re: circleA frames

philso said:

nun - since i couldn't find any pricing info on their site, i'm just curious: what do they run?

They're $1100 for a single speed. I'm waiting for a quote on a touring frame I expect it will be a couple of hundred more because of the extra stuff on it. I'm hoping to get a complete bike for around $2k. This might seem expensive, but compared to places like Co-Motion, Litespeed, Rivendell etc it seems like a bargin.

sounds like about double the price for about the same product as lugger mentioned in his bob jackson thread, the main difference being that it's off-the-shelf instead of a truly custom fit. cro-moly, nice (if not exquisite) lugs, and plenty of braze-ons.

i'd enjoy seeing a pic if you do eventually get one. let us know how it goes

philso said:

sounds like about double the price for about the same product as lugger mentioned in his bob jackson thread

That's what I have been thinking. I crunched the numbers from the Bob Jackson website again just now. For the stock World Tour 631, start with 360 British Pounds including VAT, take off VAT if you live outside UK and you get L306. Convert to US Dollars and it's $541. Shipping to US is another L60, or $106. That's $647 total and you got a Bob Jackson frame. Whoa!

The Custom Special Tourist is L361 without VAT. That's $640 and then $746 with shipping to US.

Can you get a better steel frame? I don't think so. But I suppose you can get one as good or almost as good if you pay a lot more. Makes me think Bob Jackson has a lot of integrity.

lugger said:

That's what I have been thinking. I crunched the numbers from the Bob Jackson website again just now. For the stock World Tour 631, start with 360 British Pounds including VAT, take off VAT if you live outside UK and you get L306. Convert to US Dollars and it's $541. Shipping to US is another L60, or $106. That's $647 total and you got a Bob Jackson frame. Whoa!

The Custom Special Tourist is L361 without VAT. That's $640 and then $746 with shipping to US.

Can you get a better steel frame? I don't think so. But I suppose you can get one as good or almost as good if you pay a lot more. Makes me think Bob Jackson has a lot of integrity.

the difference in price is probably that b.j. is a small assembly line operation. they do have a factory. circleA and other custom maker are making them 1 (or a few) at a time and producing (i'd guess) a few 10's of frames per year. structurally, i'd guess that neither is better than the other. but there's no denying that the circleA frames are quite nice. here's a link.check out some of the pics.
circleacycles.comgallery.aspOpen ↗