After spending more than 50 years shooting a bow and 30 years selling the most prestigious traditional bows in the world, I wanted to make the bow I had always dreamed of.
One that would bring together the best of what I had learned from my experience with craftsmen and customers, and everything I had dreamed of to perfect it.
The Testarossa project, as we know it today, was born in 2017, but it’s built on a long experience: manufacturing limbs in Australia (2006–2008), producing the Picchio (1995–2005), and collaborating with the finest American craftsmen (1988–2015). I’m finally starting to be satisfied with the result — the PICCHIO TESTAROSSA is exactly the bow I had always dreamed of. But the search never stops, and I keep imagining and experimenting with new solutions — it’s something I’m deeply passionate about and involved in.
I couldn’t tell you the exact moment I felt it was finished. Every time I solve a problem and find a new solution, it becomes almost impossible to imagine how it was before — then I look back and see how far I’ve come. Maybe it’s a bit like looking at my son, who today is 27 years old and 6’3″ (1.90m) tall, and finding it impossible to believe he once fit in my arms.
Since I started producing this bow myself, my passion has shifted from actual shooting to experimentation and production, so I train very little — but its characteristics let me shoot a very low draw weight (24–26#) that doesn’t require training, while still giving me a remarkably flat trajectory at long distances, with great satisfaction in competition.
I love its unique aesthetics, the incredible speed of its limbs, and the great stability that comes from a one-of-a-kind limb calibration process and the stabilizing weights in the inserts, which I always load to the maximum weight I can fit.
The greatest satisfaction is when I let someone try it for the first time: their first shot almost always goes high, because they’re used to bows with a much more curved trajectory. Then they look at the nominal draw weight, so low, and can’t believe the arrow comes out so fast and flat. Seeing that surprise adds to the pleasure of shooting it — it’s always a good day in its company.
