I guess that's a valid point. Number one, it's not a beater for me, but for most people it would be. It's just a pista with a new fork and a number of other upgrades but it's my only decent bike. To answer your question more directly though, it was on this board that I read a criticism of king headsets, saying that there's not a whole lot of difference when you're not doing anything overly extreme to your bike. If I heard wrong feel free to let me know, but the spicer guy told me this, "If you were to look at another sealed headset like king I cannot seeing paying over a $100 for a headset even if 10 year warranty. In 10 years you could not wear out over a $100 worth of shimano headsets in my opinion:" and that made sense to me. Lastly, all the headsets I've seen have been between 10 and 40 then upwards of a hundred. Are there any you suggest that aren't 100+ but also aren't "budget"? Sorry for the long winded post, I just have a lot of questions.