We finished an custom build last week for our good friend and customer Theo (pictured above). The bike is Ventana's new 650b Zeus frame, painted their awesome "grinch green" on the front triangle and matte black on the back end.
Theo is one of our two lucky customers to have his hands on a complete XX1 groupo, thanks to his unending patience since he pre-ordered the group back in September. Theo opted for the grip shift, as he is a long time grip shift fan and we all think that it is well suited for the 1x11 setup due the ability to dump so many gears quickly.
The wheels are DannyBuilt, using Industry Nine hubs laced to some straight-outta-China carbon rims. The rims are somewhat experimental, although we've heard plenty of good about them, and at $200 each they seem worth checking out.
We haven't done too much with Industry Nine over the years, but we were drawn to their hubs for this project since they are one of the very few companies out right now shipping XX1 compatible hubs. Most other companies are hoping to ship their hubs/drivers beginning sometime later in January or February, so at the moment there seems to be more XX1 cassettes out there than compatible hubs to mount them to. An interesting problem.
Anyway, the Industry Nines don't fail to impress. They are expensive, but competitively priced with the other boutique hub manufacturers, and they are made in the USA, which we always appreciate. You have a nice selection of colors to choose from as well. We liked them so much, in fact, that the other XX1 build going on in the shop will be getting a pair of Industry Nine wheels as well.
Other details on the build include Maxxis Ardent tires (not easy to come by in a 650b), a PRO Tharsis carbon bar, Thomson stem, and a KS dropper post (but not the LEV post, those are harder to come by than an XX1 hub driver). And last but not least, our go to, always reliable and very affordable XFusion Velvet fork.
This was a sweet bike to build, it's always fun to get to play with the latest and greatest top end stuff. So far the XX1 has lived up to expectations. It all went together very easily, and the shifting is fantastic. The Ventana frame has some beautiful details like the fully sheathed internal cable routing and those classic made in the USA Ventana welds.
Lastly, I believe the bike came in at just under 27lbs, in case you were wondering.
Thanks Theo for letting us sell you yet another amazing ride!
http://www.ventanausa.com/bikes/zeus/
(just looking at the Ventana site, and they have updated it with a teaser of El Martillo road frame and El Martillo CX cross frame! No details yet, but I'm excited to find out more!)
http://www.industrynine.net/
http://www.xfusionshox.com/en/
