Bill's Corretto

If you follow us on instagram, you may have seen a couple of ‘exotic’ bikes that we’ve built for our friend Bill. Some of his projects include the Specialized Aethos TT and one of our most expensive builds to date, the Bastion TT.

It’s fair to say that Bill owns almost one of every frame there is available to buy on the market. He loves to test and compare each one, looking carefully into the exacting details that add up to create a truly great bike. Bill loves the way steel rides, yet enjoys the light weight of a high-end carbon frame. The only type of bicycle missing from Bill’s collection was a fully titanium TT-bike, which is where we once again enter the story!

The idea of a fully titanium TT-bike started back in November 2021 when Bill wanted to try something new and special. After a few discussions with our friends at Baum, explaining Bill’s project, Michael from Baum was persuaded to take on the project. Baum only use their in-house geometries and paint schemes, so it was incredibly special for us to work together in partnership with them on this project.

The frame is a Baum Coretto, built with a fully custom TT geometry. Designed to provide Bill a fast and quick ride, and yet be comfortable and stable. The handling and cornering of all the bikes that we create is of paramount importance to us, an approach echoed by the guys at Baum who did a fantastic job comparing notes and matching our geometry.

Every part of this project was hand selected by Bill in collaboration with us. Whilst weight was a priority for him, we felt that durability and quality was equally important. If you look closely at the build kit, you’ll see that we managed to get the best of each of those features on this bike. The beauty of custom bikes is the ability to provide the balance of all factors, tuned specifically to the rider.

Now for the elephant (or zebra) in the room, the paint scheme. Bill has a unique sense of humor that matches his appreciation for art and story telling. For this bike, he wanted to pay homage to Marty, the zebra from the Madagascar movie.

Whilst they accepted the painting challenge, Baum made it very clear that they will not be doing it again, making Bill’s Baum a truly unique build of outstanding quality. Out of all the paint scheme’s we’ve worked on, which is an incredible number, this is surely one of the best. To take the Zebra theme to the next level, we took the build kit components to our friend Ron at Pro Bike Design paint lab, who perfectly matched the Zebra lines.

Whilst for some this might look a bit strange, for Bill it’s exactly what he wanted from the bike. A custom bike really does reflect the rider’s personality, down to the smallest detail. We can’t wait to see Bill crushing PR’s and eagerly await feedback on how it compares to the rest of his fleet.

We’d like to take the time to acknowledge Bill’s contribution to Signature Cycles, as it was thanks to his desire and curiosity to find the best bike builders around the world that we are now partnered with Scarab Cycles in Colombia and Baum in Australia. Through sourcing the perfect solutions for our customer’s needs we discover more fantastic partners all of the time.

Thank you Bill for allowing us to work on another dream bike of yours, and thanks to our new partner Baum for making the dream possible.