Thanks for the replies. I understand that levers will be needed too. I a similar impression about V-brakes vs cantilevers as even our toy store bikes with unbranded V-brakes do better than my cantilevers with kool-stop pads and a lot of fine tuning on the adjustments.
I'm just trying to understand what the differences are from base model to top model, as it seems like any of them will be superior to what I have today. I probably wouldn't buy the top model unless I understood why it costs 2 or 3 times as much as the other models. I expect there are differences, I'm just not able to spot them in the specs and was hoping to hear from someone doing a lot more wrenching or riding than me about those nuances. If they're all more or less the same, then I'd typically buy in the middle of the line, whether Shimano, Avid, or other.
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