I also liked the idea that it had horizontal drop outs for chain tension and not an eccentric bottom bracket. Rightly or wrongly I viewed the EBB as something that could be troublesome. Whichever way i looked at it, it seemed to me that horizontal dropouts would have less chance of 'failing' than an EBB. This perception may well be absolute rubbish, it's just the way that I saw it.
About ten-twelve years ago I too looked at Surly, the Karate Monkey, specifically because it was a known-strong frame that was not only Rohloff-capable, but had fittings for everything, very versatile. Such versatility is uncommon on American frames, where everything is an extra. But I didn't like the welded frame... To me, a proper bike is brazed together, either filleted or lugged. I'm an artist who's done a good deal of engineering design, but I don't mind admitting it is a strictly aesthetic prejudice, nothing to do with engineering: it's my money, and my proven taste, and I get what I want for it, or as close as dammit.
I agree with you on horizontal dropouts being superior in conception and use to eccentric bottom brackets.
However, the thing is you really buy the bike designer's entire philosophy, simply because you must. Even if you can afford to have a custom bike made, despite the promises of the custom bike builders to give you everything you want, you soon discover that essentially you're just buying more expensively into someone else's bike philosophy, sometimes hidden until it is too late; there is always something you want that you can't have.
It's Andy Blance's philosophy that makes his Thorn bikes so good as a whole (and behind that Robin Thorn's trading philosophy), regardless of which details you disagree with. I was originally attracted to reading his transparent screeds about the design and proving of his bikes because he knew all the best components that would last and last without going to stupidly priced boutique parts of uncertain engineering provenance.
Well, if you go to a guy because he exhibits a consistently applied value-for-money ethos, then efficient, cheap welding just comes in the package; it would be a betrayal of his principles to offer expensive fillet brazing.
The EBB probably comes from a road-racing background, and for the same reason as the rejection of lugs: weight. Now, I think all this road-racing-derived weightweenery on touring bikes is an infantile throwback, but it is where the best bikes, including touring bikes, had their origins. You can like it or you can lump it; it is just a fact of bicycles the consequences of which you have to live with. So, an EBB weighs quite a bit less than the hefty aluminium hangers associated with a sliding Rohloff fitment. For me, the fiddliness of the EBB, and it's risks of a slot being worn in it and the thing rotating at just the wrong time in the wrong place, is the key consideration against it. For someone from a roadie background, the distinct weight advantage of the EBB is the key consideration for it, and fiddly adjustment is irrelevant because roadies are used to it.
So you take the good (meaning 100% agreement with your prejudices!), and the otherwise justified, altogether, because on balance the designer is the one most in tune with what you want.
