I've just had a couple of enlightening but also depressing experiences.

1. I accepted a design commission for a bike to be sold through an
expensive department store. Bikes are essentially frame designs fitted
up with off-the shelf mechanicals from only three manufacturers, wheels
and handlebars and saddles from not all that many more makers, and
various bits and bobs from not a huge choice of suppliers. There are,
by way of comparison, probably at least four or five times as many
suppliers to the Ford Model A/Deuce hot rod market. For a bike to sell
at a thousand dollars retail, I discovered, when you're ordering only a
couple of containers-full (such bikes are sold ex-facory in Taiwan and
China by the containerload, typically around 140 bikes to a container)
to can have one or two special items, not three; the rest must be the
cheapest possible. The USD995 retail mark is say EUR800. That's not as
bad as it sounds, as Shimano's cheapest mechanicals is damned good
gear, and you can have the best Shimano hub gears and hub dynamos for
automatic lighting and still throw in shaft drive if you want it, and
still make the 995 retail cut if you take a standard frame. If you want
a different frame, you have to give up one of those desirable items or
raise the price. This accounts for why so many so-called
"custom-designed" bikes are nothing but decal-engineering. To make a
truly original frame design at anything like a reasonable price (a
grand for the complete bike looks good to me and to very experienced
marketers) you need to be certain of sales in the tens of thousands of
units. By way of comparison, Thorne's cheapest Rohloff-equipped touring
bike, which has a very thoughtfully specified set of frame parameters,
but which except for the Rohloff hub is specified at the cheapest
decent quality level to make a stunning price point, costs Stg1200 or
EUR1800.

2. I thought I'd design a cost-no-object bike for myself and stick the
customer for the development parts and services; he's known me a lotta
years and doesn't mind paying for the occasional wild idea as long as
he get first dibs at commercializing it when it shows promise. This
turned out to be not a very bright idea. When I finished the design, it
was pretty and exclusive: red nipples to the spokes on otherwise black
wheels, silver-brazed, lugged stainless steel frame half painted in my
favourite sunflower yellow with a dusted black for safety reflection,
lugs outlined in my house maroon, bits and bobs over which other
knowledgeable cyclists could oohahhh ectatically. Net cost, EUR5K+. For
a bike fundamentally not truly any better or more convenient or more
comfortable or more efficient or more durable than my Gazelle
Toulouse, which could be landed when it was current at my door in
Ireland for EUR879. It is depressing how good a product you can buy off
the shelf if you know which are the best shelves and you aren't a
fashion victim. The cost of being "different" is a depressing 600% and
there is always the risk that a custom unit of any kind will not be as
good as the best bought off the shelf: it takes only one incompetent in
the bunch of outside craftsmen you must trust to do handiwork you
cannot do yourself.

3. Then what about a truly radical bike frame? I have connections to
people who can cast anything, engrave anything, forge anything, press
anything (including by water-pressure from the inside). I know
engineers who will check my finite analysis of the stresses on the
frame down to the finest detail. The cost could be from a few hundred
(arts council supported castery for sculptors) to around a hundred
grand. I was particularly impressed with plastiform ali... Until I
discovered Biomega in Denmark already sells a bike in it from about
EUR2600 to 6K; I couldn't possibly build a singleton even for the
higher price; furthermore, the Biomega frames are just fitted up with
the same Shimano and SRAM and Rohloff parts I mentioned above. Right,
okay. At this point I concluded that I was like those people I despise
who come up to me at parties to ask if I think they should rather have
bought a Ferrari than the most expensive Mercedes coupe; they agonize
over it.

4. There's a lesson for tubies in this bike saga. The Chinese tube amps
that Keith G has been experiencing are clearly "container-load" types.
The basic ones are pretty good already -- any 300B amp is pretty good,
and some of the hysterical criticism of Keith's attitude and amps
started from an unrealistically high barrier because there is no point
whatsoever in judging a 300 buck amp by the standards of a 3000 buck
amp; the outcome is always an exercise in pure snobbery. Any change to
the basic specification costs proportionately more than the additional
quality of sound obtained. This is economic marginality at work, first
slowly and then faster and faster to the point where a big deal of
money has to be spent for a minuscule improvement in quality. A point
soon arrives where it becomes more attractive for the amp maker and
distributor to spend the money on cosmetics, which can give a big boost
in perceived value for relatively small expenditure (the reverse of the
marginality that applies to true quality). That barrier may already
have been reached in the Chinese amps. Higher up the scale, I have to
wonder if the Chinese will not decide to leave the expensive niche
markets, which have bigger unit profits but rather infrequently, to the
dumb roundeyes. But I suspect that the Chinese are so vibrant and so
hungry that somewhere some Chinese is already plotting to compete at
the top of the market. Since the major labour cost in an amp (given
mass-chassis production -- a huge cost in singletons and small runs) is
winding the transformer, and the rest of the parts are in any event
expensive relative to the wholesale price at the factory gate, I just
don't see them undercutting the top Western tube amp makers by huge
margins. It is an open question about how big their undercut *must* be
before on a luxury item people will buy the cheap no-name Chinese item
rather than the big-name Western item but I suspect a one-third
undercut won't do the business, that they will have to sell at half or
less of CJ or ARC prices -- for a similar quality of goods and warranty
and service. That won't leave too big a bowl of rice. Conclusion:
Better enjoy the Chinese amps you can get now because, far from
improving, they might be cheapened in the sound (while at the same time
being prettified) to increase margins.

Andre Jute
Economist, psychologist, tubie
Visit Jute on Amps at http://members.lycos.co.uk/fiultra/
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