Originally Posted by T-Mar

I strongly disagree. The whole point of mass production is to give people a quality product at a lower price point than hand made. The introduction of the seamed CrMo tubesets gave customers something that was as good as the 531 or SL tubesets but at a slightly higher weight and substantially less money. Had Columbus and Reynolds decided to exactly duplicate the dimensions of SL and 531 in Crmor and 501, they might well have discontinued SL and 531.

Easier to weld also translates to more consistency and therfore better quality. The mid-1980s bicycles were excellent quality, on par with the high-end, hand-built machines. The only thing they lacked was all that expensive hand-labor that went into producing a finer finish and a lot of little features that the average Joe does not appreciate or need.

In fact, I will go out on a limb and say that the quality of the mass produced bicycles is better than the hand-built machines. You are able to control operations like brazing, plating and painting much better with a machine than by hand. All you need is Luigi getting out of the wrong side of the bed, having a fight with the wife, a sick bambino , etc, to distract him enough to botch a frame.

There are some things that humans do better and others that machines do better when it comes to manufacturing a bicycle. But a machine will do most better, more consistently and at less expense. In my experience the failure rate on hand-built frames is higher than mass produced frames. Now I appreciate the extra work that goes onto the high end machines as much as most of you, but realistically, it's almost entirely aesthetic with little practical value and you pay for it through the nose.

If anything, those seamed, butted CrMo tubesets allowed the average Joe to experience a good riding, lighweight bicycle. Without them a lot of people would have given up on bicycles, having only been able to afford to experience hi-tensile steel. I bet a lot of us owned one at one time and they started our real appreciation of the sport.