Originally Posted by
himespau
You know, it would look really nice to pair with this if someone were to make a vintage-inspired stem with a bit of rise attached to the headset followed by a -17 degree angle.
Sort of like the velo orange tall stack stem:
but with the hidden bolts of the old Thomson Elite stems (I think Trek did a similar thing with some of their stems in the mid-90's):
The oversized diameter would give it away as being threadless (especially in short lengths - I use a 120-130 Cinelli 1r on my road bike, so it might not be as obvious there), so it wouldn't be a perfect match for vintage bikes, but I think it'd be super cool.
I think you're on to something here. I've had this hidden bolt stem concept in my mind for a while. But hidden as in Hidden, like you won't see them at all. What this could ideally allow is to make the rise portion of the stem trimmable/customizable allowing for a very vintage looking aesthetic (relative to a typical threadless stem at least). Of course, the cost is going to go way up as we are now talking about a big block of aluminum to machine, or perhaps a forging die, but we're saving vintage framesets here. Cost no object, right?