• Dialled Bikes Prince Albert
• £230 (frame and seatclamp)
• Dialled Bikes

You probably know the Dialled Bikes story by now. It’s the popular design-in-UK, manufacture overseas, keep the numbers low, personal service set-up that’s produced some killer bikes.

We’ve already seen Dialled’s Morning Glory Ti hardtail. It’s a lovely thing, but being titanium is a little spendy for some. Which is where the Prince Albert comes in – it’s the same shape as the MG but made of chromoly steel, which makes it somewhat heavier but a whole lot cheaper.

Frame

The profile of the Prince Albert is, not surprisingly, very similar to its titanium sibling, with a deeply sloping top tube joining the seat tube below the conventional seatstays. The key visual difference is the extra tube between top and down tubes at the front. Dialled doesn’t make any particular strength-enhancing claims for this tube, but it doesn’t seem to do any harm. It falls into the same category as things like GT’s Triple Triangle design – doesn’t really do anything but sets the frame apart.

Obviously the key difference between the Morning Glory and the Prince Albert is the tubing. Rather than titanium, the PA is good old steel. It carries a Reynolds sticker proudly upon its seat tube – given the price, you won’t be surprised to learn that it’s not 853. Instead, it’s 520, which is something of an oddity in the Reynolds tube range as it’s not actually made by Reynolds – it’s a version of 525 tubing made under license to Reynolds’s specifications. In the same way that there’s nothing wrong with frames made in Taiwan, there’s nothing wrong with Reynolds tubes not made by Reynolds – the company doesn’t hand out licenses like this to just anyone, and if they trust another company to make products bearing its name, so should you. The back end is regular 4130.

The licensed tubing keeps the cost down twice – as well as being fundamentally cheaper than 853, because it can be made overseas you don’t have to ship a load of 853 tubes halfway across the planet and then ship them back once they’ve been joined together. It’s not as light or as strong as 853, but it’s a perfectly acceptable load of pipe. On the PA, strength is enhanced by well-executed gussets at key locations, reassuring on a frame designed for a long fork.

Cable routing is all along the underside of the top tube. A quirk of the design is that the “front” cable stops are actually about a third of the way along the top tube, leaving big flappy loops unless special measures are taken. Having built the frame up, it became clear that what we ought to have done was to cross the cables over through the hole formed by the extra tube up front, but the trails were calling so we just used a zip-tie. The cable stops aren’t stops, either, they’re tube guides – the frame is designed to run full-length cable outer for the rear mech and nearly full-length for the front one. This is good for keeping drag-inducing dirt out of the cables but keeping them all in order under the top tube can be a bit of an issue. You don’t get any V-brake bosses out back, so budget for discs if you haven’t got any.

UK-friendly details like the forward-facing seatclamp slot and generous clearances complete the package. You can get a PA in a choice of colours, although the exact choice you’ll be presented with depends a little on when you order. We imagine that black will be consistently available, though. The Gothic-style graphics are something of an acquired taste, but if you don’t like them don’t fret – they’re not lacquered in so you can peel them off should you so wish. Oh, and the price includes a Salsa seatclamp.

Components

The Prince Albert is a frame-only deal, so feel free to build it up however you like. We’ve seen them put together as everything from XCish trail bikes to freeridey/BSX things. We tried it a couple of different ways. The build in the pictures is a sturdy singletrack kind of arrangement – the eagle-eyed will notice that we pretty much took everything off our test Pastey Howler from a couple of months back and stuck it on here. That means Shimano XT discs, SRAM X.7 shifters and X.9 mech, Ritchey cranks, seatpost, stem and bars, and Shimano/Mavic wheels shod with Conti Vapor tyres.

It’s also had a couple of outings in a burlier guise, with a twin ring/bashguard setup, stout 24seven wheels, 2.3in Conti Verticals and a hefty 24seven short stem/high bar combo. The face that it felt equally at home either way speaks volumes for the PA’s versatility.

Ride

Very few major manufacturers are making bikes like this. The PA sounds pretty normal on paper – 70° head, 73-and-a-bit° seat, 23.5in top tube on the Large (19.5in) frame, 16.5in stays. But the head tube is raised to accommodate a 125mm travel fork, and get on it with a bit of sag up front and it feels really quite steep and aggressive.

It feels it, too. Our first ride on the PA was initially up hill for quite a way, and the bike just ate it with an appetite perhaps surprising for what is, after all, a budget frame. The steep seat angle, longish cockpit and short back end made things seem terribly easy, which was fortunate given that we hadn’t got the front mech set right and it wouldn’t go into the inner ring.

There was none of the floaty, wandering front wheel thing that some long-forked bikes exhibit. Indeed, it was so sprightly and accurate up hill that we started to worry about what it’d be like going back down again. We needn’t have, though. Yes, it likes to change direction. And with a long fork and a fairly steep chassis it demands attention when the going gets steep – small drops are best tackled on the back wheel. It hasn’t got the “ping” of a top-notch steel frame but the shape of it encourages you to hop, skip and jump around the place and it’s generally a real giggle.

We got a couple of pedal strikes, but not so many that we’d fret over it unless we generally rode rockier places than we do. All in all, it works a treat.

Positives: Great price, great fun, versatile

Negatives: Looks aren’t to everyone’s taste, can be attention-seeking

The Prince Albert’s a sort of Labrador puppy of a bike, really, and not just because it’s black. It’s not a quiet, invisible riding companion, rather it bounds up and down, demands attention and won’t be happy until you go out and play with it on its terms. Fortunately it likes to play dippy, swoopy singletrack games and we’re more than happy to go along with those. For the money it’s hard to go wrong…

Performance: 5/5
Value: 5/5
Overall: 5/5