Yesterday, I sent a question to Ribble asking what country the CGR titanium frames were made in. Here is their answer:

"Hi Jim,

Thank you for contacting us,

We manufacture our Ti frames in Taiwan, we do all our design in house in the UK by our dedicated team who oversee all our manufacturing to ensure the highest quality and work closely with our teams overseas.

Hope this information helps,

Best Regards

Ashley Brough
Retail Manager

Ribble Cycles
http://www.ribblecycles.co.uk"

Ha! You seem to be more invested than I am, Jim...

But that's too bad: kinda half the point of buying Ti, is having it fabbed locally, right? And it's a good looking bike.

My quest is over. I was driving through Chattanooga this past Friday and stopped in at Litespeed and ordered a Cherohala all-road bike.

Very good. My quest ended with a Fairlight Secan. Building up the frameset over the next week or two.

litespeed is selling a lot of bikes right now. for a long time ti was in a slow decline. when i decided to get a pure gravel bike i just thought ti was the right material, and i asked litespeed to make it for me. i think gravel has been good for litespeed.

---

Dan Empfield
aka Slowman

Anyone have any updated codes for Lynskey? I'm guessing they don't need to discount right now but thought I'd ask.

Or any other Gravel Bike recommendations?

Another +1 for ti x gravel. Won’t try talking you out of Lynskey (big fan), but would invite you to have a look at the T-Lab X3 from T-Lab bikes out of Montreal. It’s getting seriously positive reviews and comes from the team that launched Guru bikes (extra points if anyone remembers their yellow tri frames...).

Competitive price point and quality stuff, from a small-batch NA brand.

God luck either way.

Just reading this thread and wanted to give you credit. You were spot on. About EVERYTHING you posted.

Not a bad choice. I had a Lynskey R320 that I rode for 10 years and built into a 12.67 lb bike for a M/L. Now a friend rides it. I bought a carbon wonder aero bike and while I love it I missed the ride of titanium. I then bought a Litespeed T3 disc and it's my favorite of the two. The aero framed bike is slightly faster but the titanium bike is what brings a smile to my face e when I ride it. My Lynskey R320 has/had beautiful welds and orate dropouts and Lyskey seems to have gone the mass production route and their welding and dropouts are rather chunky where Litespeed seems to have upped their game and the welds on my T3 are beautiful as are the dropouts. For a disc bike sporting 55mm Farsport rims its a hair over 14 lbs. I just feel so connected to the ground and the feed back on the titanium bike is awesome. Extremely nimble and responsive. Ti for life!

Long story, but I never did pull the trigger, on any bike. (Basically, I bought a ski house instead...)

And while those T-Lab bikes are gorgeous, that price point isn't what I would consider "competitive."

So I've taken this time to read up and drool over a ton of bikes, new and used, done up a spreadsheet comparing geometries, read damn near everything Slowman has posted here on gravel bikes, spent hours and hours perusing ebay and CL and pro's closet and anywhere else that I could think of.

I'm just about at the point of spending some cash, was actually thinking of posting about it today...

I think the last I saw was a 20% or 25%, can't remember when (I'd signed up for their newsletter, so they send me random things here and there).

Like everyone else, they haven't had to do much discounting lately, and in fact last I'd checked thought their prices might have climbed. Certainly no 35% code (it hasn't worked for a looong time now).

While I would still love a Ti bike (I think...), I've decided that I shouldn't buy Ti until I'm absolutely positive about what I want out of a frame and it's geometries. And I don't, at least not right now and certainly not a year ago!

Look at Obed bikes. Followed a bunch of Slowman's postings there and it's hard to beat their price points. Almost pulled the trigger a month ago, but decided I'd wanted my account to recover a little more first. They are on the short list, however.

I have a Guru Maestro and a Lynskey T320.
My Guru just required major repair courtesy of Ruckus Composites

Such a shame.

So, I guess that completely invalidates all the thousands of bikes sold and reputation Guru built over the years, not to mention any future efforts by the same management and design team...