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I gotta be honest...I am quite intrigued by their Carbon Road Disc Frameset (SC-R49D)

Of all the road bikes I've built and reviewed, that frame seems to have the most aggressive geometry I've ever seen. And that makes me exceptionally happy.

Size: 500
Reach: 397
Stack: 544

And add to fact they have a size 410mm/125mm integrated handlebar.....sheesh! Wonder how much their frameset and handlebar costs with shipping. Keep us informed!

Speaking of SLC, this frame looks a lot like Winspace's T1500.

Yeah, it really caught my eye as well. Super aggressive, but heavy. If I were still in the market for an Aero frame, I'd take a more serious look.

Already getting close then. $200 out of the $500 required.  I imagine the seatposts themselves will be $40-50, though I didn't ask.

Before heading down this rabbit hole, has anyone actually checked if a Venge seatpost will fit? I know the SL7 one won't for the 168, but I seem to remember some older models would accept proprietary Spec seatposts.

I did a cursory look to see if it did awhile back. Im pretty sure it won't. If I thought it would at the time I looked, I probably would have picked one up.

I decided to strip the matte black paint down to carbon and put a clear coat on it.  I also, converted the headset and stem to an SL7 one for more flexibility as the shortest stem and bar combo ICAN offers is 90x400mm which was a month wait for me at the time.  So I went with 100x400mm which was too long for me.  What I needed was a 80mm stem which the SL7 offers, there isn't that many Aero bars out there that offers anything shorter than 90mm.  Plus, with this setup the maintenance is much easier as the cables don't run inside the bar.

Did you modify your headset cup to fit the SL7 set up?

Yeah, headset issues are frustrating. Just take it one step at a time.

Regarding cutting the steerer tube, everything I saw said to cut the tube 3 mm below the top of the stem. Unfortunately, the stock TanTan top cap has a lip and the bottom of the cap extends a couple of mm into the stem. The first time I cut the steerer, there just wasn't enough space under the top cap to load the headset properly. I put a 5 mm spacer above the stem which took care of that issue without having to cut the steerer again.

I think maybe, we are not being clear about what a microspacer is though? A head set spacer fits either under the stem or over the stem, but it goes above the headset cover. Microspacers fit under the headset cover, on top of the compression ring.

https://www.jensonusa.com/FSA-Headset-Microspacers

The do the same thing as a spacer placed above the stem. You get a little more space to tighten down the top cap. But, they do that by lifting the top cover slightly, just enough so that your head set cover doesn't bind against the top of your head set cup when you tighten the top cap bolt. I used snips to cut a notch to match the notch in the compression ring, but they finally fixed the biggest issue with my head set which was the stack height of the bearings.

I actually took off the stem so am confident there was no force compressing the steerer.

At first I just wanted to switch to something "safer", however now it's more out of necessity as the stock expander is not gripping well internally and slipping up when I compress the headset (using carbon paste as well).

I switched to this one. Works a lot better, no slipping issues.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/274059545505?hash=item3fcf38cba1:g:dJMAAOSwuShai4Wg

Has anyone replaced the stock headset bearings with some 'premium' bearings, such as NTN, NSK, SKF, Enduro etc.? Or can you advise how your stock bearings are holding up?

I'm about to begin building my bike up and am debating swapping the bearings out in the hope that more premium bearings would last longer as I don't want the hassle of having to re-do all of the cable routing due to the stock headset bearings wearing out.

The problem is, I can't find any from a named manufacturer online in the size I need (P16 52x7x45 degrees).

Any advise would be appreciated 

Honestly, if your bearings are seated and loaded properly, I don't see them wearing out any time soon. They spin, what, 1/4 turn to either side at the most? Unless you're doing 50 miles of slaloms, the only issue I can think of is them getting banged around from being too loose in the cups. If you tighten your headset down too much, you wouldn't be able to turn your bars.

Others might have different advice.

That being said, I don't know how different the 168 is from the 099, but I installed a set of FSA ACR bearings to my TT-X21/VBR-099 and they fit fine. I also anguished over all the standards and measurements but, in the end, went with the FSA set because they told me I could return it if I needed to. Also in the end, all I really needed was a set of microspacers for my stock set.

Good luck!