I've owned 5 different Singers and currently have one "built for me" in 2000. Remember that AS is basically a neighborhood bike shop and in the 70s and 80s they were really scraping it. Were it not for the Japanese collectors they probably would have gone out of business. These collectors mainly ordered top of the range bikes with all the racks and lights, all the candy. there's a wonderful book that catalogs many of these bikes. Largely because of the exchange rates, these bikes were pretty expensive back in the day.
Having said that the Singer shop also had some lower cost bikes on offer and the frames for those bikes were built by a couple of outsourced contractors. They are not bad bikes and may share the Singer "design" with frame angles and fittings similar to those of the "maison" bikes, and in fact the racks were built by the Singer shop. Rene Herse also had a down line offering, I believe they were called "Federal" and it was this range of bikes that equipped many of the European bike touring groups led by Dr. Clifford Graves of San Diego.
The CRC bikes I have seen have been racing bikes similar to that black one shown in the post above, they are still nice but don't have all the details of the top of the line Singers. As long as you understand what you are buying and bid accordingly, there's nothing wrong with it and it could be a desireable bike.
My 2 favorite Singers shown below, the blue one I still own and ride occaisionally, the black one of happy memory. Both of these bikes have the integrated head tube lugs which is a cool and unique feature developed by Ernest and Roland Csuka.
Mark Petry
Bainbridge Island, WA USA
