Originally Posted by
Miele Man
The thing with a lot of old lugged steel frames MTB and Road is that they're getting mutilated into fixed-gear or single speed bicycles. People acquire the frame andthen they saw/grind off the shifter and cable bosses and the brazedon front derailler mount in order to "CLEAN UP" the lines of the frame. Then they often repaint thae frame but don't add any maker's graphics.
Cheers
I honestly don't find that very common. There was a period of time about 7-10 years ago when it was a lot more common because track bikes were getting trendy, but weren't generally available and certainly not available cheaply. It was easier/cheaper to massacre an old road frame to get the clean track bike look.
Nowadays, though, track bikes, fixed gears, and single-speeds are manufactured by every major maker and a whole boatload of smaller makers, and there's plenty of budget models around. It's now way easier to get the fixie look by buying a fixie, so nobody really bothers chopping up the old frames (which are trendy in their own right these days).