November Dave

You're right, we do advocate Lasers in a lot of builds and have them as standard in our new Nimbus Ti alloy builds. The functional difference between Lasers and CX Rays, which we have tested more or less as well as can reasonably be done, is a quite small amount of aerodynamic gain. We don't even see weight differences as big as the 7 grams per 60 spokes shown in the chart. In aerodynamically oriented wheels, which are almost always carbon and thus cost more, it seems a mistake to give back that gain when the spokes are a relatively lesser component of the overall wheel cost. In a set of every day alloys, which can be quite competent aerodynamically (we've also tested that), increasing the price of a set by 14% to get that small aerodynamic gain didn't make sense. So we've made Lasers the standard and kept CX Rays as an option on those builds.

You have to consider that a spoke doesn't cycle load on every revolution. A properly spec'd and built wheel should have spokes that cycle load (go slack and then return to tension) only on very rare occasions. The cycles to failure shown in the chart represent about 60 hours of riding assuming a cycle on every wheel revolution. If the chart represented mean time to failure or anything like it, the wheels I'm currently using (which have Laser spokes) should have failed by now if I'd started using them sometime around St. Patrick's Day. Instead they are in brand new condition.

An illustration I've often done is to line up a Race, Laser, and CX Ray spoke, each standing up. I ask a person to push straight down on each until the spoke bends in the middle. What happens is they say "ouch" with the Race and it doesn't bend, they say "ouch" with the Laser but it does bend, and the CX Ray bends. Each spoke has the same properties at the ends, but the Laser and CX Ray's willingness to bend in the middle absorbs that cycle load and protects the end of the spoke, which is where spokes break from cycle fatigue. The other spokes that perform well in cycle fatigue on that chart have more metal at the spoke end, and also weigh significantly more, than a Laser or CX Ray. But if the wheel builder does his/her job correctly, and the wheel isn't ridden beyond what it's spec'd for, cycle fatigue is likely to come into play only after the rim is toast, the bike is replaced, 13 speed cassettes come out, or some other such thing.

We also maintain a belief that spokes are an efficient way to make a wheel strong. You can use heavier rims and spokes with more mass and make a low spoke wheel that's strong enough for heavy guys, totally. You can buy a wheel with 3 spokes that will hold up GREAT for heavy guys. We'd just prefer to build someone like the OP a 28/32 set (or perhaps 24/28) that weighs the better part of a pound less than the wheels that Joe M advocates, has some built in redundancy in terms of if a spoke should happen to break, has quite good aerodynamics, and uses parts that are and will be readily available into the foreseeable future. We've built a ton of them and we know they last a long long time and make for happy riders. Our approach isn't what everyone wants, though. We respect that and are totally fine with it.