Originally Posted by well biked

To further add to the confusion, I just checked Shimano's website and looked at the exploded view of the Dura Ace hubs, front and rear. The front is apparently available with two types of bearing assemblies, an A type or a B type. The A type uses loose balls, the B type uses the retainers. On the rear hubs, it's loose balls only, no "B type" available. It sounds like maybe kleng's Dura Ace front hub is an A type (w/loose balls from the factory), and that's why there were loose balls in it-

Originally Posted by kleng

I spoke to Shimano tech about my strange hub, and they said that there have not been any complete wheelsets in the Dura-ace range since 2005 that used or uses loose bearings. They said that factory quality control would prevent the wheelset leaving the factory without bearing retainers, so they think Giant in Australia or the LBS might have modified them.