recycle.reviews

The lever group on this Pavoni is the original 1974 casting -- you can see the flash lines from the foundry, untouched by polishing. The refurbisher (a small operation in Bergamo¹) has replaced the pump, the boiler, and every gasket. The chassis is original. The chrome is original. The verdict is straightforward.

It pulls a clean 28-second shot at 92 C with a 17-gram dose. Not because the engineering is brilliant -- it isn't, lever espresso is unforgiving -- but because the new gaskets seal correctly and the new pump produces consistent pressure. The salvage is honest. The price (€640) is honest. The product works.

Where it fails: the steam wand is the original single-hole tip², which microfoams milk poorly. A modern four-hole tip costs €14 and is a five-minute installation. The refurbisher should have done this. They did not.

The aluminium has provenance: galley panels from a 1998-build A320, decommissioned in 2024, milled into 2 mm sheet, then stamped into stool form³. We pulled a sample to a laboratory in Eindhoven and confirmed the alloy is 2024-T3, consistent with aerospace-grade origin. The chair is what it claims to be.

The seat surface has the original anodized finish, lightly sanded -- you can still feel the indentations where serial stamps once lived. The maker insists this is a feature, and on this point the maker is correct. The stool refuses to pretend it is virgin material. The legs flex 3 mm under an 80 kg load, well within tolerance.

Where it disappoints: the floor glides are cheap polymer⁴, and they will fail in two years. The rest of the chair will outlast the buyer. This mismatch is the only sin.

The driver is genuinely a premium part -- a 50 mm planar magnetic salvaged from a decade-old flagship, retested, regraded. The magnesium yoke is recycled and the headband is new injection-moulded. The story is good. The story is also where the integrity of this product ends.

Frequency response on our test rig⁵ shows a 4 dB depression between 2 kHz and 5 kHz -- a region that matters for vocal clarity. The original driver did not have this depression. The new yoke clamping is to blame: the planar diaphragm is being deflected at rest, and it cannot move freely on initial transients.

The salvage premise is not the problem. The integration is the problem. A correctly-designed yoke would have given this product the bench score it deserves. As shipped: do not buy.

The yarn is short-staple, recovered from shredded denim -- the supplier confirms 92% post-consumer cotton, 8% virgin polyester binder⁶. We measured the GSM at 380, the breaking strength at 28 N, and the dimensional stability at 2.1% shrinkage after the third wash. These are good numbers.

The product is what it says it is. The colour is restrained -- a chambray blue and a faded indigo, because the source material can only be these colours. There are no decorative motifs, because decoration would betray the salvage.

It is not soft. It is not meant to be. It is a structural blanket -- the cotton equivalent of exposed concrete. We approve.