Be ready to buy and go talk to Ilya and Kasia, they are awesome and if they can, they will help you out.

Marc, go to Redbeard and get ready to join the rest of us in the 21st Century. 

In other news Redbeard got some Orange POC Octal helmets in stock. (hey that rhymes).

If you've ordered one and haven't received it, now is your chance. If you didn't order one and are looking for a way to looking like Horton laid an egg on your head, now is your chance.

^mpis or un-mips?

Sans MIPS

Like a rose without a thorn

Craig Zolan said:

Everyone else - with the exception of the other sponsor / partner deals (Nugent, OSMO, etc) please check in with Redbeard if you need something. The pricing is very good and will often beat anything you can find on the internet. They can get a whole host of stuff - vector pedals, garmin headunits, elite bottle cages, etc. So please give them a ring or stop by if you are thinking of any bike product purchases.

Just wanted to re-post this. Bikes, power meters, computers, socks and hipster hating bells.

If you need it, give them a call - or better yet, wander in!

Jules said:

Craig Zolan said:

Everyone else - with the exception of the other sponsor / partner deals (Nugent, OSMO, etc) please check in with Redbeard if you need something. The pricing is very good and will often beat anything you can find on the internet. They can get a whole host of stuff - vector pedals, garmin headunits, elite bottle cages, etc. So please give them a ring or stop by if you are thinking of any bike product purchases.

Just wanted to re-post this. Bikes, power meters, computers, socks and hipster hating bells.

If you need it, give them a call - or better yet, wander in!

Seconded! They can get most anything I've asked after and the prices are great. If its not in stock they usually can get it within a couple of days.

jim_nelson said:

Jules said:

Craig Zolan said:

Everyone else - with the exception of the other sponsor / partner deals (Nugent, OSMO, etc) please check in with Redbeard if you need something. The pricing is very good and will often beat anything you can find on the internet. They can get a whole host of stuff - vector pedals, garmin headunits, elite bottle cages, etc. So please give them a ring or stop by if you are thinking of any bike product purchases.

Just wanted to re-post this. Bikes, power meters, computers, socks and hipster hating bells.

If you need it, give them a call - or better yet, wander in!

Seconded! They can get most anything I've asked after and the prices are great. If its not in stock they usually can get it within a couple of days.

Also don't let "order window" stuff dissuade you from calling them up and asking.

Hi guys,

I think most of you know from social media, but we are celebrating 3 years of Redbeard Bikes tonight - stop by if you can! 7-10pm at the shop, beer & snacks & music & foosball

Also! MIPS versions of the Octal AVIP are now in the house, too, in case you missed the boat earlier this year. We also have a Kinetic Rock n Roll trainer if you're looking for an alternative to the Kickr.

Kasia

Also! Ilya and I haven't been able to keep up with the forum but just skimmed this thread - and want to second the idea that if you need anything, call or email us! 

The women's recruitment event was awesome, very good energy, we're looking forward to new members!

A handful of guys have just gotten new Giants - enjoy them! And if you missed the official deadline but are interested in getting a bike, come talk to us!

Is there anyway to get the Stages grassroots pricing again? Need to outfit the new rig with a power meter. 

We can get Stages again. Is everyone happy with them or would we like to look at other options?

Craig Zolan said:

We can get Stages again. Is everyone happy with them or would we like to look at other options?

I personally would be happy to see PowerTap/Saris back again. But if they are still not offering a clubs a significant discount, then I don't see a real reason to drop Stages to go after another power meter sponsorship.

I'm in the market. Looking to hear some reviews on the new stages. PT makes great stuff, but the hubs aren't compatible with the giant branded rims. 21 hole. ( correct me please if I'm wrong) and their chainrings are a no go with 4 bolt Shimano. Not a fan of the pedal systems and their pricey anyway. So my vote would be to stay put unless we could look into p2max, pioneer or quarq for a real good price. I don't feel like I "need" dual sided. (I beleive Pioneer makes a new model that is left sided like stages and is upgradable to dual sided if wanted later). 

A pedal system would be great!

My Stages meter has been the cat's pajamas....

The pioneer system looks nice and is supposedly awesome with the pioneer head unit, and pretty good with a garmin, or other ANT+ unit. Never used one though. I have used P2Max and I really like it, but they don't do a shimano version (if that matters to you). I use a rotor 3D version, but with new Shimano 4 hole spider.
Having said all that - Stages offer a lot of variety, seem to work fine for most people (excluding me, but they will fix that as their customer service is great) and we seem to get a great discount.
So I would think the best option would be to stay with Stages.

Pedal based systems seem great, but they are limiting in that you have to use Look pedals (at the moment), and I find that people get religion over their preferred pedal so it would be a deal that many could not take advantage of.

Hi all

We are having a cyber sale all week. In most cases Kissena pricing is better BUT thought you might want to share this with friends, family, colleagues, etc. There is some good stuff on here - bags, apparel, and more.

http://www.redbeardbikes.com/collections/cyber-20

Use code RBBCYBER20 @ checkout. Sale ends Sunday, 12/6 @ 11:59 PM.

