Hey Everyone,
Someone contacted me about a Masi GC that they are thinking about buying. The bike was apparently purchased in Holland in 1977. There is a number FF55 somewhere on the frame. Would appreciate if very much if someone can tell me what FF55 means and if it's even possible that the bike is a GC with a number like that (I'm thinking maybe it's actually a Prestige).

Thanks in advance for any info.

Bruce

My understanding is that Italian Masi's were not stamped with a serial number, unlike the American ones. The stamp typically indicates the size and the subcontractor who built the frame. No idea what FF stands for.

Gran Criterium or Gran Corsa?

I have a Masi GC! Guess which one!

Would the frame size by chance be 55 c-t? There are instances of Italian frame with two alphabetical characters before the frame size.

It's possible that the frame is 55 cm but I haven't seen photos of the bike. The more I dig, the more likely it seems that the bike is Italian but I just can't figure out what FF means. Could FF be the initials of the frame builder? None of the sites I've been to mention FF being an abbreviation for a location where frames were built or a maker. It's very confusing.

Go to Bob Hovey's Masi pages.

AFAICT, there is no rhyme or reason to the letters on Italian frames. They can also be duplicated. My own frame is S56 and I believe there is another S56 on the Italian Masi registry.

Actually for the Italian frames, the number is the frame size c-t, and the letter is the builder or contractor's initial. So it's typical to see the same combo.

I was going to query you on that as I had not seen any info supporting the contractor letter. But I did one more search and came across a Brian Bayliss post on CR that said just that.

Part of his post below...

Serial numbers on Italian built Masis are a little more difficult to
know everything about, but still much is known. At that time Masi frames
were built my several sub-contractors in various cities near Milano. I
have seen one Italian Masi with only a size stamped on it and no letter
preceeding it which indicated the contractor. I have seen one frame with
the letters of two different contractors preceeding the size. Since
there were all these independant builders I don't think it all that
unusual that there are some inconsistant markings from time to time. So
far I have seen these letters used: M, A, B, P, V, AV, and one that is
an "M" but it's upside down (which is easy to to when using number
stamps). If anyone else has a pre 1973 Italian Masi that has any other
letter or combination, please let me know so I can take note of it.

Learn something every day. Too bad we do not know who the contractors were for each letter.

There is a list of some of the names associated with the initials somewhere on the web. I think buried on Hovey's site, or maybe in an archived CR post?

My '69/'70 GC is F 53. F is listed but I can remember the exact name.

Details will tell what it is, Gran Criterium, Prestige, or even a Faliero Masi.

I have seen an FF prefix before. As others have mentioned, the numbers are for the size, center to tip top. Masis measure small for their stated size. The prefix code gets debated, and "firsthand" reports acknowledge subcontractors and some others don't.
I will go with the subcontractor concept, with a few follow on comments. Not all subs made forks. I have seen some prefixes get recycled over the decades. Within an era, frames with the same prefix have similar details. On frames from the 80's on in my observation, there is also a date code in smaller number stamps. In the 70's it seems to appear frequently on the steerer as a month and year.
The above is for Italian Masi frames only from the Vigorelli.
California got different treatment.
Bob Hovey's articles are pretty good, Brian Baylis has seen quite a bit from his work at the Carlsbad plant and later restoration work.
Brian has even turned a big Masi into a smaller one.

Deep in the bikelist.org archives has a few pointers. There is also P, PA, MA, and even no stamps. Just to confuse things.

I was intrigued, so I did search the CR archives. Seems the letter is a city/province code (some argument as to which), that likely tells you who built it but not definitively.

This is what I found in a CR post by Brian Baylis and note that the complete post indicates these applied to pre-1970 Specials, not necessarily to the GCs

M for Milano
V for Verona
B for Bergamo
A for an unknown city at the moment
P for another unknown city
AV I have seen once and appears to be a Verona frame, don't know why
the "A".

