Originally Posted by
ironwood
Unfortunately, one of the best modern steel tubing, True Temper XO Platinum, is no longer available. Some of the Japanese makers have moved production to Taiwan. Maybe someone on the Framebuilding forum would know what is the best modern steel. A lot of them miss XO Platinum.
While XO Platinum was very nice, there are gobs of available tubes from other brands that are just as 'nice' and build just as 'well'. XO Platinum came in varying tube profiles too, so a lot of other tubes can match XO's butting profiles as well as tensile strength.
Columbus, Reynolds, Variwall(basically who picked up True Temper's line domestically), Dedacciai, and Kaisei all offer really great tubes that can be as nice as or 'nicer' than XO Platinum.
Domestic MTB builders certainly seemed to like XO Platinum, and a lot was due to consistent inventory from what Ive seen.