Originally Posted by gugie

Yeah, but that's an answer to a different question. Why not use short reach front and rear? Ernesto et a al save a lira/franc/pence or two, and we call can find a lot of corners cut on production bikes to save money.

Giving you a bit more room for fenders in the rear doesn't help at all with fender clearance in the front in this scenario. We're talking about frames in an era with long chainstays and fork blades that were made for fenders.

The OP has a Paramount and needs a long reach brake in the back, I believe. I'm going off of RiddleOfSteel 's Paramount that was at the Atelier a few years ago, it needed a truly long reach brake, not standard, for the rear. He had a matched set of standard reach sidepulls he wanted to use, I relocated the rear brake bridge so he could do so. I thought at the time "why would they make a frame to use different reach brakes?"

If they wanted to "de-rate" the rear brake, they were solving a problem that really didn't exist. Proof of this are the many models of production frames made with same reach brakes front and rear from that time period. I don't remember seeing any posts complaining that the rear brake was too powerful on bikes from that era.