Originally Posted by
TiHabanero
This reminds of the "half-step" gearing craze back in the 80's. What became of it?
one aspect of the details of gearing changes is the percentage change between shifts.
With 14, 15, 16, maybe pushing 17% between shifts, the "difference" between shifts is ok and not a pain in the keester----when you get 20% diff between shifts, its a pain in the arse sometimes of being "a bit too low, or a bit too high", in terms of cadence
when I started being serious about riding and got into touring, I had a 6 speed, no recollection of what its gearing was, but my next bike was a 7 speed, and with a 12-30, I had percentage shifts of
15.4%, 13, 15, 17.6, 13.3, 15.4---the 17.6 was a bit annoying at times
go to the 9 speed era and my 11-34 has percentage shifts of:
13.3, 15.4, 13, 15, 17.6, 13.3, 15.4, 18.2---very similar, and liveable with that middle 17.6% jump shift
I ride a commuter with a 7 speed 11-28, and it has a 20% jump shift between the 15t and the 18t cog--which every day I find a bit of a nuisance, and Im not even fully loaded, add a full load and a 20%jump is a pain.
back in the day, with 5 and 6 speeds, bigger percentages were going to be inevitable, so the half step was thought of, to bring the jumps down in terms of percentages.
but today, with 10 speed being commonplace, (and 11 available, or even 12 speeds), you can have a nice 10 speed cassette of 11-36, with very nice percentage jumps of
12.5, 14.3, 16.7, 14.3, 10.5, 11.8, 13.3, 15.4, 18.2
a really nice bunch of slightly closer shifts than a 9 speed 11-32 or 11-34 that used to be the norm,
As someone who has ridden a lot of diff bikes, the modern drivetrains with more speeds, and at least with up to 10 speeds, similar lifespan of chains etc as 9 speed, its pretty cool that you can get your cake and eat it too----nice range of cassettes and reasonabley nice jumps between shifts.
Heck, if you used a mtn triple and a 10 speed system, you could have a tighter cassette, so even closer shifts, and still have a pretty darn good low gear.
phew, long winded response to "what happened to half step gearing", but in the end, more speeds just made the half step redundant, as we can have a larger range of gearing AND lower percentage jumps between shifts.