What is your opinion on mixing and matching the new Shimano brifters (7900 and 6700), which have the new "Servo Wave" cable pull ratio, with other standard road brake-sets? Shimano of course says that it doesn't work, but I've learned to not listen to them and try out compatibility for myself before drawing conclusions. Many other people seem to agree, and say to ignore the new brake cable pull difference because the change is very minor.

I just bought one, right-hand, 6700 brifter. I use a down-tube shifter for the front derailluer, so have a dedicated brake lever (Cane Creek SCR-5C) on the left side. Since my right-hand lever controls the rear brake, and the rear brake can never be as powerful as the front, I decided that it should be OK to use the new lever with my current brakeset (Tektro TRP 920).

My impression after about 100 miles of hilly Swiss riding is that the different brake cable pull ratio makes a huge difference. The 6700 lever is pulling a lot more cable, giving the rear brake a firm engagement, but not very powerful. I was really expecting the difference to be barely noticeable, but it keeps on surprising me how weak it is. It may be particularly noticeable for me because my left hand / front brake combo is matched, while the right hand / rear brake is mis-matched (and because I didn't change anything else on the bike when changing the lever). I'm interested to hear about the experiences / opinions of other people on this.

I'd also like to hear any information people have on the exact cable pull amounts of these levers (Shimano 6700 or 7900) and others (e.g., Shimano 6600, etc.). I'd also like to know what amount of cable pull is needed to operate linear-pull / V-brakes properly. The difference that I've noticed with the 6700 makes me think that I could use this new lever on our tandem bike, operating a V-brake without the need for the travel agent that we are currently using. Has anyone else tried pairing a 6700 or 7900 with a linear-pull / V-brake? I'm guessing that the V-brake would need yet more cable pull than the 6700 has, but the difference to V-brakes might be smaller than it is to normal road brakes.

It appears that Shimano are trying to make more money by making everyone buy more pieces of matching groupsets, and making it more difficult for other manufacturers to compete with them, which is really annoying. I like my current brakeset and don't want to change it (especially because I would only have to change the rear one), but I'm not sure that I'll be happy living with the current combination.