Introducing the Firefly ATB: A Custom Titanium Go-Anywhere Bike

Massachusetts-based custom framebuilder Firefly specializes in custom fit and frame design but has a number of different models that serve as a starting point for their customers. Until recently, the lineup included all the usual suspects: Road, Road Plus, Gravel/All-Road, Cyclocross, Mountain, and Utility. The latest addition to the Firefly lineup is the new ATB (All-Terrain Bicycle), and it looks like a promising option as a do-everything bikepacking rig.

According to Firefly, they started dreaming of the ultimate rigid all-terrain bike after building their new rigid titanium forks. The idea was to design a bike “that would be more capable on MTB trails than a gravel bike, and faster and more comfortable on roads than a mountain bike.”

The Firefly ATB is optimized for 29 x 2.6″ tires with optional clearance for up to 27.5 x 3.0″ thanks to their 3D-printed seat tube knuckle. It uses a 3D-printed UDH rear dropout, a handmade titanium frame, short 430mm chainstays, and is configurable for any combination of bags, racks, lighting systems, and anything else you may need. They also designed to the bike to play nicely with both drop bars and flat bars, and using the right selection of components, it can switch between the two in under 10 minutes.

The Firefly ATB comes stock with the Whisky No.9 MCX+ fork, but it’s designed around their new ATB Fork, which allows them to prioritize ride quality, handling, and fit. The ATB Fork has clearance for 29 × 2.6” or 27.5 × 3.0″ tires and is available with custom offsets, cargo mount options, and finishes to perfectly match your frame.

Standard features include fully custom frame geometry and tube selection, TIG-welded construction, 73mm English threaded bottom bracket, 44mm head tube for tapered forks, boost hub spacing, and a Whisky No.9 MCX+ carbon fork. A custom Firefly ATB frameset starts at $5,500 USD. Their Firefly ATB Ti Fork costs an additional $1,850, and upgrades like Di2 routing, dropper post routing, travel couplers, a Pinion gearbox mount, and more, are available for a fee. Complete builds range from $8,500 to $13,000+.

We caught up with Firefly’s Director of Operations and Frame Design, Kevin Wolfson, to learn more about the inspiration for the ATB, and here’s what he had to say:

“Our shop is about a half mile from the Middlesex Fells, a big trail network with a mix of singletrack, doubletrack, and relatively rough fire roads. Four out of five of us can and sometimes do route our commutes through the Fells, making the commute a mix of road and trail. Once we started building Ti forks, we pretty quickly got excited about building a fully rigid Ti mountain bike that would be perfect for those road-trail commutes. Then we started thinking about all of the possibilities outside of that limited use, and realized we were picturing a new model altogether.

For example, eastern Massachusetts has a ton of smaller trail networks that you can connect with longer stretches of road, so you’ll do six miles of road to get to three miles of trail, for example, and you can piece those segments together into some great rides. Some of those trail networks north of Boston also have camping grounds, so there are tons of possibilities for weekend bike-camping trips, and we realized the ATB would be perfect for all of those uses as long as we included the right options for cargo, lights, and other bikepacking gear. And then, of course, we realized we were picturing a perfect bikepacking bike for lots of riders, people who need more tire clearance than a gravel bike but don’t want the weight and/or fit and feature limitations that come with a suspension fork.”

Learn more about the Firefly ATB at FireflyBicycles.com.

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