Best Reynolds Tubing

Re:

It’s definitely more about the geometry. I can’t tell any difference between 531 & 653. I’ve never had a 753 so cant comment. Ridewise, there is vey little to chose between 853 and 953. 953 is a bit lighter yes and super strong but one of the reasons I chose it was the stainless properties that mean you can leave stays unpainted or polish them.

There’s a bit of brand snobery of course and I suppose the steel market is no different to carbon in that regard. Who wouldn’t wasn’t a Colnago over a Btwin?
 
hamster":1223b87n said:
'Best' is a difficult question. What do you mean? Lightest, stiffest, most comfortable, efficient, durable, versatile????

As LGF rightly says, until they are designed, it's just a stack of pipes. A good framebuilder will design a frame and select appropriate tubing for its intended purpose. The really good engineering-led framebuilders (for example Tony Oliver) mixed tubes between suppliers to achieve the intended result.
Click to expand...

+1. Everybody has their own ride feel preferences. The fact that 853 built bikes can polarise opinions is interesting. Who builds the frames has a much bigger effect on the ride characteristics, good or bad, than people realise imo. I custom make and blueprint my own golf clubs and no off the peg clubs come close to their feel and performace.
 
There’s a clutch of other tubes too to muddy the waters:
708 731 921 931 631 .... don’t ask me where they fit :D
 
JSH":1upp7uyo said:
There’s a clutch of other tubes too to muddy the waters:
708 731 921 931 631 .... don’t ask me where they fit :D
Click to expand...

708 is an interesting one with a rifled interior, mixed tubeset like 653.

631 is a modern weldable equivalent roughly to 531.
 
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Re:

I've never had anything other than 753 on a steel road bike . AWESOME stuff . .why settle for less??!

..it'll make your legs like Greg's!! :cool:

Well, it won't really but you can always pretend AND it would have been
a great advertising slogan!!

 
legrandefromage":27rrgye9 said:
Best thing to do is tape over whatever frame material decal is on the bike and go for a ride - that way theres no badge snobbery or assumption that because it has a certain badge on it it it will be brilliant/ terrible/ etc etc
Click to expand...

Well said that man sometimes the "Nut" holding the handle bars is the bikes worst enemy the ride/feel of the bike relies more on the frame builder/kit than the tube type for frame/fork construction & to throw a spanner in the works I always preferred Columbus tubing to Reynolds but the builder/kit fitted still applies
 
Re: COLUMBUS Alternatives

Not sure why you wouldn't also consider Columbus or Oria alternatives. I have a Tommasini Tecno in EL OS (awesome ride quality), a Pinarello Banesto in Oria ML34 (pretty damn good too, a little stiffer then EL OS) and 2 x Columbus SL bikes , both Grandis, beautiful to behold. Shortly I will have 2 x Reynolds 753 frames to compare, but in all honesty I don't think the EL OS can be bettered when built well as a bike to be ridden fast. We'll see......that's the fun of steel...
 
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