Sabbath Mondays Child

At a time when most manufacturers were moving from metal to carbon fibre for their top-end frames, Sabbath came into the market producing high-quality titanium bikes. The UK brand – originally called Sunday Bicycles before a swift name change for legal reasons – certainly seem to have found their niche and, after some major growth over the last four years, their bikes are now available through Evans Cycles as well as a network of other dealers. The Mondays Child – along with the Silk Road Pro – is their top road race model…

The frame

The main triangle of the Mondays Child (Sabbath don’t bother with the apostrophe so we won’t either – saves on ink. Or pixels. Or something) is made from double-butted 3Al 2.5V grade seamless titanium that’s custom shaped to Sabbath’s own design. The oversize ovalised down tube shifts its axis along its length so it’s tall and slim at the head tube junction and short and squat at the other end to reach across nearly the full width of the bottom bracket shell.

The seat tube is slightly ovalised down by the bottom bracket shell too, while the triangular profile top tube slopes gently down to keep the standover height low. The head tube, which houses an integrated headset, is machined out of a block of 6AL 4V titanium for added stiffness, and the same is true of the bottom bracket shell.

The Mondays Child’s seat stays are butted, as is the non-driveside chain stay, although the driveside one is plain gauge – the wall thickness is uniform throughout – to cope with the greater forces. That’s internal, though – they look exactly the same so there’s nothing unbalanced to offend your eye.

The seat stays arc away from the centre of the bike rather than towards it, which Sabbath reckon results in greater road-feel and a more “positive” ride, while the dropouts are machined 6Al grade titanium rather than the aluminium that many manufacturers use here. These dropouts are rolled laterally for extra lateral stiffness and they’re large with a sizeable welded area, again adding to the rigidity. The gear hanger is replaceable should it ever get bent out of shape in the event of a stack or mechanical mishap.

The geometry is race orientated. Whereas the Silk Road models in Sabbath’s range offer a more upright, sportive-friendly ride position, the Monday’s Child is low and fairly stretched. Our XL model (suitable for riders measuring 6ft 1in and above, and equivalent to about a 59cm frame size in traditional geometry) comes with a 59cm effective top tube and an 18cm head tube.

A whole stack of headset spacers meant the front end wasn’t especially short out of the box, but if you want to take them out and cut down the fork steerer, you can get yourself an aggressive setup without any problem. Add some clip-on tri bars and it’ll see you through the odd time trial too, if that’s your thing. Or you can go down the custom route if you prefer. It’ll cost you an extra £200 and take about eight weeks, but the option is there if you don’t fit one of the five stock sizes.

The build quality is excellent throughout with neat welds, a brushed finish and subtle sand-etched logos – ‘classy and understated’ is the usual phrase used in these situations. You can opt for a matt satin finish if you prefer, or a mirror polish look, and you get to choose from six different graphic colourways or three sand-etched logo finishes. Essentially, you can personalize the bike so you’re unlikely to see anyone else on the self-same design at your next club race.

Oh, and one more important point: the frame is lifetime guaranteed. Sabbath say they’ve not had one returned in three years. Being titanium, it’s tough enough to survive some harsh treatment out on the road and in the back of your car, and it won’t corrode either so you can look forward to masses of trouble-free miles together.

Kit

The Monday’s Child is available as a frame-only option for £1799. You can build it up however you like, or get your dealer to do it for you, or you can opt for the £3699 complete model we have here…

This comes with Sabbath’s own Fluid full-carbon fork, SRAM’s second-tier Force groupset and Sonic C Max Ceramic wheels (which we’re going to review separately, so hold your horses on those). The chainset is a compact matched up to a 12-25T cassette, the cockpit and seat post come from Deda, and Selle Italia provide the saddle.

The ride

The first thing you notice about the Mondays Child is just how stiff the frame is. We were surprised. In these days when the vast majority of high-end bikes are carbon, you can easily get sucked into believing that anything else just isn’t going to be good enough… but that’s really not the case.

Whether we were out of the saddle and throwing the bars around or chucking the bike through the tightest turns as fast as our bottle would let us, the frame was perfectly well behaved. That front end really isn’t going anywhere when you muscle it about in a sprint. Okay, Sabbath have used quite a lot of material in the head tube to get that rigidity but it has worked, and the smaller sizes are likely to be even less prone to flexing.

It’s a similar story through the middle of the frame with very little unwanted movement around the bottom bracket. Everything is firm and stable when you jump on the pedals in a way that, to be honest, it sometimes isn’t with titanium bikes when you compare them to super-stiff carbon models. The Mondays Child transfers power efficiently and picks up speed keenly even though, at 7.86kg (17.3lb), it’s light rather than featherweight. It’ll lose out to a bike a couple of pounds lighter on steep hills, but the difference is marginal.

When you talk about titanium you have to talk about its comfort. It’s the law. But while we don’t subscribe to a lot of the baloney that gets attributed to titanium as a frame building material, we have to say that this is a very comfortable bike.

You know how the roads are all shot to bits at the moment after the winter frost? And you know how that means you get a kick in the pants every time you hit a dodgy section and your teeth rattle so much it sounds like smashing milk bottles? Well, the Mondays Child helps smooth over the rough bits. Not completely – it’s not a miracle worker – but it keeps you just that little bit more comfortable. And it does the same on normal road surfaces too. What we’re saying is that the ride quality is really good.

Sabbath reckon that their Silk Road bikes have a softer ride feel to them – we can’t comment because we’ve not ridden them – but we’ve been happy enough to get back from our long rides on the Mondays Child still feeling fresh and raring to go rather than bruised and forlorn. You certainly get road-feedback here, but not so much that it becomes a pain in the whatsit.

Why, though, would you buy titanium these days when carbon fibre offers so much in terms of its strength to weight ratio? And, despite what some titanium aficionados would have you believe, we don't think there's anything you can achieve in terms of Ti's ride quality that you can't achieve in carbon. Well, we've ridden loads of titanium bikes over the years and one thing that they really have going for them is their durability. We've seen ti bikes that have been ridden hard for five years old that are as good as new. They really do go on for ever, and if that's an important issue for you the Mondays Child is a high-quality choice.

Verdict

High-end titanium speed machine with superb handling and lovely ride quality; it should last you an age too