varminter

I bet 5 upfront and 10 in the rear would sell better, especially at Wal-Mart.
Can't count how many times people asked me "how many speeds is your bike"?..LOL

varminter

Haha!
Me thinks I'll stick with a 50 speed bike

Kimmo 

What are you laughing at, the apostrophe?

varminter

This..

Kimmo 

Yeah, I know you were laughing at that sentence.

Comprehension fail.

varminter

Oh, so you were making a funny! Sorry, sometimes I don't comprehend foreign "humour"

varminter

I wasn't laughing at the sentence. I was laughing at the content OF the sentence

layedback1

My point of this thread was only question the ever increasing complexity of more gears. I am not questioning the choice of anyone that thinks as many as 33 speeds are needed. I do maybe question if people that like that many gears have the gear inches in their heads and do double shifts to take advantage.

I for one do not keep my cadence exactly at 90 or what ever. I usually ride with the middle chainring in front and use the middle 7 in the rear. Hills will find me in the granny ring or the big ring going down hill.
Simply put I ride purely for fun. At 72 I am not an Armstrong wanna be nor try to over think gearing. One more thing as a technician there is an old adage that applies--------what aint there cant break.

Garthr

We do have a choice however. You don't have to use cassettes. I'll use FW's for as long as they are made or my stock runs out..... which is not anytime soon. 7 cogs is fine for me, but everyone is different.

Keeping a consistent cadence is much over rated for most riders. Someone claims it works great for them, then all of the sudden, it must be true for everyone, regardless of how much or little they ride. This is life though my friends, it's been going on since the beginning of time.

In our world of monkey see-monkey copy ...... just ignore the other monkeys and see how it goes.

HillRider

I don't think anyone was atacking you for your question but "progress" is always going to happen even beyond the point where it offers any advantage. It may be Marketing and Sales driven but, hey, it keeps people employed.

I live in a very hilly area so a wide range of gearing is useful, or even essential, to me and as the number of cogs have increased the obvious gaps between gears have decreased. I've learned to love the 16T cog and with 10-speeds I can have it even with a relatively wide range cassette like a 12x27.

I'm 67 and certainly no Armstrong either but I see no downside to the higher cog count freehubs for my use. Maybe 11 cogs is pushing the boundry of reasonableness but I don't have to buy them.

Obviously, you are free to buy or not buy what you wish. As Garthr noted, even 6 and 7-speed freewheels are still available and 7-speed cassettes are easy to find in a fairly wide range of configurations. You can still be "retro" successfully.

Sixty Fiver

I tow and haul a lot of stuff on my bikes so having a wide range with even steps is just as beneficial here as it is when I am on the trail as it helps maintain a steady cadence... I am pretty happy with my crappy old 12 speed on the road and will swap freewheels to suit my riding. this could be a 14-28 for days when I will be doing a lot of climbing or a single step 13-18 for all out efforts on the flats.

davidad

Ditto. shimano has a patent for a 14 cog cluster.

Doohickie

Someday, probably when 11-speed rear cog sets are the standard, I'll try a 9-speed. I'm a late adopter of technology. And then maybe I'll get it, too.

HillRider

That patent, and it's corresponding unique chain, was issued in the early '90's so I believe it's expired by now, at least in the US.

However, Shimano never commecialized them so the implementation must have been a lot harder than the concept.

joejack951

You seem to not be understanding a simple point. One big advantage of more cogs in a cassette is eliminating the need to make double shifts to get an evenly spaced wide range of gearing.

Garthr

More cogs are fine for many people, for many it is not. I'm fine with 7 cogs, and friction shift. More cogs makes it more of a PITA, not less.

The problem , for those that dislike more cogs..... is the lack of choice. Why should one be forced to use 9,10 or 11 (and soon to be more) cogs when it's not needed. Manufacturers like to say "it's progress". Ha! For the racers maybe ..... but most riders don't race.

joejack951

What are you trying to say? Do you want manufacturers to offer even broader ranges of bikes so that they can include 7 speed, friction shift models for the 0.01% of potential buyers who want that option? What about even more retro guys than you who only want 5 speeds?

I also don't see how more cogs can make cycling (I presume that's what you are referring to) more of a pain. If I don't need the next closest gear, I just swing the lever a little further and double or triple shift. Do you own a brifter equipped bike?

strop

One point that has to be noted is that on a bike with downtube shifters, such as my eight speed indexed bike, you don't tend to shift as often so having wider spaced gears is not that much of an issue. On my other bike with brifters it takes no effort to shift up or down and I don't have to move my hands, and as a result I shift a lot more often even when I could easily continue riding in the current gear.

I suspect that the move to brifters has more to do with the sudden jump in rear cogs than pure marketing. It has to be practical of course and right now it seems that even 10 is difficult as I feel my eight speed shifts more easily and smoother than my ten speed (both Shimano).

P.S. I'm old enough to remember when the term ten speed racing bike meant something quite different to what it means today.

tjspiel

Most people that don't race also aren't that particular about having a wide range of choices in cassettes. Two years ago I was able to buy 6 speed freewheels from my LBS. Maybe that's not true anymore. I guess I don't know. There are still new bikes with 7 speed cassettes on the market.

For those that don't care about keeping up, the nice thing about having 10 speed cassettes out there is that 8 speed cassettes get a lot cheaper.

noglider 

Indeed. I have a new (for me) bike with a 9-speed cassette and brifters, and the ability to shift often and easily, with small ratio changes, adds a lot to the pleasure. Not a necessity at all, but very nice to have.

Mos6502

It just seems like all too much fiddling with the radio in the car.

Soon people will be shifting gears more than they will be riding. ;D

joejack951

Seems like too much curmudgeonliness (checked M-W, yes, that's a word) being displayed in this thread

noglider 

Ha! Mos6502 and joejack951, you're both right, even though you have opposite views!

strop

Correction, soon people will be not shifting gears at all. Technology introduced at the top end nearly always filters down the food chain until even Walmart bikes have it. Who thinks a 2020 3 x 10 won't have auto-cadence/grade sensing automatic shifting based on some evolution of Di2. I mean we're already getting computers to do some very difficult tasks (like transcribing voice mail into text) and by comparison figuring out the optimal gear for a given speed is trivial. The enabling technology is the electronic shifting at which point it is not if it happens but when.

Some people will be freaked out by the bike shifting on it's own but then again I still find brifters kind of freaky so I don't see that as a long term problem. Look at just about every technology the S Class Mercedes introduced (ABS, Air-Bags, Stability Control etc.) that is now ubiquitous in just about every car made.

And then we'll finally be able to go back to decent looking aero levers and get rid of these ugly brifter things :-)

noglider 

I'm not sold on the concept of automatic shifting. There are times when I want to pedal hard and slowly and others when I want to pedal fast and easily. How can the system know what I want?