It's not just pull ratios, the cog spacing is also different from everything else they have put out, making it difficult to mix and match parts if you want to use non LinkGlide parts with a LinkGlide cassette. I suspect this was an intentional choice to try and get bike companies to use more Shimano parts on any bike equipped with CUES. But now SunRace and MicroShift are making parts that are compatible with LinkGlide, so Shimano only got to have that benefit during a year or two where bike sales were struggling anyways.

Despite the incompatibility with other drivetrains, and Shimano lying about how this will decrease the amount of inventory a bike shop needs to carry when it actually increases the amount of inventory that needs to be stocked, I am otherwise a fan. Having a longer lasting cassette that shifts well under load is pretty great.

It is. See Suntour.

Are you sure? I thought Cues just uses the usual 11 speed cog spacing?

Nope. 9-speed is 4.35mm. 10-speed is 3.95mm. Cues comes in at 4.15mm.

Sorry - I found a bunch of M7's on sale for $800...

My point was - a "budget" groupset costs more than an entire bike - a bike of fairly decent quality, even if its a Marlin 5. It's not about how much you have to spend or not - it's about how we may come to think there is value with a groupset... and there is not really value.

My understanding s that cog spacing is unified across different speed cues cassettes, but is a different spacing altogether. So yeah, it uses a CUES 11 speed chain across CUES cassettes, whatever the speed and a 9sp cues cassette is the same as an 11sp with two cogs removed.

Not certain as I have admittedly only read about the group. Here is a critique that struck me though.

https://kuromori.home.blog/2024/09/0...anti-consumer/

Kind of annoying they flat out say the old 11 speed spacing would have worked for CUES too:
https://www.pinkbike.com/news/the-pi...html#cablepull

I'd say parts of this critique don't quite hold up. Running a 11-speed LinkGlide cassette requires a hub where the driveside flange is further inboard to keep the spokes far enough away from the rear derailleur so they don't collide. LinkGlide 9 and 10-speed cassettes don't have this requirement, they will happily work with any 8-11 speed HG freehub, which makes it easier to retrofit an older bike with it. Aside from that, the largest cog is far enough inboard on the 11-speed LG cassette that it could cause chainline issues on a few bikes.

My prediction about Shimano is their product marketing will continue to be a total cluster****.

"Oh please please me." :)

My predictions: Electric drop posts for road bikes and electric disc brakes with some type of failsafe mechanism that actuate the brake with no power and/r gives an audible or visual warning when the battery/ies reach a certain percentage. Either that or flying bikes. :D

They've had wireless droppers for mtb for at least 6 years.

Amazing how fast my predictions come true. So what's the hold up with road bikes? Riddle me that Batman.

Droppers for road bikes? You can get one, remember that guy won Milan-San Remo with one a couple years ago?

Or did you mean electric brakes? I don't know what the advantage would be but I have heard there have been thoughts of regenerative braking for e-bikes.

I thought the Linkglide cassette was designed to go on the 8-10speed HG freehub. I don't think it's correct to say that it requires a longer freehub, or the HG11 freehub.
Now having too wide a cassette is a problem even if the RD doesn't crash into the spokes. The wider the cassette is, the more trimming you have to do in front. Maybe that's why they seem to be pushing 1x hard. But it's also bad for 1x- the chain is running at a more severe angle at either ends of the cassette. This would only work with a longer chain stay. So now you have a groupset that is really ideal for a long wheelbase 1X bike.

Their explanation doesn't even make any sense. He said going to a linear pull ratio instead of the old progressive ratio, allows the groupsets to be modular- ie. subtract one cog from the cassette and you can sell it as a 10 speed groupset. Actually you could do that perfectly fine with the old progressive pull ratio as well. I am running a 7 of 8 on 7 speed hub on my Univega bike, and I am using a 6 speed SIS stem shifter shifting a 5 speed freewheel on my mixte. This is done routinely.

All of the LinkGlide cassettes can attach to a 8-10 speed HG freehub. A 9-speed LG cassette has it's cogs in a slightly narrower space than a HG 8-10 speed cassette, with a spacer behind that to take up the gap. A LG 10-speed cassette has an extra cog riveted to that 9th cog, which sticks out a bit past the edge of the freehub body. A LG 11-speed cassette has another cog riveted onto that 10th cog, sticking out further past the freehub body. If you put that 11-speed LG cassette on your average 8-10 speed freehub body, the cassette will fit fine, but the cage of the rear derailleur will hit against the spokes if you try to shift to that 11th cog. Putting a 11-speed LG cassette on a 11-speed freehub body with the appropriate 1.85mm spacer behind the cassette should work fine on most, but not all 11-speed hubs. Or you can grab a hub like a Shimano FH-QC400 that has a 8-10 speed freehub body, but has it's driveside flange offset so the spokes are far enough away from the rear derailleur.

The wider cassette certainly can be a problem. On the bike I've been experimenting with mixing and matching LG and HG parts, I had a goal to use a 11-45 11-speed LG cassette with a 46-30 compact double. But since the frame can only take an E-type derailleur, and fitting a 46t chainring on this frame requires moving the chainrings outboard a few mm, it is impossible to reliably shift between those two rings with any derailleur designed to fit the frame, and the chainline was horrid when shifting to that 45t cog. To get a result I'm happy with, I'll likely have to cobble together a 46/38/30 triple, and either make an adapter to fit a different type of derailleur, or just straight up design and make my own front derailleur.

Great info. This is the kind of stuff Shimano should be telling people instead of letting people find out. So the 11 speed CUES cassette is simply not compatible with an older MTB hub with the typical 8-10 HG freehub. This seriously puts a damper on how useable this supposed universal do-it-all groupset really is.
I think the bottom line is that Shimano needed to create a cassette durable enough for e-bikes. But they thought they would just turn it into some kind of 'catch-all' standard make a groupset to end all groupsets.