Originally Posted by
BikeToWork
I bought the wheel online from BWW and it never gave me trouble for two years. Recently though, spoke nipples are breaking with sickening regularity (only on the back wheel).
Short spoking is so common these days, that's it's almost par for the course. Truly careful selection of components is one thing that separates the artisan hand builders from the production shops including those who build by hand.
Your experience is typical because brass nipples while weaker than the spoke, they're strong enough to last a while. But wheels flex and the brass used isn't noted for high fatigue resistance. Also being a tube, the effects of flex are higher because the material is farther from the neutral axis. Couple that a spoke ending near the rim, and you have the perfect recipe for failure, ie concentrate the maximum flex into the smallest place.
Folks get away with it because the wheels do hold up for a while and by the time fatigue becomes an issue, they've either been crashed, or the owner figures he got good life and so doesn't complain.