Bike Check: Brivaël’s Samson
Get ready because this will be a weird one. And I’m gonna start with the elephant in the room. The pictures! What happened? Why so much ｇｒａｉｎ and why colors that looks like it’s straight out of a bad western spaghetti movie. Well let me explain: It all started with what we thought was a good idea when my friend Brivael and I found interesting to do his bike check with his medium format camera. (a Mamiya 645 if you’re curious) Sounds like a good idea, not that sunny outside so let’s throw some expired Portra 400 NC in there and see what’s gonna happen. It can’t go wrong with medium format, right? Right?
Little did we know… Going back home and scanning the roll I had the pleasant surprise to find grain smooth like sandpaper. I usually don’t complain of a good amount of grain, but this time it was just too much. So what do we do? Scrap the bike-check and call it a day? Wait for a re-shot? Or just show you how not to play with expired film and if you shoot film with some “experimental” behaviors, it can end up with a screw-up roll and a 15 lines intro to justify your “mistake”.
So yes, pictures out of this roll aren’t perfect and I don’t even have a clean shot of the entire bike. But it was also a good experience to see Brivael again, and a good lesson I told myself that day: Bike check = 100/200 iso non-expired film only! I think I’ve never been that good at capturing “still things” anyway since I’m more into snaps, daily life pictures, and moving subjects. But I’m getting there! Every article I release is some more experience and skills I learn for future improvements.
So let’s get on with it, shall we? I know this bike very well, or the frame at least, because I owned it for some time before selling it to Brivaël in 2018. It’s a beautiful Samson NJS frame with a “Sakura Fade” paint on it and an absolute ton of sparkles to shine at any given angle. In my defense, no good pictures can adequately capture how crazy the paint is. If you listened to our podcast on NJS frames and Keirin races, you know that the Japanese are quite fond of exotic paint jobs and colors to attract your eye and your money to bet on one racer over another. That’s why black NJS frames are quite rare, and if they happen to be any other dark color, they usually have tons of sparkles to blind you out of NJS goodness with any light bouncing on them. Some other colors can hold special meanings for Japanese people but never in an official manner. “Sakura Fade” is one of them as it represents the Japanese spring season when cherry trees are blooming and everyone is outside for a good time. So when Brivaël and I set up a date for me to visit him (since he is really, REALLY busy all the time) I thought it was a good opportunity to do a bike check for his Samson. It’s just too bad it’s a little small for me or I would seriously buy it back from him after seeing this beautiful bike again.
Let’s start with the cockpit and the now-classic Salsa stem, Rose drop bars, and... a Garmin? Yes! Believe it or not, Brivaël still puts a lot of kilometers on this thing and it’s nice to see it ridden and well used. A Kashimax frame protector to defend against an unfortunate dent because these NJS frames are so easy to dent. Another detail you can spot in the picture is the absolutely beautiful crown lug of this Columbus tubing fork. At the moment, only Samson, Kalavinka, and a few others, still made their lugs themselves. You can see it on pretty much every lug, especially the bottom bracket shell, beautifully crafted and engraved by Harada-san himself.
I always found it funny how people want to build NJS frames with strictly NJS parts. The build is on the opposite end of the spectrum since almost nothing is NJS stamped and carbon is here to say, “Big business is here, you kids can go home now.” Noticeably, Brivaël is rocking a sleek carbon-kevlar Flite Evolution strapped to a carbon look seatpost. That’s the kind of stuff that gets my day going! To continue on the vintage carbon fiber trend, you could pass by these wheels without really looking at them too much. Well, look twice because they’re in fact a pair of sticker-free Mavic SSC rims re-laced to Mack Superlight hubs with some sweet Sapim carbon bonded spokes.
The drivetrain is also quite peculiar here, having that twisted Japanese touch we all love. A black Dura Ace paired with a 50T Sägeblatt from our good friends at @fxd.bln. Add a Sugino Gigas 15T Cog and you end up with a nice and heavy ratio for long days at the velodrome.
Detailed Parts List
Frameset 54.5 Samson NJS “Sakura Fade'“
Chainring and Cog 50T Sägeblatt, 15T Sugino Gigas
Crank 165mm Custom painted Duraace FC-7600
Seatpost and Saddle Look Carbopost, Flite Evolution Ti
Stem and Handlebar Salsa Stem , Rose Race Attack Compact
Wheels Mavic Cosmic SSC, Mack Superlight hubs, Sapim spokes
Tires Veloflex 23c tubulars
It’s quite an epic build that Brivaël cooked for us here. Mixing a Japanese frame, an American stem, A German chainring, a French seatpost, and more quality parts that you can count. He went all out and did whatever the f*ck he wanted, ignoring the NJS purists and how a frame is ‘supposed’ to be built up. This is my favorite thing about this kind of bike. Brivaël is also a professional frame builder and I’m expecting a lot from his talent and attention to details. You can find him here @kangtheframebuilder but don’t ask him for a custom order, the man is crazy busy and well on his way to smash the frame building game all by himself.
