Basso Palta Disc Ekar review

The Palta is Basso’s third iteration of a fast gravel bike. It sits alongside the more rugged-terrain focused alloy-carbon mix Terra, which has a pivot-equipped rear triangle.

The Palta’s slender, lightweight and aero-optimised frameset places it firmly in the racey gravel camp, similar to the BMC Kaius, Factor Ostro Gravel, and – to a degree – the Specialized Crux.

The name Palta comes from the word used in Veneto, Italy for the high roads where tarmac turns to gravel. Think of it as the region's version of Tuscany’s Strada Bianca, and you’ll get a reasonable feel for the Palta’s intended use.

Testing has shown the Palta to be a compellingly quick and competent all-road type gravel bike, which looks good too.

Basso Palta Disc Ekar frameset details

Basso makes its carbon frames in Italy. The Palta features aero-optimised tubes (with an oversized head tube), a very slender fork with a forward-shifted crown and a skinny back end with subtly dropped chainstays.

The crown design is intended to effectively boost the fork length, providing more distance for vibrations to travel through, translating to greater dissipation.

The seat tube has a cutaway for rear-wheel clearance, and accommodates a proprietary crescent-shaped seatpost.

In fact, there’s a lot of proprietary design going on with the frame.

Up front, the head tube is designed for Basso’s Paradigma integration system. This works much like FSA’s ACR in that it routes the hoses and mechanical drivetrain cables through a channel bolted to the underside of the stem.

This means you can remove the stem independently of the cabling, which, further down, runs either side of the steerer tube.

The slender fork integrates smoothly into the head tube, though the front of the head tube is wide and almost flat with just a subtle arc.

This non-aero concession is practical: once you mount a bar bag in front of it, it sits stable as it rests flush against the head tube.

At the rear, the crescent seatpost is reminiscent of a D-shaped aero post, but a cutaway at the rear makes way for the clamping system.

This uses twin grub screws to push a wedge into the post, clamping it in place. It looks complex, but works remarkably well, keeping the post secure throughout my most testing rides.

There’s no provision for gravel mudguards or luggage racks. That said, it does have provision for three bottles and a top tube Bento box.

The frame is protected with a tough (removable) plastic protector in front of the bottom bracket, shielding the down tube from rock and gravel strikes.

Overall, it’s a lightweight bike. Weighing a claimed 960g for an unpainted medium frame and a very light 270g for the fork, it’d be possible to build the Palta into a seriously light bike with the right components.

In the event, my XL-sized test bike as specified (more on that later) tips the scales at 8.67kg. This is still competitively light, especially considering the £5,199 asking price.

For comparison, Specialized’s Crux Expert is 320g lighter for £2,300 more. Perhaps even more strikingly, Orbea’s Terra M21E Team will set you back a £1,100 premium, yet is 430g heavier.

Cannondale’s similarly priced Topstone Rival AXS comes in more than a kilo and a half beefier.

Basso has designed the Palta with clearance for 700 x 45c gravel tyres, which is ample for its all-road and racey gravel leanings.

The overall quality of the frame and fork is very high, with small details you just don’t see on many big brands' offerings.

Simple aesthetic things such as the paint finish and the Italian flag painted on top of the integrated fork crown (which you can only see when turning the bars) add an undeniable sense of class and polish.

Meanwhile, the Palta features a pair of mini-tools that push into the front and rear thru-axles.

The rear tool has T25 and 5mm hex keys, while the front tool has 2.5mm and 6mm hex keys. As it happens, these are just the tools you need to tighten the bars, stem and seatpost.

Basso Palta Disc Ekar geometry

The Palta combines fast endurance road-type and gravel geometry to good effect.

My XL-sized test bike comes with a 600mm stack and 402mm reach.

Compare that to one of the best endurance bikes, such as the Giant Defy and it’s lower and longer, by 5mm and 10mm respectively.

The seat angle is road bike steep at 73 degrees, but the head angle is a more relaxed 71 degrees. The 1,053mm wheelbase and 425mm chainstay length both hint towards a focus on rough roads over technical terrain.

On balance, the geometry is what I’d be looking for in a fast gravel-biased bike that would get a lot of road use too.

Basso Palta Disc Ekar specification

My test Palta comes to the bar with a completely Italian build.

Campagnolo supplies its 1x mechanical 13-speed Ekar groupset, with a 40-tooth chainring and a 9-42 tooth cassette.

With the 35c tyres fitted, that gives a top gear equivalent to a 50/11t gearing combination, but a smallest gear significantly (3in) lighter than a 34/32t combination. That’s plenty of range for road and off-road riding.

The bike rolls on Campagnolo Shamal C17 carbon gravel wheels, weighing a claimed 1,585g, with a 21mm internal width.

This is somewhat narrower than the widths some progressive gravel wheels can boast (such as Campagnolo’s own Levante wheelset, which has a 25mm internal width). However, it's enough to accommodate the 35c Schwalbe G-One Allround tyres properly without any bulging or lightbulbing.

