Originally Posted by fatpossum22
Can you get away with not swapping out the crank? Clearly. Is it something I would personally do? No. Given the fact that our shop works on a lot of road bikes, including those with shimano 10 speed, I've seen a number of TEN SPEED cranksets that weren't properly engineered and resulted in shifting problems (mostly from Truvativ and misc. compact cranks). This leads me to believe that its best to avoid any potential shifting problems and get a matching Shimano 10spd. crankset for your 10 speed upgrade. Just my two cents.
Ditto, I've already seen a number of 10 speed setups where going from one set of rings to another (both 10spd) resulted in differences in shifting crispness. At least one of the guys at our shop did this EXACT SAME UPGRADE, it worked pretty well, but when he finally got some spendola to buy the cranks and rings it worked substantially better.
I really don't know what else to say here...the calipers say it makes a difference, a number of guys in the shop and in the real world say it makes a difference...the only people who insist that it *doesn't* make a difference very clearly have something against Shimano and against the bike industry in general and slant their opinions and troll accordingly.