I went to the Salsa website linked in the first post. I like this bike! A bike designed to solve a problem, not a bike designed to fill a need no one had found yet. A bike to make the rides they do better.
This bike is a little like my Peter Mooney. The big difference is they started from scratch with a rather specific hard, physical goal in mind. I ordered my Mooney with just as specific a goal, but that goal was to have a bike that could be my link to sanity over the coming post-head injury crazy years. They knew the roads they'd be riding if not the pavement. I didn't know what coast I would be living on. I also didn't know the wheel standard I would be using. 700c or 27"? In 1978, not knowing where I'd be living, that wasn't at all obvious.
Well, 38 years later, my Mooney had a new focus - as a fix gear to ride Crater Lake with Cycle Oregon AND ride the promised 30 miles of gravel with its 1000' ups and downs. I did it. The bike could run 37c in front, 35c in back and run gears of 44-13, 42-17, 36-21 just moving chain and flipping a wheel and (unscrewing a cog) 36-24. I rode it the length of the Trask River Trail to the Oregon coast as a trial (with fellow forumites) and it thrived.
In many ways, my bike is similar to this Salsa. Long chainstays, big tire clearances, steep front end. But also big differences. Canti brakes so 650B is not an option, High BB. (As a fix gear, I love it! Even if it is a small drawback on gravel. And even higher with those big tires. Longer stem (140 and it might even be a Salsa), much deeper, wide (semi-pista) bars. This worried me knowing the Trask gravel descents would hit 17% but the bike thrived with me in the drops!
This Salsa isn't going to be my bike. Hitting pedals with the low BB and 175 (my knees demand those cranks) would get old. I am a long ways from making the jump to a new braking system (disc) and even further from jumping to carbon fiber. Bars and stem would have to change. Still, I like this bike and I like where it came from. Conceived on the road, not the drawing board.
Ben