The Recherche

The Recherche was a private label frame that I built for two brothers, Kent and Kyle Radford. They owned a specialist bicycle store in Rancho Bernardo, which is in San Diego County, California.

They sold the frame out of their own store and also marketed the frame to other dealers, primarily in Southern California. The frame was first built in 1985 up to late 1987 or 1988. There were a little over two hundred of them built.


I have been in touch with Kent Radford in the last year, he still owns the number one Recherche. The name and the decal design was the Radford brother’s creation. They always pronounced it Reh-shur-shay. I believe it means “to search” in French, (Please correct me if I am wrong on that.) and that is probably not the correct French pronunciation.

It was a “no frills” frame, painted in a single color with the white Mylar panel decals; at first available only in red; later it was offered in blue and black also. Although I describe the frame as “no frills” it was of course built by me to the same high standard as any frame from my shop.


The frame was the exact same geometry as the Fuso; in fact the production of the Recherche was grouped together with the Fuso on the same jig setting, and both brand names brazed in small batches at the same time.

The frame was built in the same Columbus tubing, with Campagnolo or Columbus front and rear dropouts. With a Cinelli investment cast bottom bracket shell. The Recherche lugs were also investment cast but a different style than the Fuso; the seat stay caps were also different.




Most Recherche’s had a distinct cast fork crown with two decorative grooves cast into the top. (See left.) Towards the end of production this crown became unavailable and a plain sloping crown was substituted.






(Right)

The way the tubes were finished at the front and rear drop outs was distinctive. The tube ends were scalloped with a round file and the brass allowed to sink inside as the brazing cooled. I was imitating a style that is common to many French frame builders.

These small but unique features made the Recherche different in appearance, but because the design and workmanship was equal to other frames from my shop, the finished bike rides and handles the same as any other I built.

The red paint finish that the majority of Recherche frames had was achieved by painting a candy red over a bright orange base coat. Most red paint jobs appear orange, especially after they start to fade in bright sunlight. The candy red method I used was labor intense because of the extra steps in painting, but the end result was a truer longer lasting deep red.

My thanks to Lorin Youde, who lives in Southern California not far from my original San Marcos shop, for sending me these pictures. He picked up this 62 cm. Recherche last year, with original red paint and very few miles on it. It is number 201 so one of the last few built.

With so few of these built compared with close to 3,000 Fuso frames produced and with the small but unique differences I have described here; the Recherche could be a desirable frame to own should anyone be lucky enough to come across one.

Because so few were built the chances of finding one in any given size is slim, especially in the less popular very large or small sizes. If Recherche does indeed mean “to search” then maybe the name will become prophetic.