Originally Posted by
rydabent
Unless you are racing dont over think gearing. With a triple just look at the 3 front sprockets this way. Granny up hills, center ring for most riding, and big ring down hill and with the wind. Then depending on the terrain just shift across the rear cluster. Make life simple.
I have a bike that's set up exactly this way. I have a standard mountain triple (48/38/28) and a megarange freewheel. I like it. In the big ring I have one overdrive gear, then the two tooth jumps from 16 to 24 give me nice spacing throughout my cruising range. The middle ring works for moderate climbing. I rarely use the small ring. It's reserved for steep climbing and for most uphills when I'm towing my daughter on her tag along.
I thought I might just put the same drivetrain on my daily driver, but I have decided that I want a higher top end. Every crank/cassette combo I have looked at that will give me the range that I want leaves a gap or two in my cruising range that I would like to avoid (except for HS+G). If I use a 48/38/28 with an 11-36 9 speed, I get all the range I need, but I don't like the jump from 15 to 18 or from 18 to 21 in the big ring. Those two shifts jump right over most of the sweet spot of my cruising range. The 13 and 15 sprockets in the middle ring break those up fairly well, but it's a (slightly) more complicated shift pattern to use them than if I were to use HS+G with 48/44 rings. As a bonus, I already have the 48/44/28 rings from an old bike. Just need crankarms.
The only thing I'm still thinking about is a cassette to use with it. 11-36, 9 speed and 12-36, 8 speed are close enough to try it out and see if I like it. My ideal though, would be 11-13-15-18-21-25-30-36 8 speed, or maybe 11-13-15-17-20-24-28-36 8 speed. My hope was that I might get advice on which cassette models were most useful for mixing and matching to make a cassette as close as possible to the ideal, but unsurprisingly, I get mostly second guessing . Oh well.
HS+G wasn't my goal from the start. It's just the best solution I've found to get:
1) Low gear of around 20 gi.
2) High gear around 115-120 gi
3) Easily accessible 5-6 gi steps in the range from 55-ish to 80-ish gi.
You may or may not find that these criteria are useful for your own riding, but I know from my experience that they are all things that I want.
If I've missed a more conventional, cross-over setup that meets those 3 criteria I'd be interested to know what it is.