The front and rear rims have their own optimised profiles, with the front rim a shallower 35mm compared to the rear 40mm depth.

Each uses Campagnolo’s patented MoMag technology, which sees spoke nipples installed via a magnet (so there are no holes on the rim bed, removing the need for tubeless tape).

The straight-pull spokes are laced in the ‘G3’ spoking pattern, which sees them grouped into parallel sets of three. Campagnolo claims this design leads to improved energy transfer, while reducing stress on the spokes.

The wheels are completed with hubs featuring oversized flanges. They take easy-to-replace cup-and-cone bearings, while the freehub delivers a swift 10-degree pick-up too.

The Schwalbes are tubeless-ready (but come with inner tubes fitted).

Basso provides a dedicated carbon seatpost, topped with Selle Italia’s basic Model X saddle, in the short, wide ‘Boost’ shape.

At the front, Basso provides a carbon gravel bar with a very subtle 8-degree flare and a shallow 122mm drop. It’s clamped into place by the Paradigma stem, which has an offset bar clamp and steerer bolts hidden by a clip-on aero cover.

It's a stylish design, and the subtle flare of the bar means the Palto feels very road-ready, yet still gives plenty of clearance for your wrists when wrestling it through rougher descents in the drops.

The rear stem cover feels a little bit of an afterthought and its internal grip for the rear-facing steerer clamp bolts is easily damaged. However, there’s no denying that it looks slick and integrated.

Basso Palta Disc Ekar ride impressions

The Basso Palta delivers a great ride, but it might not be what you expect from a gravel bike.

The gravel world in 2023 covers a whole range of riding and terrain, from gravel racing on fast and flowing hardpack gravel to exploring gnarly, almost cross-country mountain bike terrain.

The Palta is certainly a racer's choice on that wide gravel spectrum. The stiff, responsive frame feels much like a quick endurance bike (similar in some respects to the Merida Scultura Endurance and Cervélo Caledonia).

Only the 1x drivetrain and larger tyres make a real difference. I think you could run the Palta with a 2x gearing system and more road-focused tyres and it would deliver a competent road ride.

On gravel, it’s a very quick bike when the conditions allow. On wide hard-packed dirt roads, it's enthrallingly fast, yet not uncomfortable.

The back end is stiffer than the front, but I found the excellent Selle Italia saddle helps cushion blows and vibrations well.

Up front, the skinny lightweight fork with its forward-shifted crown does a brilliant job of keeping buzz and noise low.

The slightly relaxed steering also helps keep the Palta feeling stable at speed.

Its lack of mass, combined with excellent frame stiffness through the bottom bracket, makes it a formidable climber on the road or rough, and it descends well too.

I like the subtle flare of the carbon bar because it's just enough to give you a bit of control-aiding width and plenty of wrist clearance in the drops.

Most importantly, it doesn’t put the brake levers at an odd angle (where you can’t reach them with your fingers).

The mechanical Ekar groupset is an anomaly in a world that’s increasingly dependent on electronic drivetrains at this sort of price.

Make no mistake, Ekar is a very good groupset. The braking has a huge amount of adjustability and it offers solid power and lots of feel.

The chain retention is excellent in the rough, too.

The shifting is satisfying as well – the mechanical movement both up and down the block is swift, and you can feel the movement more easily than you can with an electronic groupset. It's a tactile response as you apply pressure to the shifter.

The downside is Ekar can struggle slightly in hostile conditions. On a couple of particularly wet and muddy test rides, the derailleur stuttered on upshifts. After one very sticky ride, the nine-tooth cog became clogged, with the rear derailleur swamped with dirt and the cables catching grit and grime.

The skinny-for-gravel 35c tyres are impressively fast on tarmac and hard-packed gravel roads.

However, the Schwalbe tyres suffer hugely in muddy conditions. The tightly packed ‘all-road’ tread simply fills up, which in turn means lots of lost energy scrabbling for grip.

The Palta’s fast all-road geometry means it isn’t suited to singletrack and more technical trails. Its sharper steering sees the front end react, bounce and snap side to side when the going's rough.

Much like the Factor Ostro Gravel and BMC Kaius, it’ll make up time on wide-open off-road stuff (and even tarmac), you’ll just need to be prepared to slow down and take it steady when things get tight and technical.

Basso Palta Disc Ekar bottom line

Overall, the Basso Palta is an enjoyable, fun bike to ride. It’s certainly more of an all-road bike than gnarly rough stuff conqueror.

With the lines between endurance road bike and gravel bike becoming blurred, the Palta is on the gravel side, but it's closer to bikes such as the Rondo RATT, Ridley Grifn and Vitus’ Bike of the Year winning Venon Evo than it is the Ridley Kanzo Adventure or Giant’s Revolt X – another Bike of the Year winner.

If you’re looking for a bike that you’ll ride predominantly on rougher tarmac and unmetalled roads, the Palta is one of the very best around. As a bonus, it has a keener price than most of its rivals.

But, if you want to go further and deeper off into the wilderness on the toughest terrain gravel can offer, you could be best placed shopping elsewhere.