1. In order for me to sponsor you - you actually have to RIDE a bike instead of just volunteering, running events, supporting your club and team, showing up at every race, cheering for everyone, heckling the hecklers, and always handing me a beer.
2. I didn't steal your team.....If I did you still ended up with the big guns that I can't afford.
3. I would never mess anyone's wheels up intentionally. Even yours. Although it WOULD be tempting.

Sorry for the "fire and forget" yesterday but that was indeed the answer. People need to take a step back and think about this industry. Why do people buy what they buy? When it comes to wheels what draws in 99% of the market to buy wheels? It isn't durable, purpose built wheels designed for the application. Why? because they are too heavy and the first thing that a shopper looks at after having a wheelset draw their attention by looks? Weight.

Now ask yourself - will that blingy low spoke count uber wheel designed to perform at the limits of it's ability under a 140# Pro racer perform just as well under a 280# club rider? No. It's like taking a bridge and then putting 4 times the traffic it was designed for on it.

If they worked well wouldn't they be on the most popular and best selling bikes out there? I mean of course family hybrid and city bikes. I mean they have fewer spokes/components and are lighter using less raw material - they require less machine time and labor to produce.....so why aren't they? Because they would suck at that task.

I build conservatively. Why? Because I can and it works. If I had a $ for every 190# cyclist who has come to me and said, "Yeah, but conventional wisdom says I can run 20/24 not 24/28" then I could retire and stop selling wheels. I have never seen anyone lose a race because they had too many spokes. I have seen people drop out because they busted a spoke. My favorite is when someone says, "but company xyz recommends 20/24 out to 210#'s." Yup - but they also use aluminum nipples which are pretty much assured to fail through normal use....so...we know where they are coming from.

So why doesn't everyone ride 32 or 36 spoke wheels? Weight and looks. Aerodynamics too. So understand the hand off, know consciously what choice you are making and live with the results. "Hey I just busted a spoke!!!" "you're 300# and riding a 20 spoke rear" "Yeah....so? The internet told me that was fine." So why were you riding the 20 spoke rear, "Because I liked it" "Cool but now you have to deal with a broken spoke. Just keep that in mind."

For anyone over about 215 I start moving into my "real" builds. FWIW - some of my high end hub manufacturers cringe whenever I say I am putting a 250#rider on hub xyz. They always say something along the lines of "that doesn't make me feel very comfortable. They will probably have problems."

There are options out there. They aren't glorious. They aren't blingy but they work. They aren't really advertized but are in catalogs - wholesale catalogs. They are on the manufacturer's sites.

Understand that these recommendations are for what I consider to be the "middle range" - too heavy for "high performance" wheels but "too light" for "industrial wheels"

As far as rims - DT, Velocity and Sun Ringle, H+ Sons
Hubs - White, Chris King, DT, Shimano, Campy, Phil Wood
Spokes - DT Comps, Wheelsmith (part of Hayes with Sun now) DB14
Nipples - brass. duh.
If you're in this range you should be starting at 32 spoke.