Nothing but praise for Justin and the setup he has at Burls. All the correspondence I had with Justin was via email but despite not being able to meet face to face I was very impressed with his customer service.
We exchanged numerous emails and his advice and patience was very much appreciated. I had a pretty good idea of the geometry of the frame I wanted built but no idea of the tube diameters and profile options for titanium. Justin's advice was spot on and over the course of our email correspondence the final spec emerged.
One of the big differences between Burls and other options is with Burls you pay a very reasonable price for an excellent product whereas with other brands you are simply paying a premium for their marketing budgets. With other brands you can end up paying double the price of Burls if you decide to choose tubing options such as diamond top tube or bi-ovalised down tube or oversized seat tube. With Burls all these options are available but at no extra cost. There is a set price for the frame, the choice of tubing is based on purpose not marketing spin.
In terms of the finished product I am very happy with the frame and the choice of forks Justin recommended. The frame looks and is very durable, the welding is neat and the alignment is perfect. All the measurements were as per the spec to the millimetre. One of the benefits of ti over steel is no paint to chip or scratch, its just bare metal pure and simple. The diamond toptube is the coolest tube I have ever seen on a bike and the biovalised downtube has a very large contact area on the headtube and the bottom bracket tube creating a rock solid set up.
I wanted a frame that was light, rigid, responsive and also comfortable. This frame has delivered 100%. I have dropped the handlebar position 2cms compared to my other road bike simply because this bike feels more like a racing bike. It comes into its own when sprinting or climbing out of the saddle, but also it is comfortable on the tops just tapping out a rhythm.
In my opinion, Burls is a great option to consider; Justin is great at matching the right frame to you and the builders in Russia (who built Colnago's Titan frames) build a great frame.