If this is correct and excludes nipples, they are pretty heavy. I got a batch of PSR 1422 aero spokes in 249 and 251 mm and they weighed about 300 g for 64. And PSR 1420's are even lighter than that.

Those are 2.0/1.5mm spokes flattened to 2.2 x 0.95mm in the middle. 1420s start life even thinner and end at 2.0 x 0.95mm.

DT Swiss 15/16 DB spokes are 311. Subtract about 5.5% for your shorter spoke and.........
You're also heavier then DT Aerolite or Revolutions.

The original question wasn't; "what's the lightest spoke available?", it was; "what's the weight difference between straight gauge and butted spokes?" and that's what the example showed. All else is thread drift.

Thread drift: The original post was not interesting enough and we have too much time on our hands, so....

Regardless of thread drift it's quite possible the OP may want this other info, so I see nothing wrong with showing other spoke manufactures and the weights.

There are other lighter spokes on the market, however most other brands have proven to be unreliable, the only real reliable ones with a long history of such is DT, Wheelsmith, and Sapim; not to mean that the others are all going to break but there has been some recorded incidences of failures with other brands and since those other brands sell far less spokes then the big 3 that would mean that has a whole the fail rate by percentage is high.

Spoke weight isn't rocket science, and there's no secret or magic involved. All spokes use steels with very similar (if not identical) specific gravities (density) so the only way one makes lighter spokes is by making them shorter or thinner. At the same thickness, some makers reduce weight by having the thicker ends shorter than others, but other than that the spoke's weight is a simple function of it's length and section.

The above excludes spokes made of other materials, such as Ti, aluminum or carbon.

the Placebo effect is a wondrous thing.

And that's why I mentioned in my post you quoted but didn't show the whole post was that these lighter spokes from other brands do not hold up as well because in order to make them lighter they had to make the spoke thinner and thus subject to breaking more often. So there is a fine line in the science of making the spoke too thick and heavy with no gain in strength to making it too thin and light with a loss in strength. I trust DT spokes, their the only spoke I've ever used, but others like Wheelsmith are fantastic spokes as well and are the only spoke that Peter White uses and he gives a lifetime warranty on his builds. And Sapims, while a great spoke are just too expensive to make them worth while.

I read that to imply that there were quality issues, not simply the obvious, less steel = less strength.

There are a number of good spoke makers besides those named, and it's possible to build excellent wheels using some of the lightest offerings. My commuter's wheels are built using 1.8/1.5/1.8 spokes throughout except for the right rear which uses 1.8/1.6/1.8 spokes.

Times and styles change, and these days people are putting a high priority on durability, but in a world where folks spend big bucks to save grams, or for competition, low weight is also a virtue, and for me the challenge hasn't to build the strongest wheel, but the lightest wheel that's strong enough to do the job.

How old are you? I don't mean that as an insult but rather you sound like you haven't been around very long. I'm 60 years old, I remember reading Consumer Reports back in the early 70's and reading about how the average life expectancy of a major appliance was 23 years, today it's 13! TV's 25 years, today 8! This shortening of life expectancy of consumer products goes through the entire spectrum, not just one or two items. My Suntour Superbe components on my 84 Trek 660 have over 160,000 miles on them and not ever have I had to replace even a bearing; I know for a fact that the newer integrated systems won't go anywhere near that, in fact their talking only about 20,000 miles on major components (smaller components like chains, gears etc are not included). However speaking of chains and gears back in the days of 5, 6, and 7 speed freewheels the chains and gears were wider, a chain could last 13 to 15,000 miles, gear clusters 3 times that! Today's thin jewelry like chains might go 5,000 with most I've read here at around 3,000 miles. So we don't live in a world of high priority toward durability, the manufactures don't want that, they want you to spend your money faster to keep the world economy moving.

I'm not much older than you, but bought my first "real" bike in 1967. I often refer to the Bronze Age, because Campagnolo Record derailleurs of that era were made of bronze.

When I referenced the trend toward prioritizing durability, it was limited to what people expect from bicycle wheels. You're right that most stuff made today doesn't last nearly as long as similar stuff from decades ago, but when I started building wheels we were all using 15g DB spokes and rims in the 250-350gr range. Occasional need to re-true, or even a broken spoke now and then wasn't considered a sin.

Later folks discovered DT 2.0 spokes and suddenly the dialog changed from light to super tight, overbuilt wheels.

My goal remains to build wheels along th lines of Holmes's One Horse Shea. I consider it ideal if at some point I break a spoke, then notice that the rim is starting to stress crack, and the brake track is a bit past the bottom of the wear indicator. If any of these should happen well before the others, then it's underbuilt, or the others are overbuilt.

I don't think I've built 5 pairs of wheels with 2.0 plain spokes, and they were all track sprint wheels.

BTW- while many items don't last as long as they used to, one remarkable exception is in automobiles. 100,000 miles used to be a rarity, and here on the East Coast no rust at 5 years equally rare. These days 100,000 miles is like nothing, and you don't see nearly the amount of body rust that you used to.

Actually this is a fallacy too! Let me explain, and since your older than me you will come to understand the fallacy rather quickly. First off engines; if you recall in the 60's a car could run down the freeway at 60 mph and be turning 2500 to 3400 RPM, today at 60 mph cars are turning between 1500 and 2300 due to cars having 6 speed automatics vs 3 speed autos. So yesterdays engines wore out faster because internally they had more "miles" on them then todays cars. But I knew plenty of people, including myself who saw a lot more miles than 100,000 back in the 3 speed auto 4 speed manual days, and those miles were abusive miles too. So I think the 100,000 mile thing is way low, cops ran 440cc engines that got over 140,000 miles of abuse and sold them at auctions where they would run another 100,000 miles. My dads 6 cylinder Ford F100 had 850,000 miles on it! Actually there were some engines made back then that were noted for doing in excess of 500,000 miles.

