This thread must be upsetting a lot of Masi owners out there! I'm pretty sure that none of my classics were ever touched, never mind being built by Mr The Flying Scot!
Russell Mowat
Irvine
Scotland
> 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