Originally Posted by
jch3n
I'm not debating the quality of Shimano's spokes, nor product quality or warranty in general. They're all excellent.
The truth of the matter is, with a higher spoke count you will most likely still have a rideable wheel to get you home, should you break a spoke. Not the case with a low spoke count/high tension wheel. I broke a spoke on a set of RS10s (which were pretty good wheels despite its undeserved reputation for being crap) and could not continue. Luckily I was only a few blocks from home. Then came the matter of replacing the spoke. My shop didn't have the Shimano proprietary spoke and nipples available nor was it worth dealing with warranty on a set of RS10s (might be different for higher-end Shimano wheels) but they eventually found a suitable replacement.
Some people might not care but who really wants to deal with warranty just to replace a broken spoke? With the Vuelta wheels and other wheelsets, you can probably be in and out of a shop in 20 minutes.
While I agree with you in general, I meed to point out that lower spoke count wheels are usually tensioned the same as high spoke count wheels. That is, each spoke has approximately the same tension in both wheels. It is a common misconception that there is a certain total spoke tension (sum of all spokes) that all wheels must have. Totally untrue.