Some people argue that the old cars needed constant tuning, every 10 to 12,000 miles, this is true, but why did they need this constant tuning? Sparkplugs were only good for about 12,000 miles because the lead in gasoline fouled the plugs, once the lead was removed those same cars plugs would last 50,000 miles and more! So once the lead was out that left the hassle of the points, mechanical points burned out around 12,000 miles too, but a company called Pertronics came out with a set of electronic points that simply replaced the mechanical ones and boom no more ever even thinking about replacing or adjusting the points. So what was left, the distributor timing needed to be checked with a timing light every 12,000 miles, most of the time the distributor timing stayed, but sometimes you had to adjust it just a tad, no big deal. The final thing was the carburetor, the carb gummed up for the same reason the plugs did...lead, once the lead was removed and cleaning agents installed in the gas for injector cars the carbs no longer gummed up.

3 speed automatics back then were almost all bulletproof transmissions, they would outlast the engines! Not only out last the engine but a punk kid could but the car in neutral and rev the engine into the red and then drop the gear selector into 1'st and watch the tires smoke; todays autos won't and can't do that. A 3 speed auto today cost about $600 to rebuild, a 6 speed auto today starts at $4500 and goes up from there.

I own several classic cars and I can tell you from experience with those that the older cars are more reliable than newer ones, and when something does break it's cheaper to fix because the parts are less expensive and their easy for the backyard mechanic to work on.

Since this thread is already hopelessly off track....

Does anybody know the best place to get Sapim CX-Rays? I've built quite a few wheelsets but haven't gotten a chance to use these, or any bladed spoke for that matter. If I could get some at a not-insane price I'd like to try them.

Or how about the best (least expensive) place to get some light weight aero spokes that will fit through normal holes from any brand?

Indeed, and there's nothing like regular training with racers to discover others aren't affected by my placebos. Lighter gear didn't make me faster than those who trained harder or could hurt more.

I can definitely identify with that way of thinking. I've gotten back into racing mountain bikes this year, and I'm using better equipment than I've ever had. At the races, sometimes I do well, sometimes I'm disappointed. But what's funny is that when I look around at the other guys and what they're riding, there's very little correlation between racing with latest-greatest equipment and who's going to smoke the course. Within reason.

https://www.outsideoutfitters.com/p-1...FU1gMgod0DkArQ comes in a bag of 20 for $37.94 which is $1.99 each...a great price.

Exactly, and this is why the TDF since 1963 has only seen an average speed increase of 3 mph with all the lighter bikes and gear, all the training technology, etc, etc. And the weird thing is...that 3 mph increase is misleading because the race is 400 miles shorter now then back then and has less climbs and less percent of grades to climb. So yup, hard work was what they did back then, put Jacques Anquetil, the winner of the 63 TDF, in his prime against the guys today and he would think their all a bunch of babies.

I still have a decent stock of NOS Wheelsmith 15g Aero spokes. email me c/o the site below if interested.

This is a good illustration of the wrong way people think about percentages and riding. While 100 miles sounds like a long distance, and it is, the real distance that's important here is the distance between two finishers of that ride. If you could improve your speed by 1/10 of 1%, you'd finish 528 feet ahead of someone who other than this change was riding exactly the same speed as you.

For "normal" people who aren't in hard-fought bike races, but rather just out riding for our own pleasure or improvement, the 1/10th of 1% isn't going to make a substantive difference in our times and whatnot, but who cares? If we're riding for our own pleasure, then any feeling of pleasure we get by having better gear, improves our enjoyment. If that's what we're riding for in the first place, then it's mission accomplished.

Personally, I'm gearing up to do my first wheelbuilding project. I've decided to use Sapim CX-Ray spokes, despite the cost. Regardless of any weight savings or possible aero benefits, part of me just wants to feel like I've got a "cool" wheel build. It's my money, so if I get what I want out of this build, what's the problem? Is it "worth it"? Well, apparently so, since I've considered the price options and still decided to go with the CX-Rays, and my own opinion here is all that really matters.

Actually your thinking is off too. Most of a road race occurs within the peloton, where nobody is working all out. So Races aren't decided based on performance over the entire distance, but over the few hundred yards of final sprints, or somewhat more with breakaways, or if you include the runup to the finish over the last few miles.

Since sprinting is about acceleration, weight can be very important, but rigidity becomes just as important, so good bike design balances these.

See My post #68 above for the best price on those spokes that I could find, maybe with more searching you might find it a bit cheaper but I couldn't.

I don't think you're weird or foolish for doing a build with the Sapims. Look, this is a new build, it's cheaper now to put in the spokes you want then to later tear it down and do it again. For the price you can get them at the Outside Outfitters that is about a $1 difference between those and the DT Competition spokes, if you're building a 28 spoke wheel or less then it's only $28 or less each wheel, that's nothing.

And you're right, it is you're opinion and you're wheels and you can do whatever you want...personally for around $28 each wheel I would go Sapim.

I wish that was true, it would have saved me some money.

I did find an interesting research paper by HP Gavin using strain gauges in a lab setting. He tested 2x, 3x, and 4x patterns. It concluded spoke pattern and radial loads have no real effect on spoke fatigue, but lateral loads do. It also concluded shorter spokes fatigue less quickly than longer spokes. It did not test DB vs. plain gauge. I am digging for that info now.