And also this bit of info in another CR post from Brian Baylis:

During this period I was not exactly taking notes nor asking the type of
questions we all might as today if we had the chance to go back in time,
but still many things were discussed (as well as we could through the
translator and other methods) and what was meant by the "MC" was a
question we all knew the answer to. It stood for "Masi California OR Masi
Carlsbad", it didn't really matter. We also eventually found out that the
Italian frames marked "V" were the bikes made in Mario's shop in Verona,
which he explained to us himself. The bikes marked "M" were made in
Milano. No one ever said who in Milano actually made the frames, but I got
the impression that there were deffinitely (sic) more than one and possibly
several builders there. So beyond that, the rest is guesswork. But if what
Masi and Mario both told is is true, I would say that the letters refer to
the subcontractor in one way or another, in the majority of cases.

I included the above for the info that "V" was likely built by Mario Confente's shop...note I said shop. And also to show that there may have been multiple builders in a city. For those of you who do not know, Brian Baylis is a premier builder and painter who did work for Masi in the early US days.

Again, the caveat. That info applied to pre-1970 Masis and may not apply to later GCs. Clearly more people were building for Masi starting in the early 70s.

Elsewhere there was a mention of Pela as a builder.
Alluding that he was as good or better than Mario.

There's a better list out there somewhere, which had individual names associated with the letter codes. But to clarify, these were letters stamped along with the M XX stamping. Like my bike is a M53 but also has an "F" stamped. This was for the builder's name which was listed as something like "Fibalito" (which is wrong but I cannot remember what the actual name was).

I think the contractor shop codes were used instead of the M, like V XX or A XX.

Maybe Bob Hovey emailed me the list at some point as I cannot find it on the web? Not sure if he's still into it but you might try writing him direct.

Yes he is still into it. I did not find any reference on his site concerning this, so either he does not have the info or maybe considers it too iffy to post. I will drop him an email

Here is what Bob Hovey has to say on the subject. Used with permission.

Letter prefixes on Masi frame size stamps meant different things at different times. During the Faliero era (say '72 and earlier), it was usually an "M" (some have suggested "Milano," but almost certainly "Masi"). However, there were other letters which supposedly designated the city or subcontractor of origin (Masi farmed out a lot of frames during the bike boom era). For example, we are almost completely certain "V" was Verona (Mario Confente's shop). "B" could be Bergamo. There are quite a few "A" frames from the early 60's, most of them Nervex-lugged and as far as I know all sold in the US, so I'm curious if these are VeloSport imports and for this small group at least, there's an outside chance that "A" might mean "America" (to be clear, this is purely my own speculation). Several early '70's "AM" frames have turned up, I've often wondered if these were Alberto's early frames when he first started building (one notable exception of course, "AM58" built for Italian champion and national team coach Alfredo Martini in the early '50's). There are quite a few "P" bikes, and a large number of them are pistas, so I suppose there might be some connection there.

For a time, Alberto and Faliero were somewhat reticent about the meanings of these letters, but a few years ago Alberto told me (through a translator) that the bike boom era letters were indeed city designations for subcontrators. As for the pre-bike boom years, I suspect that the letters may have had numerous meanings... they might have been subcontractors, but they might also designate team bikes or a personalized designation for special customers.

Beginning around 1973-74, Alberto began using a two letter prefix that represented the initials of the person or bike shop which ordered the frame. This, along with his date codes (YYMM, in a smaller 1/8" stamp) provided enough variation to insure that there would be almost no frames with duplicate markings, without having to use consecutive serial numbers the way US bikes did (which can be hard to keep track of... see Rob Roberson's build list on my site, there are several duplicate series of numbers). The date code didn't begin at the same time as the double letter "Customer Code," I think it started a bit later, around 1975. In 1974, some bikes were just stamped "4," and prior to that (beginning in the late 60's) a date was out of sight on the steering tube (and was not always a good indication of the production date since forks were often built in large batches months ahead of time, and might not even be by the same person... for example, Confente began his work with Masi by just building forks, so occasionally you'll find a bike with a "V" fork and an "M" bottom bracket).


I am still looking for info on the "S" prefix.

Wow, confusing stuff. Thanks for all of the replies. Obviously, I need to see some good photos of the bike (which I haven't).

it is not confusing, just intriguing. How mundane would it have been if the bikes had fully decodable serial numbers throughout the eras?

lmao

Noone has been able to determine what my M56V means on my 1972 GC. Built in Milan, repainted in Verona (it was a bad repaint, about 3mm of gold).

V is for Victory, of course.