Thanks!

Kasia

- DC Rainmaker has great Stages analysis... bottom line is Stages stands up a lot better than Quarg or PT when temperatures change (better algorithms) and is very good the rest of the time:
http://www.dcrainmaker.com/2013/06/stages-review-update.html
- Carbon crank options hitting winter 2015/16 and spring.
- Redesigned aero form factor and strengthened battery door.

FWIW
I don't use a power meter, but would like not to have to buy new kit ,because of a sponsor change 

The Stages are junk. I would never recommend the product to a friend or teammate.

1. They don't work. It is one-sided measurement of your left leg, so it doesn't actually measure your power output, it guesses it. That is a hopelessly poor design. The data is irrelevant for measuring sprint power, which makes the crank irrelevant for track and sadly limited for road and CX.

2. They don't work. Nearly every Stages owner has had their crank stop working. The horrible quality of this product can be verified via Google. I would bet Ilya would corroborate a greater than 50% return rate. The battery doors are complete shit and do not keep water out or the battery securely in. My Stages drops wattage to zero for five seconds at a time for the whole ride. It's going back (sorry Ilya).

3. Crank-based power meters are not portable. With the number of different bottom-bracket "standards" out there combined with the number of incompatible crank systems, each Stages crank arm only works with a small subset of cranksets being manufactured, so you can't easily move it from bike to bike. I, for example, travel a decent amount for work and have a SRAM Rival Stages crank arm. Almost no rental bikes out here in the world have SRAM cranksets though. So I can't train with power when I'm traveling.

PowerTap -- with their full menu of power meter types -- would be amazing. I would be all over the pedal system, though their hubs are awesome, accurate, and bulletproof too.

Wow, I hardcore disagree with one Mr White. I have 2 sets of Stages and they work great. Yes, sometimes you have to tweak them, especially when it comes to getting the battery to sit properly, but that's it.

I have a Quarq too. It's great. I like it better than the Stages actually, but I don't like the price as much.

And yes, both sides would be nice too, but I'm doing just fine with my one-sided Quarq and my one sided Stageses (plural).

They work White. I've got the data to prove it. #brodoyoueven

And FWIW, PowerTap guesses at your power output too.

@Jeffrey White That sounds very very frustrating, but it's worth reiterating that they've redesigned the pod and strengthened the battery door in their new version. Might it be that you are suffering from earlyadoptericitis? Reviews of the V2.0 out? 

Portability is an issue, but with a discount they'd be in neighborhood of $400ish. That's a solid week to week power measure and 90% of what matters for training (although inaccurate TSS data could cause trouble). 

If you're focused on accurate max watts you should train with weights and a stationary trainer with left/right leg measure, spin-scan etc. True accuracy is just bragging rights no? Or are you saying that 30 sec and 10 sec power are off too? Now I'm curious if people work on their left/right leg power.

I am Powertap fan too, although you don't mention that you have to build up a wheelset that you race and train on OR build two sets. Either way, that puts you into a $1500+ outlay. The pedals are highly rated but so big'n clunky LOOKing. heh.

I bought Garmin Vector, two times.  

Not a replacement, I liked the first so much I got another.

I have no input on Stages but feel that I am ENTITLED to talk with authority about powermeters as I own one (well, two of them actually).  That was part of the reason I started 'training with power'- to chat about it.

Does seem a bit odd to me that for something that will be the core of anyone's training regime (i.e. their power data), that they wouldn't put in 400 more bucks to get real data (dual sided) versus a guess, which, as Jeff rightly asserts, is not appropriate for short intervals/sprints.  Hard to deny that.  For TT efforts, sure, one side might work.  But why be limited?

My two cents...

My Stages is the original and it lets water in sometimes...always comes back to life in a day or 2.
Yup the battery floats in the case but I've patched that by using a small piece of electrical tape behind the battery.
The battery lasts for months...I get them at the dollar store for..you guessed it a dollar.
I consider it the best performance upgrade I've ever made.  It works with ant+ and bluetooth
The company has always responded to phone calls and emails....I bought the 2 year warranty just in case, which is about up

Don't get me wrong, a Stages is better than nothing for a relatively low price. And no power meter design is perfect. Will their new power meters be top notch? Who knows. I just have a hard time believing that after they sold everyone such terrible quality the first time around. My PowerTap from 8 years ago is still going strong as Jill's training wheel. PowerTap builds quality power meters.

What I like very much about PowerTap is that it is a top-quality brand that sells multiple power meter types, so each of us could choose which is most appropriate:

Chainring
Pedal
Hub/Wheelset

Also, the last time we had Power Tap, we had access to Saris products, including trainers. It seems to me that whenever folks test new power meters, they use Power Tap and SRM units as baseline measuring tools.

I don't like that my Stages meter tells me that I crank out 1800 watts on active recovery rides.

But I think this end of the discussion is sort of moot, because I think that Craig told us that PT wanted too much from us, for too little discount in return.

So anyway, my message to Craig would be that we should be open to other options.