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Cycle Show 2009: The lowdown on Sabbath's Silk Emperor

Why is it like it is? Sabbath's techical guru talks us through the design

If there was one bike that turned heads and divide opinions more than any other at the bike show it was probably Sabbath's new top-of-the-range Titanium road machine, the Silk Emperor. It's certainly a unique looking beast; opinion as to whether that unique look was a good or bad thing was pretty fiecely divided amongst the people we spoke to at the show.

Whatever the opinions, there's some fairly detailed thinking behind the design decisions, it's not just an odd-looking bike for the sake of it. We asked Sabbath's resident expert, Dr Ian Roach, to tell us about how the Silk Emperor came about, and here's what he told us...

Dave is a founding father of road.cc, having previously worked on Cycling Plus and What Mountain Bike magazines back in the day. He also writes about e-bikes for our sister publication ebiketips. He's won three mountain bike bog snorkelling World Championships, and races at the back of the third cats.

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DaSy | 14 years ago
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I agree TR, that must ride just like an Alu frame.

I chose the Litespeed Icon over the Archon for exactley that reason. The Archon was very stiff and much more carbon like in it's ride, not at all what I wanted from a Ti frame.

For me the joy of Ti is the steel like ride with much reduced weight and corrosion resistance.

Plus the Icon actually looks like a proper bike.

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Tony Farrelly | 14 years ago
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I wondered about that, really like to try one though

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TRs Blurb n Blog | 14 years ago
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With all that extra stiffness it probably rides like a lightweight aluminium frame, a really expensive one.

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