Originally Posted by 63rickert

I build wheels. Yes, wheels can change how a bike rides and rim height is part of that. Yes, taller rims are much stiffer. Find an antique flat section tubular rim and you can flex it with your hands. It won't support your body weight until it is filled with spokes.

Without going all the way back to that kind of rim it is all pretty much the same. A 20mm tall rim is now considered very shallow, it is going to ride just about the same as a 30mm tall rim. In current production I like Pacenti Brevet and H+Son TB14. They are not really like vintage, some of the effect remains. Heavier and taller than vintage. Stronger too.

The way vintage wheels got their ride was nearly all of them were built too loose and they were built with erratic tension. A wheel can run perfectly true while spoke tension is all over the map. That was the only reason for 36 spokes, only a dozen of them were doing much work. The wheel kind of flopped and shimmied down the road and sometimes that felt good.

Everything affects how the wheel rides. High flange hubs do ride stiffer than low flange. Butted spokes ride smoother than straight gauge. Real butted spokes at 2.0/1.5mm ride better than fake butted at 2.0/1.8. Lower spoke count rides better. These are small effects but they add up.

Quality of the build matters more than any of the other little details. I have used salvage rims and hubs to build for clients with $3000 wheels and my wheels were preferred. When the order was build a cheap set of spare wheels and the customer sells the name brand wheels because they just don't match up to hand built you did good. And having just said that I build really good wheels I will also say that some pre-built system wheels are just as good as mine. But they are not all the same, they are not interchangeable widgets. The price is mostly the cost of advertising. Quality does not equal price.