My premise is that I can't see the flaw in this theory. What if you reduced cable pull to 1mm per shift? Think that'd work? Okay, what if it was 5mm? 'Compressionless' housing isn't truly compressionless, hence the fact you don't use it for brakes, and the existence of segmented housing.

This compression, along with cable friction, constitutes noise in the signal of the shift, does it not? And it remains relatively constant no matter what the cable pull is, amirite?

So a larger signal would have a higher SNR. Where can I be wrong with this?

So most people don't have an issue with this. I never had the slightest issue with 7spd, myself. But I wasn't too happy about the SNR on 8spd, since the adjustment can be a bit fiddly once normal housing degradation sets in...

Folks can cast as many aspersions on my skills as they like, but in addition to my practical experience, I've spent pretty much my whole time on this forum in the Mechanics section chatting with far more experienced guys than myself, not to mention the fact IQ tests put me in the 98th percentile, so it's a bit of a stretch to suggest I'm missing something basic.

The stuff I'm using isn't new. But the DA chain and Ultegra cassette I have show minimal wear, and the chain has no twisted links. This gear would certainly pass muster on an 8spd system.

But the problem I seem to be running into is that the finer tolerances involved here mean a close visual inspection of everything just doesn't tell you enough...

Sure, new everything would certainly fix it. But I'm saying that if I'm using new cables and everything else appears to be up to snuff and it still doesn't work reliably, what we have here is a pretty damn finnicky system.

Although I have a feeling my issue might be something a bit out of left field, since the malfunction I'm getting seems a little different than usual: rather than it being consistently crap, it's mostly sweet, but with sporadic moments of extreme woefulness. So there's that... I'll throw it up on the stand at my co-op today and see if some of the old hands can figure it out.