Mtnbke, I'm sorry if it appears that I am asking you to beat a dead horse, but I am still curious about the Dyad rims. When you say that the rim failed after 6 miles, how did it fail? (Obviously, it didn't break) Or was it a spoke failure? It seems odd to me that a newly built wheel with 48 spokes would fail so quickly, even with underspeced spokes. It would seem that there was something very basically wrong with the build. I don't want to jinx anything, but I have about 2000 miles on my dyads with 40 straight 14 ga spokes. We've hit all manner of pot holes, etc, with no issues. My old tandem was a Burley duet that wore the same 27" 48 hole Sun Chinook rims for 20 years! They weighed a ton, and I felt that 48 spokes were overkill for us, since we do no loaded touring.