Originally Posted by
seypat
Interesting thread. Here is a somewhat luddite opinion, that is still relevant to the discussion.
I prefer friction shifters (barcons) for most of the reasons discussed in this thread...
... Ride a lot of back to back to back to back V shaped hills and rollers and you will see what I mean. With the friction, and the triple it's move a couple of levers and you are done. With STI/brifters it's whack, whack, whack, whack, whack, whack until you get to the gear you want. That's a lot of whacking. There is a joke in there somewhere...
I gave this another try after years of using STI, when my STI shifter gummed up on me one year as the cold weather was coming on.
I was surprised how little time it took me to become re-accustomed to and proficient with the friction shifters on my older spare bike.
With the modern chain and "Uniglide" freewheel that I was using with the old friction shifters, the shifting was so crisp and immediate with the much-shorter cables leading up to the downtube shifters.
I now prefer friction shifting, even for the fastest training rides that I can stay on with. I shift a lot less now, less whacking indeed!
I'm not saying that STI levers with fresh cables and a big stack of closely-spaced cogs doesn't offer a performance advantage in the hills, but with adaptation and practice, I think I have minimized that advantage to a small fraction of what I thought it was.
Ergonomically speaking, I don't find STI/Ergo shifters to be all that ergonomic in terms of hand position required to operate these shifters, so I find myself using more of the handlebar's grip options when using downtube or (gasp) stem-mount shifters.