A Fistful Of Post ATMO (old)

He’s the anti Bruce Gordon. Both are elder [i]framebuilders[i] but dick Sachs has figured out how to work with people and cash in on his brand. BG is a butthole about it, when he could have spent time being nice to people or hiring someone to be nice to people for him. Sachs is posing in all those photos.

[quote=lukasz][quote=iwillbe][quote=lukasz][quote=iwillbe]People want distinction! You gotta get them thinking that they’ve got some real savoir faire going, they’re insiders who Get It and everyone else is just, you know, sort of clueless. With their regular binder bolts and all.

I honestly don’t think Sachs is trolling, I think he’s earnestly cashing in on the brand value he’s built up over the decades (that really blossomed after he turned VS into his personal brand lab).[/quote]

he is 100% trolling, in that he knew exactly what the reaction to this was gonna be among the type of people that patronize tarck. but he did it anyway, because fuck you he can do whatever he wants and he wants to make a pretty binder bolt and put some twizzlers in the pretty box along with it, you know?[/quote]

I don’t think he’s doing this for “us”, I think he’s doing it for the people who buy $800 custom painted Silicas and custom lugged frames with Joe Bell paintwork. We’re collectively about three rungs down the socioeconomic ladder from his customer base. As this thread makes clear, Tarck buys RS branded socks, not Sachs framesets.[/quote]

i never said he’s doing it for “us”

I said he knew what the haterz were gonna think and understood that ultimately that makes his product and image even more desirable. Not even the most Connecticut richie fans out there look at that thing without a bit of a smirk.[/quote]

there’s a few different kinds of smirks out there. You said that he considered his audience.

What if RS actually fucking hates bikes and it just happened to be a thing he was good at and like a soulless middle manager stuck working in a field they hate he oozes disdain for his products, customers, and industry.

There’s a local fop shop that I believe is this exactly.
If t was 50 years ago it would be an auto shop
Either way all they do is drink beer and try to sell their stuff. Never seen any of them actually ridin a bike

Early on into my Rapha brain disease infection I had a fever dream where I asked Sachs to lift the no-new-orders ban just for me because I’m such a fan, and in my dream, he calmly explained that he doesn’t really want to make bikes any more and just wants to hang out with his wife and dog on his ranch in the woods. I said I understood and woke up feeling relieved.

“The frame is the mortgage payment”
I don’t get that vibe from the guy, more just that he identified a somewhat coherent vein of folks with deep pockets for cycling stuff, and applied some time-tested luxury product marketing practices to them. That his branding resonates with younger people isn’t a surprise, there aren’t a lot of other people doing this as well as he does (and they don’t make tasteful logo socks for the punters).

Bike shit is so ugly, I’m glad someone’s making pretty stuff, even if it’s not for me

Nah. I’ve ridden with and spent time with him. He’s a great hang. Sachs on a bike and Sachs in a conversation was always a pleasure. Meeting people in real life is always a different experience and usually much better. By real world, I’m not talking about trade shows either.

[quote=Patch][quote=JUGE FREDD]funny thing is, Grant Petersen of all people figured this out 20 years ago:

instead of using that stupid italian custom bolt/nut design that always breaks, the seat lug is cast with a 10mm hexagonal hole in it

so Rivendells just use a standard M6 bolt and nylock nut

it’s lighter, simpler, never breaks, and is trivially replaced if lost or crossthreaded[/quote]

But that would require sax to make is own lugs…![/quote]

Sachs does fully design all the investment-cast fittings he uses, down to the dropouts

hell he designed Rivendell’s original lugs ~25 years ago!

Nah. I’ve ridden with and spent time with him. He’s a great hang. Sachs on a bike and Sachs in a conversation was always a pleasure. Meeting people in real life is always a different experience and usually much better. By real world, I’m not talking about trade shows either.[/quote]

I can see Sachs being ok to hang with, despite his utterly intolerable online persona.

How much does this thing cost? I didn’t see a price in the vsalad thread

I just want to know what the actual improvements are. I did not see them enumerated anywhere.

Evidence is not the plural of anecdote, but still: I’ve never broken a Sugino binder bolt and I never expect to.

I’m squarely in the chopped of recessed brake nut+stainless M5 bolt crü.

[quote=jimmythefly]I just want to know what the actual improvements are. I did not see them enumerated anywhere.

Evidence is not the plural of anecdote, but still: I’ve never broken a Sugino binder bolt and I never expect to.[/quote]

Not Sach’s words but from here, "The problem with a Sugino bolt in a Campagnolo universe is that Sugino seat post bolts are held in place by a little key that is cast into the female end of the deal that fits into the seat collar. That key, in turn, matches up with a notch in the seat tube collar that is designed to fit that key. The key fits in the notch and holds the bolt in place as you tighten it.

Campagnolo bolts, on the other hand, aren’t keyed. They are held in place by some serrations that are machined into the female end of the bolt. Campagnolo engineers also designed the bolt to fail if you over-tighten it, preventing more serious damage and mayhem."

So, it’s not an improvement. Campagnolo doesn’t manufacture the 1072 8mm seat post binder bolt Richie used for years so now he has a high-quality binder bolt manufactured to his spec by Horst Engineering. The packaging and marketing is just a foppers flourish.

[quote=newellbt]Campagnolo engineers also designed the bolt to fail if you over-tighten it, preventing more serious damage and mayhem."
[/quote]

“designed”

“Everything about this bolt is technically inferior, but I need it anyway because the internet told me so.”

Just in case someone somehow missed this.


Honestly, IDGI. Can someone (pubes) explain? Is there an overarching archetype being mocked? Or is this a direct meta-commentary on Dick Sachs presentation-box seatpost bolt? Wouldn’t it have been funnier to present the bike pubes chainring bolts, or would that have been too much effort?

what