Originally Posted by
lotek
Ok,
Aelle was Columbus' 'budget' tubeset. Aelle was plain guage Manganese Moly as opposed to Chrome Moly of the more expensive SL and SP butted tubes. Aelle R was a later version that was
butted. Aelle tubing was cold drawn tubing which I believe meant it could be brazed faster
(less temperature sensitive than the SL or SP tubing). Aelle was used on mid level bikes, including
entry level racing frames, bikes made with aelle tubing generally were outfitted in good solid
mid tier components (i.e. the Victory gruppo).
It's very interesting that in the 80's Bicycle Guide ran a blind test of bikes made with 7 various
tubesets from Reynolds and Columbus' best, down to I believe the Aelle and Reynolds 501 levels and
not one tester could discern a significant difference in the ride of the bikes.
Marty
Aelle was carbon-manganese not manganese-molybdenum (MnMo). The latter is basically equivalent to chromium-molybdenum (CrMo). MnMo and CrMo require a lower and more finely controlled brazing temperature. Carbon-manganese withstands the higher temperatures of automated brazing without significant loss of strength and thus as better suited for mass production. However, in the end, it is not quite a strong as CrMo or MnMo, though it's closer to these two than it is to hi-tensile steel.