Last weekend saw a fairly impromptu, short notice Singular pairs team head over to the Bristol Bikefest. Much fretting over what had been a fairly dismal weather forecast over the preceeding days turned out to be for nought and bright sunny weather covered perfectly tacky trails. 12 hours over a quite rooty, rutted course was always going to take its toll when aboard a rigid bike, though we'd hoped to make a slightly better fist of it than we did. As it was, we rode in earnest for about 7 hours, took a break for about 2.5 hours, then each came back for another couple of laps. The weather was just too nice to be punishing oneself around a race course, it may be the only nice weekend of the summer as it was last year...

Next weekend brings the big one, the Mountain Mayhem 24 hour race, in which we have a team of four competing. It's bound to be a lot of fun, with a bit of internecine rivalry thrown into the mix. We'll have a number of bikes there so if you fancy giving something a try just come by and see us - we'll have a red marquee with the logo on it.

Sam

A couple of pics from Bristol

A couple of recent customers who've taken advantage of the discounted price we've had on the Swift frames have sent in some pics. Two very different builds for sure, but both looking good.

Al's gone for a drop bar and gears - first time I've seen that on one of the geared frames actually - looks great though.





Same frame, but a very different build for Chew - Mary bars and singlespeed.

It's been a busy time for us lately, thus not having had any update for some time. However there are a few things to update on.

Firstly and most importanty, the status of the Peregrines and replacement Swift SS frames. The Swifts are on the boat and should be with us shortly, so we ought to have full stock of all sizes by the end of the month. Peregrines have now all been built and are just waiting to head off to paint. Because these are having an especially nice and intricate paint job they will take a good four weeks to paint, and then another month to ship - so unfortunately they won't be here until late July really. Here they are in their naked form.

SSUK '08

A few weeks ago the UK Singlespeed Championship was held at Drumlanrig, Scotland. Somehow I got cajoled into pitching to organise this year's event while possibly under the influence last year at the SSWC. So Kenny, Julie, Rik, Tom and myself ended up with the responsibility of pulling SSUK '08 together. I think it's fair to say it was all a bit more than we'd bargained for, but people's kind words of thanks and enjoyment of a fantastic weekend made it well worth it. Here are a few pics to give you a flavour of it.

A jumble of Singulars to add to the confusion of the Le Mans start Of course I had to have number 1... The new marquee was very welcome given the weather we got

Me

And a few shots of some Singular riders

Mick

Mike

Fran

Brian

Swiss 29"er shootout


Then two weeks after SSUK I was off to Switzerland for the 2nd Swiss 29er Shootout. Essentially a gathering of some German speaking 29er enthusiasts to get a bunch of bikes together and to try loads of different 29ers. I took a couple of bikes over with me, which people seemed to like. This was also a great chance for me to try first hand what a lot of other manufacturers are doing with big wheels; there was a good selection of bikes from Salsa, Redline, Surly, Ventana, Gary Fisher, and others. To be able to compare and contrast such a range of bikes back to back really highlights the differences, and the similarities.

The swiss cows liked the Gryphon

On the GF Superfly - I like the G2 geometry

I was really impressed by the Ventana. I've not had a good
long ride on an FS 29er and the El Patron was a revelation.

Other News

Our Ti sample frames are in production and are due to be here early June, so I'm quite excited about getting them built up and see how they go. I'm currently gathering bits to try to get mine well under 20lbs.

The Osprey road frames have been getting a lot of positive feedback, so we are looking more closely into whether they ought to go into production at some point.

The 26" wheeled bike (working name the Hummingbird) which turns into a nice rigid 69er currently also has samples in production, and they should be here by July also.

It's summer (at least that's what the calendar says) and that means there are a lot of events on all around the place. We will be at the Bristol Bikefest in a couple of weeks' time, Mountain Mayhem a fortnight after that, then the other definites on the calendar are SSWC in Napa, California and the London Cycles Show in October. I hope to squeeze a few other things in as well - open to suggestions if you have a good event on!

