After following this thread with some interest I've reached a simple conclusion: if a frame has someone's name on it, and that someone was not involved in any way in the design, construction, or supervision of construction, of said frame, then said frame is *not* a genuine whatever-it-may-be. It may be a nice frame, even a great frame, but it's not a whatever.
The Stradivarius violin analogy is instructive, if a little extreme (bicycle frames are not great violins, and never will be)...the brutal truth is, if Stradivarius didn't make it, then it's not a Stradivarius. Just ask anyone who wants to own a Strad and you'll see exactly what I mean.
Similarly with antique french boehm flutes from the 19th century..there are those of us who feel that if Louis Lot or Vincent Godfroy or Claude Rive neither made the flute themselves, nor at least supervised its construction and approved/QC'ed it on the way out of the shop, then it's simply not a Lot or Godfroy or Rive, no matter the name on it, and no matter how similar it may be to flutes that *were* actually made by said artisans.. (in the case of all three of these makers, successors carried on both the marque, and the designs, long after the original maker left the premises, by death or retirement)
I feel the same way about Masis and Pogliaghis. If Sante wasn't around when the frame was made, neither brazing it himself nor making sure it was made the way he wanted it made, then it's not a Pogliaghi, no matter the external decoration, or anything else, for that matter.
This is, by the way, why I feel California Masis are as genuine as italian Masis. Not only is the design identical, Faliero was around when the Carlsbad factory started, and had at least some part in making the frames, and/or supervising construction, even if briefly...who was it, Mr. Baylis maybe? Who mentioned that Faliero would make sure the forks had the proper bend by jumping up and down on them in the bending jig... now, that's involvement.
Of course, all that said, I think it's far less the case that the master's touch has much effect on the way a frame performs, as compared to how a musical instrument performs...make a perfect copy of a Pogliaghi, decorate it appropriately, age it carefully, and probably very few of us could tell the difference between it and a real Pogliaghi...probably none of us, admittedly.
Musical instruments are different.
Stradivarius had something...Louis Lot did too...and Verne Q. Powell of the famous Powell Flute Company of Boston cut every embouchure hole of every flute that went out the door almost to the day he retired. The day he stopped doing that was the day those flutes ceased to be Powells, even though thousands of excellent instruments went out the door long after Powell was gone.
Charles "purist" Andrews
Los Angeles