Three and a half years on the Miche Express wheelset on my Hillbrick, carrying big ol' me and usually a pannier of stuff on the back. Nary a problem.

Of course, I've also got a set of handmade wheels with Novatech hubs and no-name Chinese rims with 18g spokes and they've done at least as much work, if not more when the Europa was playing fixed gear. Again, no problems.

The issue isn't so much the bits that go into the wheel but how it's made. You can either buy good bits and get a good wheel maker to make them for you, or buy a complete wheelset and get a good wheel maker to retension them properly for you. In either case, it's that last step that makes the difference. Just buying a machine built wheelset and riding it usually results in issues at some level.

And the cost of retensioning? Depends on what your lbs charges for under an hour's work. Buy your tyres and tubes at the same time and they might even do it for nix.