Not at the '72 Worlds, which Basso won by going over the top of Italian teammate Franco Bitossi.

..which was held at Gap and which is how the Basso Gap model got it's name. And if I recall correctly, Merckx thought Bitossi was the actual champion, as there were allegations of Basso slingshotting from behind an offical's car.

I did´nt refer to you specifically. I meant, this whole discussion is about the guy whos name is on the frame actually built it himself is´nt it? To me it does´nt matter much, but to some it is obviously a very important matter and I´d like to find out more why that is so.

Ah. Your question is a very good one. You just seemed to kind of lump everyone together. I personally think the "who really built my bike" question is largely misplaced. As I posted earlier, the Renaissance master painters didn't execute every brushstroke - the master's signature meant that the painting met his high standards. Stradivari didn't build all his violins solo. And yet the myth of the individual genius is so persistent, run through the filter of 19th century Romanticism. "Western culture" celebrates the individual to an extreme degree, and nowhere is this more true than in the US. We like to believe in an "Old World" of master craftsmen carefully guarding and handing down their secrets from generation to generation. It's part of the mythology of European cultural production, stoked by something of an inferiority complex (our nation was built on factories rather than small workshops, or so we tell ourselves.) Then there is the extent to which we are disconnected from our objects of everyday use - they have a merely utilitarian value, and so we idealize other modes of production and cultural usage. Of course, there are individual producers and artists who work largely without assistance, but they tend to be the idealized exception rather than the norm.

Thanks for the clarification.

Picchio, thank you. English is´nt my native language so I am sorry if I express myself clumsily sometimes, you´ll have to bear with me. I think your explanation regarding this subject is great. One can clearly see a big difference between Europe and the US in the way we percieve the idea/myth of a master craftsman or artist working alone in his shop to develop and refine his product.
In Europe, the name, Colnago in this case, is first of all a guarantee that a frame is made to certain high standards which Ernesto has become famous for, exactly who built it is´nt that important really. They are certainly built by very skilled builders, be it Mario Rossin or someone else less known. Usually we don´t know the names of the builders of the Bianchi, Cinelli or Bottecchia Reparto Corse frames (just to name a few) either but they are considered top-class frames anyway. I think in Europe, we tend to regard the so called masters as heads of a team more than lone individuals.
In the US you have another view, perfectly explained here above, were American builders have taken the so called Old World mythology that seldom existed on the whole, and taken it one step further.
That is why American builders like Baylis, Sachs, della Santa a o are producing some of the
finest and most meticulously built frames in the world. But they are not the norm, they are the exceptions, like Dario Pegoretti in Italy. The American equivalent to the big name European builders/producers are called Trek, Schwinn/Waterford, Cannondale and Specialized.

I'm loving this thread!

Good stuff Mike01... Just watching the video on current colnago carbon frame production was enough to make me want one! The funny thing is that I can't afford the Italian marquees, which were often torched by another hand than the name on the down tube, instead I have ended up owning several bikes which were actually brazed by the man on the down tube, because they are lesser known due to smaller production numbers!

Those are Marinoni (who certainly had others filing the lugs and painting the frames, probably mitering the tubes too) of which I have two and my Corky Gulbransen who I also know had the lugs filed by assistants (his son and mark lobbit who recalls specifically doing the cut outs on the frame I own).

But yeah great discussion guys keep it up!

your not going to believe this but... you may know that i advertise for confente bike on craigslist(why not?) anyway a guy emailed me yesterday saying " why not get brian bayliss to just make you one as he made all the confente frames anyway - just call him and ask" well, this blows me away if its true. personally i dont believe it for one minute. i do however believe the frame builder that told me colnago didnt build his frames.

So, its your opinion that Ugo and Ugo only built every frame himself up to certain unknown date? Unless an individual was there, you, me or someone else we'll never know exactly when, and if, any builder stopped building every frame. We simply have to filter out the propaganda thats spread by the builders and by the fans.

There are only some many hours in as year. How many frames can 1 person build, without sacrificing quality, while performing all the other duties as a company owner?

I'm not knocking Ugo, his quality, workmanship or integrity. It doesnt matter to me if someone else held the torch, sometimes apprentices can do a better job than the mentor. I recall Dave Moulton, in these very pages, saying his apprentice was a better fillet brazing builder than himself.

