The Works Components angle headsets seem pretty unknown on this side of the pond (they’re a UK company). A customer shared the link with me as an option to slacken the head tube angle on his Meriwether MTB that I built him a few years ago. The HTA of the frame is 67 degrees but he’s living in the PNW and there’s peer pressure to go slacker and slacker. Works makes 1, 1.5, and 2 deg angle headsets depending on which style head tube you have. For custom builders this is pretty sweet since so many of us use Paragon head tubes for steel and Ti frames which are straight 44mm I.D. and Cane Creek doesn’t make Anglesets for this style head tube, only for certain tapered head tubes. But Works got around making them for straight, non-tapered head tubes by using an external upper cup (EC44 upper and lower versus the normal ZS44/EC44 of the King i7). The stack height is taller up top (15mm compared to 8mm for a King inset 7) so it may change your position a bit unless you can move around some stem spacers. I ordered the 1 degree headset and quickly installed it (and forgot to take photos of it out of the box, sorry). The headset is blocky, see photos, but appears very bomber and well made. You may notice that the crown race on this bike is thick, and that’s not the headset’s fault. I’m using a +6mm spacer from Cane Creek to (partially) account for the difference in fork length that i designed the frame for vs. what’s on their now (130 vs 120mm). I got the headset to try it both ways, right now it’s set up so the HTA is 1 deg STEEPER at 67.5 (frame was built at 66.5). The headset has indicator lines to align the cups either forward or backwards depending on what you want to do. Most people are going to set it up so the HTA gets slacker but I like to compare/contrast climbing and descending prowess between different front centers and HTA’s and wheelbases so I’m going to try both over time. Anyways, check em out!
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