Skip to main content

Understanding Custom Bikes

When shopping for a custom bike, there are a few important things to consider, the builder’s experience, the materials they use and the process they follow to get from your dream to an on-the-road reality. Our full custom brand is Seven Cycles from Massachusetts. Seven has been making 100% full custom bicycles in the US for over 15 years and has produced more than 25,000 frames.  They are the largest custom bike builder in the country, and they build the best bicycle in the world. 

Seven starts from the best materials. Steel tubing they butt, cope and miter in their factory, US-milled titanium, American made filament wound carbon fiber tubing and shaped carbon they wrap and bond right on their shop floor. Many custom builders are using Chinese or Russian Titanium that they buy from frame material distributors in the United States. It looks the same, but has, in most cases, less than half the fatigue life of the US-milled equivalent.

Seven’s process starts with our fit session with you, and includes a personal interview with one of the frame designers at Seven. Together we arrive at a frame that will fit you better than any bike you’ve ridden before, built from a tubeset selected specifically for you and the type of riding you want to do. Once we sign off on your design, Seven’s experienced framebuilders take over, and in a matter of weeks you’re riding your dream bike.

The Cincinnati market has many custom bicycle brands represented at different shops throughout the city.  We are very fortunate to have Seven Cycles as our custom bike brand, as Seven partners only with very select shops. To work with Seven, Team Cycling and Fitness had to meet a long list of requirements for experience and commitment to producing only the very best custom builds.

There is a difference between “custom built” and “custom made.” At our store a “custom built” bike is a stock, off-the-shelf frame that we build out with your desired parts. One example of a custom build is the Trek Project One bike.  We cannot change the geometry of the frame on a Trek Project One.  When we use the term “custom made” we mean that the geometry is specific to your body.  With Seven Cycles you not only get custom geometry but you get a frame tubeset that is dialed in specifically for you as well.  Seven will select the diameter, wall thickness and shape of each tube to make your bike absolutely perfect. Seven can build a custom Titanium bike in 220,000 different ways, and that’s not including what they can do with carbon or steel. 

So when you’re shopping for a new custom bike and the sales person says it’s custom built, ask them for clarification.  Ask where the frame material comes from and understand the process. We know of few greater values in the bike game than a custom Seven, American materials and labor, 100% custom and guaranteed for life.