Best regards,

Sam

As referenced on the front page, we have quite a few things we are testing at the moment, the new Peregrine forks, some new road frames, more Gryphon prototypes (pics below). We've also got some more interesting things in the pipeline with some Ti Swift frames and, shock horror, 26" wheeled frames for the little people on the way for testing. If all goes according to plan we'll be releasing all of these things before the year is out.

I aim to get to a number of events over the coming months, including SSUK, Mountain Mayhem, Bristol Bikefest, 24/12 and the London Cycle Show. I will post a full list shortly.

Well, it’s been a long time in development but I’ve been taking pains to ensure that the Singular Peregrine will be everything I want it to be. Finally our production order is in. A lot of you have provided feedback at some point and some of these suggestions have been taken on board, many thanks for your interest. So the final configuration will look like this.

• Three sizes – 59cm TT, 56.5cm TT, and 54 cm TT. Head tubes, seat tubes and tubing tweaked as appropriate for each size. I would have liked to do a wider range, but given the size of our business at present I’m focussing on those likely to fit most needs.


• Eccentric Bottom Bracket shell and insert. There were a couple of calls for sliding dropouts, or regular horizontals, but I am sticking to my guns on the EBB as I think it’s the best way to offer singlespeed or internal hub gear capability with disc brakes both in terms of function and aesthetics.


• Disc only – some people wanted cantis (one even a caliper!) but for the sort of multi purpose all-season use for which this bike is intended, I still felt discs were the way to go, and the majority of opinion was with me.


• Fork – from the unicrown of the first protos I’ve finally gone with a nice lugged traditional crown. I think it fits the overall feel of the bike better and has the added bonus of giving extra tyre clearance without increasing fork length.


• Braze-ons will be guides for both derailleur and brakes. This will maintain a (relatively) clean look for the single-gear crowd, while still giving an all-weather set-up for derailleur gears, or the capacity for a Rohloff hub if desired.


• Paint will be slightly different from what we’ve had on the samples. The colour will be the same deep red with cream head-tube panel, but we’ll have a seat-tube rather than a down-tube panel. There will still be a green Singular down-tube decal and green lug lining.


• We will maintain the original goal of clearance for up to 48mm tyres or 42mm with mudguards.

So to the final and critical questions – time and money! Time is a fairly confident but not quite definite March 2008. Price is slightly dependent on what the final costs of the lug-sets will be to me, though overall frame and fork price ought to be in the region £450 GBP. When these firm up I will be ready to take any pre-orders as this first run is quite limited. Here are a couple of pics to keep you interested in the mean time.

Wow, it's been a long time since the last post on this blog, but that doesn't mean there hasn't been a lot happening. It's been a busy 'summer' of riding, designing and (I'm glad to say) selling bikes.

Firstly some news on the design side. The last post here was regarding the Gryphon prototypes. We've been testing those a lot and really enjoying the ride. The Ti fork I had made up is perhaps a little on the flexy side, hard braking and turning don't go well together. Have recently been riding it with a Pace carbon fork which is much more inspiring. Getting a nice steel fork together for these frames needs to happen before we go into production.

The main thing I've been working on though is the Peregrine and we now have the final drawings all ready to go. Finally worked out a good way to enable derailleur gears, hub gears, or SS while looking fairly neat in any configuration. Also have got a different fork together with a nice lugged crown. The first run of those along with more Swift SS frames should get here early in the new year.

Have also been working on a few other little projects, stay tuned for further details very shortly.
As I said, lots of frames going out the door lately, here are some pics of a few customers' builds.

Mike in Sweden

Mick in Yorkshire

Lynten in Singapore

Karsten in Germany

Erik in The Netherlands

Eric in France

Alex in Bristol

That's about it, all sorts of people from all over the globe - nice to see so many different builds out there, everyone giving their Singular their own flavour!

