Originally Posted by luker
"...I have found that 10 speed shimano and 10 speed campy are very compatible, because their differences in spacing are just too tiny to cause a snafu. Must cause the shimano and campy camps much lost sleep, thinking how they are going to lose market share because they can no longer design in incompatibility...
•¿•
–-– Hah! ~ That's great, and also very funny news. I'll bet there are already dozens of Japanese engineers scrambling to come up with an 11-speed cassette before the Italian opposition beats them to marketplace.
Center-to-center spacing on Campy 10-spd cogs is 4.12 mm. and Shimano's is 3.95 mm. I guess that with the ever diminishing gap between the two brands, as more and more cogs were squeezed into the same allottment of 130mm dropout spacing, it would be inevitable that the differences would eventually matter very little - given the blessedly simple century old technology of bicycles.
To review the score: Shimano released 8-spd in 1989... both had 9-spd in 1997... Campy lunged ahead releasing 10-spd in 2000 (beating Shimano by 4 years)... I wonder how long it will be before one or the other has 11 and then 12-spd cassettes perfected,... prehaps using parchment paper as spacers between the cogs.
It all reminds me of a gag in the satyrical 1984 movie "This is Spinal Tap" where the rock band guitarist selects one amplifier over another because the knob on one goes all the way up to "11", while the other brand's is only marked to "10".