Yes that's right, the "969" refers to the butting. As the brochure says "To begin with, we designed and commissioned rugged, mega oversize THORN 969 frame tubes and stays. These are cold drawn and butted from seamless Japanese 4130 Cro-mo blanks and the tubes are then heat treated. The resultant tubeset is “lightweight”, considering its great strength. It is very stiff and very resilient... perfect for carrying heavy loads, perfect for long distance comfort. This Thorn 969 tubeset is exclusive to our bikes. So not Reynolds tubing.