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the UK "scene" (i hate that word . . . so sorry)
anyway, recently i have noticed there have been differences of opinion and i believe it stems from a different understanding of the history of mountain biking, the US market, the UK market, when, where, who etc.
this thread is mainly aimed for the UK guys to write and the US guys to read, maybe there could be a opposite to this thread from the US side?
what i would like in this thread is for YOU to explain your views on why you like the brands you like, why you are drawn to those brands, who do you respect in this business? UK and USA brands that were about at the time.
I don't want this to turn into an us against them argument thread, that's not the point, i want this thread to be YOUR POINT OF VIEW, and your point of view is just that! yours! a personal history if you will.
I will start to give you an idea of what i mean.
hopefully if this thread is treated with respect (NO SPAMMING PLEASE) the US guys might understand the UK scene a little better (and i don't mean that in a condescending way) because to us it wasn't all about the same stuff as it was to you guys.
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i started riding offroad on my first (BSO) mountain bike around 1988, basic, heavy, 10speed, utter rubbish!
after a time i graduated to a muddy fox seeker a Uk brand that was big at the time, my first REAL mountain bike, i did a huge amount of riding on this bike and when it was stolen i was lucky enough to get a muddy fox alu pro. this was 1990, i didn't know anything at this point about anything american, at that point it didn't occur to me where the brand was from. muddy fox was advertised alot and was perceived to be the cool brand. to a 16 year old kid it was. when i started college i discovered a higher end shop (GA cycles the shop that 15 years later i managed) it was this shop that i first came across Orange, Offroad, GT, Specialized, Cannondale, Marin, and Kona. all brands from across the water, except 1.
i liked some but not others, in all honesty some (well maybe most) of it was based on asthetics. typical of a young guy to be fair.
i didn't need a new bike at that time as i still had the alu pro but i did set about upgrading. first was a pair of mag 20 forks. i didn't like manitou or pace, i felt that rockshox offered more performance for the money. after that i decided i'd try full suspension, there weren't many sensibly priced frames at that point but i got an Offroad proflex 552 (same as matt browns new project) frame from GA's then did a frame swap, i was the first person i knew with a full suspension bike and i loved it!
after this i got a road bike to train on and became pretty fit as i rode 32 miles to work 4 days a week and decided to try racing, i thought a hardtail would be better for me so i went to GA's again and that's when i got my explosif, this was 94, again it was a frame only, 92 model so i frame swapped again.
i won my first race on that bike by 3 minutes on a 12mile race
after this bike the next i got after a winter of no MTB as i sold the explosif (i felt at the time i needed to replace it) was my first Orange, a 1996 P7 nickel plated xt/xtr middleburn/x-lite mix with judy's upfront. i loved that bike, as much as i liked the ride of the Kona, i found the P7 better. even today (i have the original explosif back and i have aquired a 95 P7) i prefer the ride of the P7.
that's about as much of my history is needed, after that i think we are out of the era of bikes we're talking about, but having said that, after this i got in the bike trade, a GT/Giant dealer mostly, i had to sell the P7 cos we didn't sell them and the boss wanted me to ride a Zaskar (no bad thing but i liked the P7) i eventually went on to run GA's which was by then selling Orange, Cannondale, Marin, Fausto Coppi, Mongoose, Santa Cruz. this re united me with Orange bikes so it wasn't long before i had one!
i feel this explains the choices i have made in the bikes i now choose to restore, mostly Orange! not only that Oranges are good frames with relatively small number runs and they can go so cheap which is sort of good and bad! Also it explains the era i choose as my period of interest, the early to mid 90's, i never really liked the 80's stuff, the 90's stuff became a little more racey and i thought that was better.
also through most of this time(90 to 97) i didn't have an awareness of Cunningham, fat chance (and it's history), i hadn't seen klein's, yo eddy's, bonty's etc in anything other than a pic in a magazine, i didn't know what they were, how much they cost, why they were special to people and why they were considered relevant in a big way.
May be this explains to the US guys why the UK guys might vote for a Kona explosif over the Cunningham last month for example, we didn't/don't know about them, but if we did but it wasn't available to us would we have voted for it?
What i am saying is the American brands other than the stuff that became mainstream from 1990 onwards effectively had no meaning to me (and also wasn't generally available even if you could afford it!) And that's not being rude, how can you find something relevant or special if you never heard of it?!
also the mags tried to push UK brands, components aswel, middleburn was our crankset of choice, x-lite was our bike candy.
also i think the UK riders aspired to riding XTR whereas by comparison with the UK the US had a myriad of CNC parts makers to choose from and we had only a few. frame wise we had maybe 1 or 2 to each of the US's 20 custom builders, you had more choice of stuff we didn't know existed and you could get it without import taxes!
since i have been on this site i have seen some fantastic american brands, some i had heard of over the years and some i still up until 3 or 4 years ago hadn't heard of that were house hold US names.
i have developed an interest in Fat Chance (but haven't bought yet as i am paranoid that i might not like the ride and it will cost me alot to find out!! ) also i would love to have an E stay bike amongst others, these are things i have found the interest in because of this site not because of what i liked back in the day.
that's got to be a compliment surely . . . to the american brands and to retrobike.co.uk
anyway, recently i have noticed there have been differences of opinion and i believe it stems from a different understanding of the history of mountain biking, the US market, the UK market, when, where, who etc.
this thread is mainly aimed for the UK guys to write and the US guys to read, maybe there could be a opposite to this thread from the US side?
what i would like in this thread is for YOU to explain your views on why you like the brands you like, why you are drawn to those brands, who do you respect in this business? UK and USA brands that were about at the time.
