Originally Posted by
kbarch
This is what I don't understand. What is the advantage of such small increments? Surely not redundancy, but that's what it seems to approach. I've found that the increments around 7-7.5% are barely noticeable. I'd be inclined to call those useless if the alternative wasn't a single 15% jump, but even then, often enough I'll inadvertently skip over a gear and it won't matter, and there are plenty of times when it's necessary to make big jumps over two or more cogs.
In what circumstances do you most appreciate smaller steps? Flat stretches of a couple of miles or more? That's something I don't get much of....
They're nice on the top end, when you want to fine-tune your cadence at higher speeds. And I'm not going to lie, there is an aesthetic appeal to a tighter cassette without big cogs on it.
But there is something to be said for only having gear increments that
you will appreciate, so that is where this becomes individual again. Some people like and want single-tooth jumps down to 19T (or more), while others would rather make each shift count for more by that point. I'm somewhere in the middle. One cassette goes 13-14-15-16-17-19-21 and the other goes 13-14-15-17-19-21-24.