Originally Posted by Patriot
There is one very slight differance, from what I can see. The Litespeed has straight seat stays, and the QS2 is curved. The rest of the frame is exactly the same. From what I understand, they are made at t he same factory in Taiwan, and have the same quality controls, but when the stays are epoxied to the frame, the trademark of Litespeed has the straight stays applied, and the QS2 has the curved. Even the listed weights for the same size frames are within 20g of each other. That's it.
The Litespeed page says they have special Litespeed resin and "3K low density carbon", whatever that means. My guess is that they built the Pavias with resin from Vat A and the QS2s with resin from Vat B just so they can say it's special, while the actually composition of the resins is basically the same. It sounds like plain old mystery ingredient marketing, which is as old as the Bible.
Litespeed would've been better off specifying titanium dropouts and making a big deal out of that. They are probably a bit better than aluminum or carbon dropouts (harder, more durable) and would give the Pavia a bit of the Litespeed heritage.