I don't want this to turn into an us against them argument thread, that's not the point, i want this thread to be YOUR POINT OF VIEW, and your point of view is just that! yours! a personal history if you will.
I will start to give you an idea of what i mean.
hopefully if this thread is treated with respect (NO SPAMMING PLEASE) the US guys might understand the UK scene a little better (and i don't mean that in a condescending way) because to us it wasn't all about the same stuff as it was to you guys.
----------------------------------------------------------------
i started riding offroad on my first (BSO) mountain bike around 1988, basic, heavy, 10speed, utter rubbish!
after a time i graduated to a muddy fox seeker
a Uk brand that was big at the time, my first REAL mountain bike, i did a huge amount of riding on this bike and when it was stolen i was lucky enough to get a muddy fox alu pro. this was 1990, i didn't know anything at this point about anything american, at that point it didn't occur to me where the brand was from. muddy fox was advertised alot and was perceived to be the cool brand. to a 16 year old kid it was. when i started college i discovered a higher end shop (GA cycles the shop that 15 years later i managed) it was this shop that i first came across Orange, Offroad, GT, Specialized, Cannondale, Marin, and Kona. all brands from across the water, except 1.i liked some but not others, in all honesty some (well maybe most) of it was based on asthetics. typical of a young guy to be fair.
i didn't need a new bike at that time as i still had the alu pro but i did set about upgrading. first was a pair of mag 20 forks. i didn't like manitou or pace, i felt that rockshox offered more performance for the money. after that i decided i'd try full suspension, there weren't many sensibly priced frames at that point but i got an Offroad proflex 552 (same as matt browns new project) frame from GA's then did a frame swap, i was the first person i knew with a full suspension bike and i loved it!
after this i got a road bike to train on and became pretty fit as i rode 32 miles to work 4 days a week and decided to try racing, i thought a hardtail would be better for me so i went to GA's again and that's when i got my explosif, this was 94, again it was a frame only, 92 model so i frame swapped again.
i won my first race on that bike
by 3 minutes on a 12mile race after this bike the next i got after a winter of no MTB as i sold the explosif (i felt at the time i needed to replace it) was my first Orange, a 1996 P7 nickel plated xt/xtr middleburn/x-lite mix with judy's upfront.
i loved that bike, as much as i liked the ride of the Kona, i found the P7 better. even today (i have the original explosif back and i have aquired a 95 P7) i prefer the ride of the P7. that's about as much of my history is needed, after that i think we are out of the era of bikes we're talking about, but having said that, after this i got in the bike trade, a GT/Giant dealer mostly, i had to sell the P7 cos we didn't sell them and the boss wanted me to ride a Zaskar (no bad thing but i liked the P7) i eventually went on to run GA's which was by then selling Orange, Cannondale, Marin, Fausto Coppi, Mongoose, Santa Cruz. this re united me with Orange bikes so it wasn't long before i had one!
i feel this explains the choices i have made in the bikes i now choose to restore, mostly Orange!
not only that Oranges are good frames with relatively small number runs and they can go so cheap which is sort of good and bad! Also it explains the era i choose as my period of interest, the early to mid 90's, i never really liked the 80's stuff, the 90's stuff became a little more racey and i thought that was better.also through most of this time(90 to 97) i didn't have an awareness of Cunningham, fat chance (and it's history), i hadn't seen klein's, yo eddy's, bonty's etc in anything other than a pic in a magazine, i didn't know what they were, how much they cost, why they were special to people and why they were considered relevant in a big way.
May be this explains to the US guys why the UK guys might vote for a Kona explosif over the Cunningham last month for example, we didn't/don't know about them, but if we did but it wasn't available to us would we have voted for it?
What i am saying is the American brands other than the stuff that became mainstream from 1990 onwards effectively had no meaning to me (and also wasn't generally available even if you could afford it!) And that's not being rude, how can you find something relevant or special if you never heard of it?!
also the mags tried to push UK brands, components aswel, middleburn was our crankset of choice, x-lite was our bike candy.
also i think the UK riders aspired to riding XTR whereas by comparison with the UK the US had a myriad of CNC parts makers to choose from and we had only a few. frame wise we had maybe 1 or 2 to each of the US's 20 custom builders, you had more choice of stuff we didn't know existed and you could get it without import taxes!
since i have been on this site i have seen some fantastic american brands, some i had heard of over the years and some i still up until 3 or 4 years ago hadn't heard of that were house hold US names.
i have developed an interest in Fat Chance (but haven't bought yet as i am paranoid that i might not like the ride and it will cost me alot to find out!!
) also i would love to have an E stay bike amongst others, these are things i have found the interest in because of this site not because of what i liked back in the day. that's got to be a compliment surely . . . to the american brands and to retrobike.co.uk
