just don't think there's the same audience for it these days for a few reasons, one of which being FB f**king around with how people's news feeds work. They made a big change to how they operated and I heard a good few people say their video reach totally bombed (mainly because FB wanted people to pay to receive the same level of exposure they'd worked to generate previously...). This just means if you're not set up right on FB/social media, you just don't get the same level of exposure as you would have done a couple of years ago. I've found it with my own videos, and with videos I've produced for other people. I don't feel there's a big difference in terms of style or whatever between videos I've done before that got over 100k views, and now ones I've done (e.g. the last Clean video which has some of the best riding I've ever filmed in it) which barely scrape 5k or so. The difference in views seemed to correlate to the change in views that other people had too so I think it's an across-the-board thing.

Those tyre logos are applied in a fairly freestyle way it seems, so they usually vary slightly on each tyre. Some are almost perfect, some really aren't. Even from side to side they can vary.

Good shit. How organised are you being with clips/naming of clips? Archiving stuff in a reasonably organised manner or just freestyling it? Only reason I ask is that if you're all over the place atm, trying to get to grips with copying your best clips into a dedicated folder wouldn't be a bad shout. It's a little more work now to save a lot of work later.

People still do full parts but release little updates/vlogs. Kink did it a lot with their Kink House projects, Etnies put random things out, and a few other companies have done similar too. There's always riding that happens that, if you've got QC, wouldn't make the final cut so that would be prime fodder for a vlog/video like that. There have been a few DVD projects where people have posted up 'raw' footage where they show the build-up/crashes that led to a clip then the aftermath as a teaser, and also to show the battle the rider had to go through. I don't really see it as a binary choice of either you do one or the other, but it seems like it's more about balance. It seems at the moment riders would rather have the instant gratification of likes/comments/shares on social media clips, but I think a well produced/made video will always have a place. I suppose part of the problem for trials is that, compared to BMXing, skating and virtually all other things like that, the quality of videos has generally been pretty low. To use skating as an example, there's a strong tradition of full parts, and so although there's a lot more stuff being burned on social media skaters still expect/demand full parts because they do stand out. I don't really think that's the case with trials though. That said, before his last video (I think...) Ben Travis was pumping out loads of good stuff on FB/Instagram that didn't make the cut for the full video, and with the amount he was posting on social media I wasn't expecting to see a full video suddenly appear so that was the icing on the cake. In terms of vlogs, I don't really watch any apart from Ali's occasionally, mainly because it seems like a lot of people don't really have a purpose or direction for doing them so it's essentially 10+mins of rambling with no idea/structure behind it. I'm one of the people who said Ali seemed more confident after starting his because I'd say it has had a positive impact on him personally and on how he's perceived online. Despite him being a total fanny he does have some redeeming features, but I don't think a lot of riders really 'got' Ali, until he started vlogging and his personality started coming through more. Him having a personality and being his own person definitely helps it stand out from other vlogs though where it's pretty clear the rider in question doesn't really have much going on and is just doing a vlog because they're the done thing. That's always the way though - people get successful doing them, then that idea trickles down through the rest of the community and everyone wants a pop. Same deal with road bike videos - no-one who's ever put out a 'trials on a road bike' video in the past few years would have done it had they not seen the success of Road Bike Party, so they all wanted to try and get a piece of the pie. None of them really got the reason that it was popular though, so they just faded away. See also: Danny Mac, and everyone else who "has their own style" and "does their own thing" that just so happens to be a half-scale, styleless copy of what Danny does. EDIT: One thing I would say Ali is that you definitely need to strap a pair on, go through your vlog footage and pick out the best 2-3 clips of each one and maybe put a full 'best of' kinda video together. When we all watch them here in the office, the usual thing is "Why doesn't he just put out a video of these for people like us?", so make it happen There's so much good stuff that's buried in them that needs to be seen by more people. It seems like the little taster videos work well (e.g. the skatepark one recently that made me watch the whole thing whereas ordinarily I don't think I would have done), so just do that, but more so.

Heard that and thought "Oh Trials-Forum". It's a 24" Flow Plus with MT7 upgrade (and some stuff like the V2 lock-ons).

The 100k views = babe time goes for filmers too though, that woman in Cardiff when we filmed you doing that dropgap where you bent the rail was keen.

I imagine the disc rotor issue is probably a big one - that's the main stumbling block for them being introduced in the roadie world more. The UCI were going back and forth with making them illegal for use in road races because of the 'risk' of a rider falling in the peloton and somehow being sawn to pieces by some disc rotors. In fairness to them they kind of do have a point in terms of rotors vs. pegs - I've fallen onto a BMX before and hit the peg and it wasn't really too bad, whereas I've seen photos of people who've just brushed their finger against a moving rotor and lost chunks of their finger. I know it's super unlikely to happen and I don't agree with it (because realistically it's not like having a chainring is safe either if people are falling and sticking their fingers into things) but it's possible to see where they're coming from.

Inspired weren't big back then (they aren't now in the scheme of things, not even realistically among trials companies I'd have thought - they don't have the same big external backers like some other companies do), that's kind of why Danny stuck with them when all the wheelbarrows of potential cash started arriving from all the big companies back when things went mental in 2009-10. Most of the bikes Ali's got are just old ones he's had kicking around the flat for a while. One or two have been old black proto frames that are quite old, so it's just a case of using them with some of the many random parts he's got lying around from his experiments. While we lived together in Blackpool he pretty much always had random shit from CRC turning up to possibly experiment with, and having been up to stay with him he's turned parts of that flat into some kind of random-part-hoarding nightmare Without putting words in his mouth and without knowing the full BTS stuff, I'd imagine that almost all of Ali's money comes from shows, whether that was from working with The Clan like he used to all the time a few years back to working with Drop & Roll now. There really isn't much money in trials at all, let alone enough to give any rider a living just from a solely trials-related sponsor.

Did it take a while to get the finance stuff sorted out or something? Seems like it's taken a while for them to get it done otherwise? Hope you like it in any case

Kind of allllmost an average - the Pro and Fuse are 362mm, the Team is 365mm.

George - if you want everyone around you to have a rough idea of what your surname might be, it'd probably be cheaper to get Jonny Jones to knock you up some "MY NAME IS GEORGE SEAMONS" vinyl stickers for the same effect.

They did, yeah. Before Christmas we got through a pretty ridiculous number of frames, frame kits and bikes.

Cap built up a pretty sweet looking new bike... There are a few detail shots on the TartyBikes FB page for those who are interested.

It looks pretty rusty - usually just some lube will sort out most Echo freewheels like that in terms of freedom of movement. They come virtually dry from the factory so are more susceptible to dirt/moisture and so on than most other freewheels are.

If you're talking about just the frame, yes. The jump in price on our website looks a little higher than it should have because we hadn't realised we were selling the old frame at an incorrect price (so everyone who ordered the previous kits from us got a bit of a discount), but the price of Inspired's parts/bikes in general has gone up due to the weakness of the £. As with the other parts we import/buy, most price changes that reflect this are going up incrementally rather than in one hit, so for example our Echo bikes have gone up in price a bit and will probably go up again in future a bit too.

Having shots the photos of them I knew the colour they were going to, and consequently I knew you'd be fairly keen once you saw it

Where did you buy that from? Inspired have been out of stock of those bikes for a bit now as far as I'm aware.