I don't know if the O.P. is still following this thread but I will chime in with my 2 cents. We ride a Co-Motion with 48 spoke Phil Wood hubs laced to Velocity Dyad rims. About 2 years ago we put a set of Bontrager Race-Lite wheels on the tandem because we got them at an exceptional price. I can't say we noticed a huge improvement in our speed because of the wheels. We both felt they were faster but this was probably the placebo affect as much as anything else. What we both noticed was the tandem seemed less stable. We also noticed under hard braking the fork would shudder. We never had this problem with the original wheels. Maybe we got a set of wheels that weren't tensioned properly or had some other problem. Many teams ride these wheels and seem to love them. We ended up selling them on Ebay for more than we originally paid for them. We will likely have a set of conventional 36 spoke wheels built up to try next. Do we expect to obtain a much higher level of performance with new wheels? Not really. We are passionate about cycling as a lifetstyle. Most of our disposable income is spent on bicycle or motorcycle related items. I am somewhat of a gadget / gear freak and like trying new / different equipment. So somewhere down the road we will try another set of wheels on our tandem and it will hopefully make us at least look and feel faster if nothing else.