Marc Boral opined:
"Dave,=0D =0D I think Charles mentioned that his were milled all the way through from front to back. I have not seen the ones he speaks of, but I have seen ma= ny of the ones you speak of. Yes, they came on a few different Bianchis, as well as Colnagos, Cellinis, Bassos, etc.=0D =0D While I LOVE panto'd parts, I have always disliked that particular style.= I feel the groove is way too wide, and it obliterates the Campy stamping on both sides. Not very elegant in my opinion.=0D =0D Marc Boral=0D Long Beach, CA=0D"
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I tend to agree with Marc: the later 70's/early 80s panto'd groups that showed up on Olmos especially, as well as the other bikes Marc mentions (De Rosas could be added to the list, who knows how many others...?)--those groups are souless. I know, sounds dumb. But I had direct experience of this.
Two years ago I bought a very cool early 80s Olmo competition on ebay. In perfect, mint condition, my size exactly. The parts were panto'd in the manner described by Marc and Dave. To the nines. All panto'd, milled and enamelled bright colors. It had a certain gauche charm I suppose; I left the bike hanging in my living room for months, trying to develop some affection for it. But I couldn't. It looked too much like a toy, and too little like a road warrior. Still, I might have kept it for novelty value, except it had those &%$#ing crap vinyl stick-on graphics. I HATE THOSE THINGS!
The end of the vintage lightweight era did not come with index shifting...it came when Olmo and Colnago and others started using those horrible vinyl stick-ons. Ugh. It's like having a bike covered with bumper stickers.
Anyway, back to my point, which was that those later panto'd groups aren't very interesting to me...at least, compared to the earlier generation of such things. The pantographing on some early Masis, as well as, more famously, on some Colnago Supers (the Colnago Super Pantografata as it was known), has soul. It looks much more artistic...it has a kind of---I know, this sounds kooky---but, that earlier milling and highlighting has a kind of artistic seriousness--a carefully planned elegance--that is not duplicated by later pantograph schemes I've seen--later schemes seem mechanical somehow, without much artistic interest, or worse, simply toy-like.....although, that said, I've always rather liked the panto'd and milled parts that came on some of the Colnago Arabesques. Colnago seemed to do this kind of thing on their top bikes better than anyone else.
The brakes I was talking about in an earlier post are, in fact, as Marc noted, milled all the way through; clean open slots in both arms. The job was done very neatly, and I like it a lot. It's very cool looking, in my view...although I concur that breakage could be a real risk with these puppies.
I'll try to post some pics of them somewhere sometime.
Charles Andrews
SoCal