Originally Posted by
dweenk
Rivendell has Shimano 8 speed bar end shifters for $68 (they work indexed or friction). That includes the cables and down tube stops. While I prefer Sun Tour, the Shimanos are quite a deal - and a while back they were on sale for $55.
Rivendell also sells the blank bar-end pods for their silver shifters.
http://www.rivbike.com/product-p/sh13.htm $38
The pods are great, they're made by Diacompe-Ene.
They take any shifters that work on downtube braze on, which includes most vintage band shifters.
I have my old Zeus downtube levers from '78 on them
and back to the original question, the SunTour was the choice. They have the ratcheting mechanism (used in the current Rivendell/Discompe silver shifters and also in Simplex Retros), which SunTour needed to control the strong spring on their Cyclone GT RDs.