Gears.

My bent wears what it came with but it's not a lot different to my Jamis except that it has 26x1 wheels ie, 26" diameter with 28mm tyres as opposed to the 700c on the Jamis.

My Jamis (df) which has darned near perfect gearing for me has a 50, 39, 26 crankset mated to a one of the SRAM 11-32 rear cassettes which is arranged 11-12-14-16-18-21-24-28-32
The shifters are Ultegra, the front dr is a 105 and the rear dr is DeoreLX (for the long cage).

That gearing allows me to work either on the large ring or the middle ring depending on whether it's a bit hilly or flat. I can only pull top gear going down hill but there isn't a ride I can do from home that doesn't have me pulling top gear at some point and there are other hills that have me not bothering to try to keep up.
The Ultegra shifters and 105 front dr allow me to use the full range on the rear cassette though obviously, I only go on the smaller cogs for shortish periods or if anattentive - I still subscribe to the theories against cross chaining. I can spin quite happily up most hills on the middle ring and for those that demand the granny, I NEED the thing.

I've got one hill that I do regularly that is 3km on the granny with a cadence of around 90. There's another brute that is shorter but steeper. Maybe nothing for you young blokes but hard on this old wombat. I've yet to get up that first hill in one hit on the bent but I'm happy to put that down to lack of bent fitness - as I've said elsewhere, if I'm not riding the bent every day I loose that fitness very quickly and seeing I'm not climbing hills every day on the thing, I don't expect to be able to. Different with the Jamis, she climbs like a cat up a tree no matter how long I've been off the bike.

If lazy, I can live on the middle ring but the Jamis is so much fun to ride the big ring gets used a lot.

Coming up to a climb, I'll flick onto the middle ring, and the jump between top and middle is such that that rarely requires a change at the back. I'll work my way down the rear cassette until in bottom then, if needed, will drop onto the granny which gives me an extra three gears (the equaliser between the two is the fourth cog). Sometimes I'll go up a cog or two on the back, but usually if I need the granny, I stay on it to conserve my heart rate. Coming over the top of a hill, I'll work my way up on the rear cogs, then change onto the middle at some point - it's a jump but I've deliberately chosen a big jump from granny to middle to give me that stupid bottom gear.

There are roughly 2 gears between the big and the middle (it's not a clean split, the cross over gears are slightly different). When going from middle to big, you need to be spinning in the 90's to make the change cleanly but if you aren't, why would you bother going onto the big ring? Similarly, I'll drop onto the middle from the big when slowing where again, the gear difference isn't really a problem.

However, were I to have a larger jump between the big and middle rings, I would have to muck about with the rear cogs and I can't see the point in that. That's especially pertinent in that I've all the top speed I'm brave enough to use and when the middle ring is too high for a hill, I've got my granny set up - I do not need to expand the range of gears available to me on those two rings in normal riding.

For me, expanding that jump between big and middle rings would be inefficient because I would no longer enjoy a clean change. Further, lowering the middle ring, would force me into more changes on the front as the middle ring span out or I cross chained more while trying to use the smallest cogs.

Interestingly, my commuter has a smaller middle ring - a 34 courtesy of an mtb cranket - and that's bloody useless, get it rolling and get it onto the big ring. Maybe it's not interesting, maybe I'm just pissed off with it.

The Ultegra shifters handle the triple crankset with ease - I really don't know why people complain about them. Further, the relatively small jump between middle and big ring is also handled quickly and with ease. The leap from granny to middle is slow but it's also well outside the range recommended by Shimano, and it's not done often enough to be a problem.

So, for me, changing to a compact setup would mean:
1/ getting rid of changing between granny and middle ring ... which isn't a problem on any of my bikes (except the fixie where I get upset if the chain comes off the ring)
2/ widening the gap between middle and large ring which isn't desirable
3/ lowering my middle ring which would take it out of the sweet zone it's in now, result in more cross chaining and probably more shifting between big and middle
4/ result in me having a higher bottom gear which is undesirable because I use the bottom gear I have now - no, I'm not going to stand and grind up hills because that spikes my heart rate and it already runs close to my maximum (yes, I hit and maintained my max for 10 mins one day and have no desire to do it again, my REAL max, not some calculated number).

The only positive I see in going to a compact (for me, YMMV), is that it'd be 'trendy' - I ride a steel framed bike, with a frame that is oversized to modern eyes so I can get the bars up at saddle height, using a Brooks saddle wearing kakhi shorts and t-shirts. Come summer, there's a bandana or cycling cap under my peaked helmet to protect my scalp from sunburn (bald where the hair isn't thin and I've already got skin cancers up there) There ain't nuffin trendy about me, though I do use clipless pedals on the Jamis (SPDs) and the bent while the commuter wears toe clips.

All of which is a bit weird on a bent forum, so I'll go back to my original question. I like the gearing I have on the bent which is similar to the Jamis. It does wear a higher granny (still the stock 30) but the wheels are 26", not 700c which seems to compensate. I can't ride the bent up the big hills but come close enough to know that if I was riding the bent all the time, I'd be able to ... or I could just put a 26 on the granny and go even slower, possible now that my balance is a lot better.

The commuter has this dreadful mtb setup with the useless middle ring and a large ring that's okay because when you stick this fat old wombat on top, in a non-aerodynamic riding position, with over 10kg of text books in the pannier (I weighed them one day and nearly died with shock), in traffic, top speed isn't a problem. That middle ring is.

The bent has 172mm cranks.
Sooooooo, seeing so many people have found short cranks a positive experience, I thought I'd swipe the cranks from the bent to give the commuter half reasonable gearing and put short cranks on the bent, killing two birds with the one stone so to speak, but only if I can do it at a reasonable price - if it's going to be expensive I'll just keep swearing at the gearing on the commuter (which stops me swearing at cars I guess).

But yeah, compact cranksets? I can't see the point ... but maybe you aren't in your fifties, shaped like a wombat and having to muck about with some pretty decent hills.

Richard