corwin1968

I went thru the process you are currently engaged in and I spent a lot of time running gearing calculations on Sheldon Brown's website. I would suggest figuring out the gearing on your current bikes (ie, number of teeth on each chainring and number of teeth on each cog) and plug the information into the calculator. Then pay attention to what combinations you normally ride in and take note of where you feel like shifting makes almost no difference, where it feels like there's a huge jump between two gears, where you feel you need more gearing range, ditto for less gearing range. Figure out exactly what high gear you want, what low gear you want and how big you want the jumps between each gear to be. You can can then customize your crankset/cassette combo to your chosen specifications. It sounds complicated but it's really very simple once you start playing around with the calculator. I think this is the THE most important thing you can do on your builds. I don't think anyone can ever be truly satisfied with a bike where the gearing range doesn't suit them. To me, a compact road double (the 50/34) you mentioned is too high for most recreational riders. The 50 is higher than most will ever need and the 39 is not low enough for most of us, if we ride any hills, are heavy (or carry a load) or live in a windy location.

I chose a Deore triple with 48/36/26 chainrings and an 11-28 9-speed cassette. This gives me a very broad range of gears with reasonable jumps between them.

Here is the link to the calculator: http://sheldonbrown.com/gears/