Introducing the Belmont

We have a very exciting, all-new frame model that's arriving soon! The Belmont was designed in collaboration with our friends at Keystone Bicycle Co. based in Philadelphia, PA. We'll be officially launching it at this year's Philly Bike Expo.

While they've been Bassi dealers for a while, we met the KBC crew IRL the first time we visited Philadelphia for the Philly Bike Expo in 2022 and immediately hit it off with the team's wonderful members. 

Here at Bassi, we were starting to wonder what the next step for our lineup should be. We'd been entertaining our desire for a more road-oriented tourer with all the modern trimmings - just the things people keep asking us to "update" the Hog's Back with (never gonna happen, sorry). As a small bicycle manufacturer, we always seriously question the introduction of a new model considering the effort and financial investment involved. Finding out the Keystone team was keen to collaborate was just the push we needed to get the wheels rolling!

The folks at Keystone regularly participate in long-distance randonnée events, with a few of them having done the infamous 1200km Paris-Brest-Paris event multiple times. We were eager to design a frame fit for that purpose! The result of our serendipitous joining of ideas is a versatile, comfortable and capable frame that'll be a perfect companion on sporty road rides, randonnées, gravel rides and light tours!

Here's what they have to say about the process:
We have been fortunate to build and ride a lot of bikes over the last couple years and have done a lot of thinking about what the perfect bike could look like. Together, we designed a bike that is perfectly suited for randonneuring but is also able to handle gravel riding, light touring and other circumstances where you might need to carry some luggage. We prioritized features that would help make the bike comfortable for an all day adventure, including internal dynamo routing, fender compatibility, rack mounts, and of course the signature Bassi shoulder strap. We were excited to team up with Bassi so that we could utilize their experience designing and riding bikes to help make our collective dream a reality.

The Belmont

The Belmont is made of 4130 ChroMoly tubing. It was designed around 650x48B tires with fenders and can also clear 700x45C without fenders. 
Other key specs include:

• Thru-axle dropouts front and rear
• Flat-mount brakes, ø160mm minimum
• 68mm BSA threaded bottom bracket shell
• Replaceable aluminum derailleur hanger
• Internal dynamo light routing front and rear
• Internal rear brake routing to allow for downtube shifters
• 1-1/8" straight steerer
• A reasonable amount of rack and fender eyelets
• Eyelets for our signature shoulder portage strap
• Frame and fork MSRP: 1500$CA / 1050$US
• Arrival: April 2025

Here's the geo chart:

Details

Here are some close-ups of the prototypes we've been riding. The main differences between the frames pictured here and the final production are the inclusion of an integrated seatpost clamp and internal rear brake routing, but only along the downtube. The reason for the latter is to get the housing out of the way in order to use downtube shifters and leave more room for bottle cages!

More prototypes

Pictured throughout this article are the prototypes we've been testing with different colour schemes and build ideas. We tried a few different configurations to test clearances and ride quality with both 650B and 700C tires. Before anyone gets too excited, the 2.22" Sim Works Super Yummy tires on the raw prototype are indeed too wide and caused some tire rub under spirited off-the-saddle efforts. 650x50B (aka 27.5x2.0") should be fine, but we're still calling max clearance at 650x48B with fenders which is plenty! In 700C, 42mm tires fit with fenders, 45mm without.

With the help of our talented graphic designer friend Lauren West, we landed on the final look of the Belmont. Here are a couple teasers (we gotta keep some of the surprise for the big reveal!):

We're calling them Sage and Wine. It was really fun to find all the common threads between our two cities when thinking about the Belmont's identity. More on that, and the name, in the next post!

Keep an eye out for the reveal on Philly Bike Expo weekend on March 8-9 (we'll be in booth 3106, come say hi if you're in town!).

Photos by Troy