Chorus or Centaur
 

Which is the smoothest and can anyone compare the performance? If you had the choice which would you prefer for a build-up? Lp

I switched from Chorus 8 sp to Daytona 10 sp. The Daytona, which is Centaur, is easily the equal of Chorus at a lot less money. If you're a weight weenie Chorus will win though.

If you are talking about current '08-'09 parts I would go Chorus for the shifters at least.

I've always bought Record and Chorus, although I can no longer afford current Record. My main race bike which I go through parts on was just rebuilt this winter. I needed to replace the left hand shifter and went Centaur to save a few bucks. I always thought the performance was pretty equal, but that is definitely not the case for this shifter. The action is very clunky, nowhere near the performance of the Record and Chorus stuff I've had in the past. I can live with it for the front der, but I would not keep it if I had bought a right hand that felt like that.

I also bought the Centaur UT CF cranks because they were about $30 less than Chorus and listed as the same weight. I figured they would be identical except for the lettering. But the difference is the chainrings, which are really ugly. I wish I had spent the extra for the Chorus there as well.

In the past I found the performance between the top 3 groups pretty equal, but that looks like it is no longer the case. I will not buy under Chorus in the future.

For 2009 Centaur dumped the Escape mech so they shift just like Chorus and Record. The chainrings are stamped not machined. After a break in period they will work just as well as Chorus. As far as ugly goes that's really not a performance issue. Sorry to hear about your bad luck with the Centaur parts.

I recently bought the 09 Centaur Carbon group for my wife's bike from TotalCycling in the UK for about $750 shipped and it is extremely nice looking and seems to function perfectly. It's supposedly easy to remove the black anodizing (if not paint?) from the chain rings if one doesn't like black. I have 07 Record on one of my bikes and it's nice too but was more than 2x the price. These days, functionally what is one buying for all that extra money?

I just bought a NOS 2006 Centaur CF crank from Nashbar. The rings look great but that's pre 2007. Seems like Campy cheapened the group for 07/08.