tellyho

Without starting the "support your LBS" tirade, I'd love to know where you all buy your spokes. I want to avoid $1 per spoke, so tell me where's cheap. I know it's come up before, but I can't find it via search. Thanks!

trich

Support your LBS I'm not sure - my LBS has spokes at reasonable prices DT comp straight gauge for $0.50 - most double butted less than $1...

moxfyre

Nashbar. They often have 18-packs (Wheelsmith) or 20-packs (DB Swiss) of 14-gauge spoke for under $10, and a good selection of lengths. Right now it's $9 for Wheelsmith and you can get a 20% discount with $80+ purchase, so that would bring you down to about 36¢/spoke.

I use 'em cause they're cheap and work well on fixed-gear and touring wheels I've built. Sometimes they have good deals on fancier spokes too.

Unfortunately their selection of hubs and rims is very sporadic. Especially 700C rims, they never stock inexpensive touring/commuting rims like Sun CR18. They only have fancy, expensive racing rims.

p4nh4ndle

Nashbar has 5 sizes of spokes available right now, none are appropriate for 622 wheels. Their price is good but they never have any selection.
All LBS's in our area sell straight gauge for a buck a piece. RIP OFF!!! I almost choke anytime I'm there and hear the staff quoting these prices to people who want wheels built.

Retro Grouch 

I have a source for buying bike parts at wholesale. Never-the-less, for my last few wheelbuilds I bought my spokes from wheelbuilder.com. Good service and you only have to buy whatever number of spokes you need.

moxfyre

Bikeman.com sells Wheelsmith and DT Swiss spokes in boxes of 50 and 100 for 40-50¢/spoke, with a full range of sizes.

BluesDawg

I just ordered 36 DT 14-15g Double Butted Spokes (18ea in 2 sizes) from Excelsports.com for $0.75 each plus $7.25 shipping. $34.25 total.

I went to my LBS first, but being a small shop in a small market, they don't have a stock of spokes and didn't really want to order 2 boxes of 100 spokes just for me. They are going to get a rim for me (Open Pro) to go with my Ultegra rear hub and help me build the wheel.

p4nh4ndle

+1 on Excelsports.com, they might be better than colorado cyclist.

yup, saw that too. They've a good selection but I'd be swamped in extra spokes if I ordered em by the box every time. Guess you could break them out in 20 packs and sell the extras on ebay.

moxfyre

Oh dear, please tell me you didn't order different-sized spokes for the right and left sides of the wheel Just go with 36 of the (slightly) longer size, that way you won't have to look for the exact right one while building the wheel, and if you have any spares they'll all be the same. An extra mm won't matter!

FlatFender

www.aebike.com sells wheelsmith in bags of 50 for $19.99

halfspeed

biketoolsetc.com sells Sapims in bags of 20 for very reasonable prices and with good selection. 14/15 DB for $9.50.

BluesDawg

Live and learn. I went by the book. Somehow I think I will survive this though.

tellyho

Awesome; I'll be shopping around.

GV27

*shrug* I just bought a dozen DT Revolution spokes (for doing repairs) from my LBS for 80 cents a piece. That's not bad.

moxfyre

Oh, you will do fine, sorry to be flippant But in the future, you'll find it's often more convenient and less expensive to get all the spokes in the same size!

smurf hunter

I've been going to Recycled Cycles in Seattle. They have a Phil Wood machine, and even with manually cutting 2 lengths (rear wheel) the spokes were around $0.80 including brass nipples. I'd need to be building a lot of wheels before online shipping would significantly change this for me.

BluesDawg

There are advantages and disadvantages to living in a small town. I could have made a 60 mile round trip to a shop that would probably have been able to supply the spokes for the same cost or a little less, but time and gas would have made that not such a good deal at all. The good part is that once I get this wheel built and the bike on the road, I'll be riding on roads with very little traffic.

bwgride

I recently compared spoke and nipple prices at aebike, nashbar, performancebike, jensonusa, spicercycles, edinabike, tristore, and universalcycles (must buy nipples separately from spoke at universalcycles).

AEBike.com and jensonusa.com tended to have lowest prices (DT spokes cheaper at jenson, wheelsmith cheaper at aebike [which FlatFender noted]).

Soil_Sampler

Not a recommendation, but Cambria has some oddball sized spokes cheap.

https://www.cambriabike.com/shopdispl...es+%2F+Nipples

AKTed

I would recommend Odds and Endos https://oddsandendos.com/ for Wheelsmith spokes. DB14s go for around .70 and that includes nipples of your choice. There is the postage to consider.

paulv

Maybe not the cheapest but CT Bikes has been very helpful for me and shipped very quickly (as I am in NY as well it made for next day deliveries in some cases!)
Don't go by the listings, email him for any quantities of spokes and nipples you need.

paulv

The problem with jensonusa, cambriabike, etc, is that the availability on their web site may not match their actual inventory - in my experience. I'm sure 99% of the time there should be no problem but I once had to cancel an order with cambriabike after being told for more than a week that the order was "about to ship", yet the third and last time I called they said they were waiting to receive the spokes that were backordered.

Also: branfordbike.com are super friendly and helpful.

tellyho

I dragged this one out of the archive just to let other spoke-searchers know that I found cambria and biketoolsetc. to be the cheapest places for spokes. I ended up bundling shipping from bike tools with bearings (also cheap as hell) and got 40 straight gauge Sapim spokes for 39.5 cents apiece. Cambria was 35 cents apiece (DT spokes), not sure if nipples come with.