I'm just calling out any individuals abilty to build more than a 2 hundred frames or so per year without someone else touching a torch.

Yeah, right, but that is my point to a certain extent, besides the famous Italian marquees that are famous due to high quality, good marketing and big production numbers there were hundreds of skilled builders in Italy, in almost every major town there was a couple (Italians are very local, they won´t travel many miles to buy a frame if they´ve got a good builder nearby)of them and most of them are almost unknown outside Italy, like Angelo Picchio, Calzone, Marnati, Freschi, Milani, Montelatici, Stelio Belletti, Pellizoli, Montagner, Zullo, Grandis, Chesini, Bruno Tardivo, Mauro Sannino, Mario Vicini just to drop some names. I´d say almost all of them worked for the "big" brands at one time or another.
Giuseppe Marinoni was one of these guys that happened to come to Canada and stayed by coincidence just like Mario Confente went to the US to work for Faliero as a contract builder as a matter of fact. Colnago actually tried to make him stay at home in Italy to build his frames for him as far as I know.
Pegoretti is a one man show today like many of the US builders, with a long waiting list for an expensive frame, but before he branched out on his own in 97 he built bikes for many others, not the least almost every major pro rider in the peloton in the early 90ies.

How many frames do you think De Rosa produced say, during the US "bike boom?" Where are all these "more than 2 hundred" frames?
This is where your photo is out of place, IMO. You use it as evidence that De Rosa was not the "boutique builder" it is claimed to have been. But that photo proves nothing about the period that really matters, when the lugs were still hand-filed. That picture documents one period in De Rosa's history, and so it proves nothing regarding that history as a whole. I'm not claiming that Ugo personally built every frame, at any period except perhaps the very earliest in De Rosa history. Even then, he may well have had helpers. But that photo you gleefully deride as evidence that De Rosa was not a small boutique shop (lotek's post to which you were responding), says nothing about the period before 1980. How many De Rosas from that period do you see come up for sale? All the evidence is that they were building very few frames throughout the 70's. De Rosa could probably have brazed them all himself, or at least the vast majority. Not saying he did, just that he could. You seem to know little about De Rosa in the 60's and 70's for someone willing to be dismissive of the idea that De Rosa was not a "boutique builder," as lotek suggests. Filtering out the propaganda, the preponderance of the evidence I've encountered from knowlegeable sources suggests that De Rosa could be described as a "boutique builder" right through the 70's (otherwise, where are all the bikes? - 60's and 70's De Rosas are relatively few and far between. And if not "boutique," why so much variation frame-to-frame?) It aso suggests that he was far more "hands on" with the bikes far longer that Masi and Colnago, to cite two "less-boutique" operations. Ugo could certainly have brazed the majority of frames during that period, from what we can tell of De Rosas production (again, not a lot of frames/bikes out there, relatively speaking.) Ugo's hands do suggest that he was directly involved in bike building at least until fairly recently (as per Citoyen du Monde), and he probably did personally produce some of the early TIG frames (both steel and aluminum.) This all stands in stark contrast to guys like Colnago, whose non-building kicked off this thread.
Incidentally, Ugo does not seem to relish the duties of "company owner," and indeed seems to have delegated them as thoroughly as possible, other than obligatory media photos and show appearances. Unlike Colnago, he has never enjoyed being the "front man" for his bikes or sought the limelight. This in itself should suggest that Ugo is not particularly interested in propagandizing his bikes, though certainly there are marketing folks anxious to do so. Ugo has always prefered working quietly in the back to wearing a suit and tie at the front - which in itself sets him apart from many of the other more ambitious producers.
I'm the last guy to oversubscribe to the vaunted "Italian bike myth" that seems to be the windmill for so many tilters here. All the more reason to actually try to sort the wheat from the chaff, rather than waving photos and crying "propaganda!" You're all about filtering propaganda but your tool for doing so is one photo? (Produced by De Rosa I might add - if only they'd known they were handing you a smoking gun.)

A lot of the better known builders were, of course, clustered around Milan and Verona, and some did achieve regional and national fame. Then, too, Italy is not of a piece - many more of these small-scale builders exist(ed) in the north than in the south. But you're correct of course about the many smaller builders, some of whom, like Marnati, built for pro teams. To your very good list I'd add, for starters, Fossati, Marastoni, Branca (who built Filotex team bikes), and the elusive and hugely influential Giuseppe Pela. And yeah, Picchio Specials really are pretty special.

