Originally Posted by
busdriver1959
No. It's not even theoretically true. If the distances from the cable to the pivot and the brake pad to the pivot don't change, the geometry hasn't changed and therefore braking power hasn't changed. Any amount of metal hanging past the brake pad doesn't matter.
But the original quote was talking about long reach brakes at the bottoms of the slots vs short reach brakes. The pads of the long reach brakes would indeed be further from the pivot point, and so would not have the same stopping power as the short reach ones.