IanSmithCSE
Guru
- Location
- Worcester, Worcestershire
Good evening,
It does say commercial success so once you write off tubesets that were supplied to pro teams and frame builders for marketing builds at a discount then maybe the sales weren't that high.
I do remember a club 25 when someone turned up with one of those new fangled 753 frames and he was branded a show-off with too much money, this confused me as I was at school at the time and a full 531DB frame was expensive! Looking back on it, it seems to be the same argument that we have now on bikes around the £10k mark, £5k is fine.
As I remember it, at club level 753 was not publicly respected, it's the same as Di2 nowadays. It wasn't that long ago that Di2 (753) was too expensive for many women's pro teams and many amateur teams use Ultegra rather than Dura-Ace.
It was never suitable for a touring bikes, there never was 753st
, and back then there were fairly few high income individuals who were "into" cycling, so a 531frame was already a significant commitment for most riders.
Nowadays you can get a £10k bike from a retail shop, but 753 frames were mostly only available from a local frame builder, yes there were a few Raleigh 5 Star dealers who could get you a Raleigh one. Again as a generalisation local frame builders weren't interested in the people who could afford a high priced frame just because it is good and affordable to them, many weren't even interested in offering complete bikes and were pretty much unknown to the non enthusiast.
Having said all of this, 753 does appear to be a marketing product not an engineering one, it was the same alloy as 531 and heat treated and this metal and heat treating seems to have been offered in other dimensions (.... we control the vertical, we control the horizontal) 20 odd years before it was offered as 753 bike tubing.
When made to lightweight bike tubing dimensions the tubing has limited other uses.
So yes, there are still 753 frames on ebay, but a surprising number are almost NOS, someone's best bike that was rarely used and is now sadly my departed partner's (in practice husband's) cherished bike.
Bye
Ian
It does say commercial success so once you write off tubesets that were supplied to pro teams and frame builders for marketing builds at a discount then maybe the sales weren't that high.
I do remember a club 25 when someone turned up with one of those new fangled 753 frames and he was branded a show-off with too much money, this confused me as I was at school at the time and a full 531DB frame was expensive! Looking back on it, it seems to be the same argument that we have now on bikes around the £10k mark, £5k is fine.
As I remember it, at club level 753 was not publicly respected, it's the same as Di2 nowadays. It wasn't that long ago that Di2 (753) was too expensive for many women's pro teams and many amateur teams use Ultegra rather than Dura-Ace.
It was never suitable for a touring bikes, there never was 753st
, and back then there were fairly few high income individuals who were "into" cycling, so a 531frame was already a significant commitment for most riders.Nowadays you can get a £10k bike from a retail shop, but 753 frames were mostly only available from a local frame builder, yes there were a few Raleigh 5 Star dealers who could get you a Raleigh one. Again as a generalisation local frame builders weren't interested in the people who could afford a high priced frame just because it is good and affordable to them, many weren't even interested in offering complete bikes and were pretty much unknown to the non enthusiast.
Having said all of this, 753 does appear to be a marketing product not an engineering one, it was the same alloy as 531 and heat treated and this metal and heat treating seems to have been offered in other dimensions (.... we control the vertical, we control the horizontal) 20 odd years before it was offered as 753 bike tubing.
When made to lightweight bike tubing dimensions the tubing has limited other uses.
So yes, there are still 753 frames on ebay, but a surprising number are almost NOS, someone's best bike that was rarely used and is now sadly my departed partner's (in practice husband's) cherished bike.
Bye
Ian
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