Bespoke

As a consumer, you probably understand and accept that bike brands have to save money somewhere to bring complete bikes to market at prices people are willing to pay. Even very good bikes usually have a house-brand handlebar, stem, and seatpost—generic aluminum parts stamped with the brand’s name—and a saddle at or near the bottom of their own line or another company’s. A lot of this stuff is sold only with complete bikes; you couldn’t buy it by itself … and you probably wouldn’t want to. That’s not to say it’s bad, but it’s ordinary. And it’s heavy.

“Light. Strong. Cheap. Pick two.” That’s an old truism in cycling, and perhaps it is most applicable to wheels. It’s no surprise that bike brands save money there when they sell you a complete bike. I wouldn’t accuse them of cutting corners—the wheels are safe and functional—but if you have performance objectives, then you’re probably not going to be satisfied forever.

After taking delivery of my Framed Gravier on July 27, it took me only about a week to decide to open the wallet again for new wheels. Shopping for them became an interesting pursuit. At first I did what I had done in the past: I looked at big retailers and found, mostly, machine-built wheels that would be a step up from Framed’s heavy stock wheels but not exactly what I wanted. In the light-strong-cheap equation I had already dismissed cheap, and from there it was a small step to hand-built.

I went to wheelbuilder.com and found a huge array of options. Eventually I decided on HED Belgium+ rims mated to DT Swiss hubs. But there’s more to wheelbuilding than rims and hubs. What spokes did I want? What spoke nipples? Thru-axles? Yes. OK, what size thru-axles? What hub body? Centerlock or ISO disc brakes? What about colors? What about rim tape? The last time I bought a wheelset by itself, none of these things were a consideration. But the wheelbuilder.com website is designed well, and it wouldn’t let me choose things that were incompatible with each other.

So, today I have my first set of bespoke wheels. They were made just for me. And they weren’t inexpensive, but they also weren’t priced too far beyond the range of their mass-produced rivals. For a lot more money I could have gone with carbon fiber rims instead of aluminum—I just couldn’t justify the cost. The new wheelset is almost a full pound lighter than the stock wheels, and I intend to use the Gravier as a high-mileage training bike, not as a race bike. I think I’m going to be happy with the upgrade. My expectations are high.