Originally Posted by
Menel
I disagree, the premiere Al options have those features and the weight nailed.
Specialized Allez E5, Al, has a tapered head tube, 1.5" lower race. Butted hydroformed tubes, all the good stuff.
CAAD10 is reportedly 1050g. That's not far off your 800-900g desire. Other premier Al frame offers are probably close to that. With a DA/RED drive train and diligent cockpit/wheel selection, you'd probably be bumping up against or dropping below UCI weight limits without huge difficulty.
$550 for the Allez frameset, unknown on CAAD. To get a quality stiff 800-900g carbon frameset, your talking $3-4K. That's a huge HUGE price premium.
I understand that the features I mentioned are available on mass produced, stock framesets.
I was talking about product for a small builder (i.e. the OP, who sounds smaller than a Cannondale size company), meaning tubing etc, so that small builders can make custom geometry frames based on a wider variety of tubing. Tapered head tubes available individually (low quantities, like half a dozen at a time or similar numbers), tubing groupsets marketed towards end consumers as much as the actual clients like frame builders, etc.
Based on my conversations with the guy that built my last two framesets things like a tapered headtube is unavailable. That kind of bums me out, although I assured him that when they do become available I'll be ordering another frameset.
cdr
*edit* it would be a moot point if, say, Cannondale made a 40 cm seat tube, 56.5 cm tt, 9.5 cm head tube, 75.5 deg ST, 39 cm chainstay frame. But they can't anymore (they offered full on custom frames for a very short time in the mid-90s).