Sam

Finally got the Gryphon proto together today. Our move has been delayed by a week which gave me a chance to get into the shed and catch up on a few things. One of which was getting this drop barred rigid specific beast together, another to fit a recently acquired Maverick SC32 to a demo bike - both came together very nicely. Yes, I know there are a few little corners I missed when polishing, but I got impatient and wanted to see it built! Silver Gryphon headbadge still to come.

Pertinent details: 853 frame polished to a sheen (will be clearcoated), Black Sheep Ti fork 440mm w 48mm rake, Stans wheels and other nice bits and bobs, don't know the total weight but it's pretty light, guessing around 22lb. Production of these framesets is still very much up in the air. Whether there is a market for a 'mass' produced drop bar specific, rigid specific 29er I'm not sure - if you like the idea let me know.

Tour Fever has hit London and who should I see wandering the streets near Victoria station but El Diablo himself Didi Senft! I managed to break into some extremely broken German to interrupt his perusal of free magazines and ask him for a photo - he happily obliged.

The Singular distribution network is slowly growing - with Square Wheels in Strathpeffer, Northern Scotland, the latest to join the fold. Steve has had a demo bike up there for a while which he's been very happy with, so they will now be carrying stock of Singular Swift framesets in both geared and singlespeed versions.

The Gryphon prototypes we had come in are now being painted up in a nice new colour scheme, getting really excited about these ones. Build ought to happen next week and pics will follow shortly thereafter.

We also have a new road frame in the works using a classic Italian road geometry with some lovely lugs including a fully lugged fork. It won't be so touring oriented as the Peregrine, nor will it be an out and out race bike - really just a lovely road bike for every day folk with clearance for decent sized tyres and fenders. Keep an eye on here for more news on the Osprey over the coming weeks.

Wow - what a fun weekend away! Weather couldn't have been better, trails were great, people even better - good times indeed. We made it over to the Bristol Bikefest over last weekend, and this year being combined with the UK Singlespeed Championships promised an even greater level of festivity than normal.

Singular had a fair fleet of bikes in attendance, with a few built up Swifts in geared and SS configuration, a complete Peregrine, and a few framesets including the just landed and still unpainted Gryphon prototype in 853.



There was a lot of interest in the bikes despite our somewhat out of the way location in the corner of the field. We didn't arrive until late Friday night, and couldn't secure a pitch in the trade area where we were also able to camp - so just set up our somewhat makeshift stand in the camp area and away we went.

Saturday was a 12 hour enduro in which we had a four man team. For some deluded reason which now escapes me we registered in the competitive teams division for a 9am start after some fairly heavy post-drive refreshments the previous evening. It's fair to say we all had a fairly painful first lap, but we managed to turn in laps of around 35 mins all day and finished on 20 laps. 25th in our class was not a bad result - we were certainly never in it to win it.

The more highly anticipated event, at least amongst our team, was SSUK itself. Due to kick off at the ungodly hour of 9am, some team-members managed to restrain themselves somewhat on Saturday night and managed to arise reasonably bright and chipper on Sunday morning. While we didn't set the world on fire - we did represent pretty well. Somehow I was 3rd out of the start area (learnt from the mayhem of Saturday...) which only meant a lot of people would go past me during the race... Ah well, these SS events are not about when you finish, it's all about how you get there - and we did it in style.

Thanks to all involved for a great weekend!

Sam

Finally the Peregrine prototypes are here!

After a number of setbacks and unexpected delays, we took delivery of four frames and forks yesterday. There are a few things which already I can say will need changing for the production framesets, but overall I'm extremely pleased with how they've come together.

I built this one up quickly with a few bits I had getting around, and initial impressions are excellent. Quick and light feeling to the ride, but reassuringly stable. These will be extensively tested over the summer by a few eager volunteers in a number of guises- geared road tourer, doublespeed rambler, we might even try a Shimano Alfine group -more reports to come...

The beautiful solid silver Peregrine headbadge with thanks to Jen Green at headbadges.com (silver Swift headbaadges are also now available).