This is an interesting thread. I'm so glad though that I collect and ride Bottecchias. At least I won't be devistated if I find out my bike was built by an Italian plumber moonlighting as a frame builder :D

The whole thing about Italian plumbers becoming framebuilders is clearly apocryphal, since plumbing undoubtedle pays much better. Wouldbe moonlighting Italian plumbers would do much better to simply work overtime. (And why does plumbing come in for so little respect as a craft, anyway?)

Kommisar89, I also own a Bottecchia Squadra, custombuilt for me (a la misura) by Carnielli (Bottecchia) Reparto Corse in 1990. Let me tell you that those guys working there were just as fine builders as any
other "famous" name in the business in Italy. Actually, one of the chief builders was a guy called Brandazzi and he was bought over by Francesco Moser when he started his own frame building operation in Trento in the early/mid 80ies. Don´t look down on these guys just beacuse they are not well known.

You´re right. Most builders were situated in the northern part of Italy, the traditional cycling regions of Piemonte, Lombardia, Veneto and Toscana. And thank you for mentioning Giuseppe Pela, another great builder, but there were so many of them just 20 years ago!
Today I am afraid most of them are gone, it´s not possible to make a living building frames today, they become to expensive for most cyclists. And do remember that ALL of these guys, from Colnago to Pela, are/were in this business for the money, not to try to be an artist like Michelangelo or something. They wanted to make a living from it, they were craftsmen and as soon as it did´nt pay they ceased and did something else.
Btw, I´d love to see your Picchio Special, there are´nt many of those around anymore, even in Italy!

How about Billato? hehe I have one of those also (of course branded as something else as almost all Billatos were/are), built by his sons of course, AFAIK they're still operating though I doubt they do much steel these days.

well, i think of all the frame builders, mario confente is seen today to be cyclings michalangelo no?

Depends on what that definition is.

He might have been an excellent framebuilder, but from what I've seen, not unusually superior to any other framebuilder, back in the day, pushing out frames of similar caliber (i.e., lots of fine filing, pantographing, and panache).

I'd venture to say that the aura surrounding his name (and frames) is primarily due to the fact that he passed on at a relatively young age, not that his work vastly outshined that of anyone else in the business. Frankly - and forgive me if this sounds blunt - I believe most of this aura was manufactured by name-droppers who seized Confente's death as a means of turning the bikes into something of exclusive snob-value - as if his tragic end was something out of a television soap opera.

-Kurt

Confente was a special builder in that he understood that it was possible to get people to pay real money for a frame. When he was alive he was selling bikes at prices that were higher than almost anybody else. Without him, teh boutique builders in the US might not exist. His workmanship was also better than average and he was more competent than most at coming up with geometries that worked for the rider. Do I believe that all of these positives translate into the value given to his frame today? Not really. Would I put his bikes on a par with a Cinelli? No, I believe his to be superior. I also agree that there was some aura building with Confente by speculators. He is one of the more important builders of the US.

The first guy that Moser called was a builder by the name of Marastoni. Marastoni turned down the gig because Moser's brothers were interested in quantity and not quality. Being a builder for Moser has never been considered a particularly important calling card.

Mike I know that you want to add something useful but please don't name drop if you are not fully aware of the people who you are writing about. A few of the names listed never built anything (Montelatici for one, but likely two others too), they were simply nameplates for a shop. Others were not persons but rather multiple generations of a family or multi-person teams (Picchio, Marnati, Grandis, Chesini, Sannino). Others were apprentices who developed their trade under real master whose shadow they never surpassed (Freschi under Brambilla and Pogliaghi). Marinoni did not emigrate as a framebuilder. Pegoretti is not a one man show...

say, does anyone out there cooberate(?) the guy that said brian bayliss is the guy that actually built the confente bikes. well maybe in la but when mario moved up to monterey i am assuming he would have built those himself-no?

and I still have no idea who built my Zilioli frame...(probably one of the big builders and Zilioli puts his name on it.)

But I know who built and painted my Davidson. Bill Davidson himself. I brought it into his shop in Seattle one time many years after I had him make it. He looked it over because he saw it was one of his early frames and had his own personal touches on it.

Joe,
I seriously doubt Brian Baylis built all of Mario's frames.
but why don't you post on CR list and ask Brian? he is a frequent poster over there.