just don't order and shut up. People who aren't willing to take risk themselves are often the quickest with the darts when someone else does. Shame on them. Good luck Mike and Mark. I look forward to your work and I don't care whether it looks like an old Rene Herse. I'm confident that you'll offer us a product worthy of emulation. Lou Deeter, Orlando FL
**********
I'm with Lou on this one. Nobilette is a first-class builder. Mike is a true student of bicycles. With more experience thinking about and riding, and selling, these things, than most of us here.
It's said that Herse's son-in-law built a much tastier, tidier frame than Herse himself did, and if the examples I've seen (including a Poly de chanteloup tandem I have in-house), are any indication, that's true. I have absolutely no reason to believe that Mark Nobilette could not build an even nicer frame than that. And if it follows the spirit and the reality of the classic herses and uses the same tubing or equivalent, I fail to see what all the fuss is about. No-one's trying to fool anyone at all. Anyone who buys one will know exactly what they're getting.
This is not rocket-science...on the other hand, it's not for amateurs either. I'd guess these will be very nice bikes, any way you slice it. Whether you regard them as a Rene Herse or not, seems somewhat beside the point, to me. Certainly they will honor the original, and what more can you ask than that? Hell, the Masis made after 1978 or so were probably less a Masi than the Herses Nobilette will make are less an Herse..howeve you want to slice it.
charles "still waiting for my first original Herse single" Andrews Los Angeles