Thoughts on 11 speed cassettes?
 

I'll be purchasing a new C'dale Evo within the next few weeks. Think I'm going with a Red setup versus Dura Ace simply because the Red will come with a 10 speed cassette and then I can swap all of my other wheelsets out on it. To me, it seems that the 10 speed cassette is optimal and I remember the debates held years ago when the jump from 9 speed to 10 was made. Any arguments to be made for adding another cog?

IMO, it's just marketing- to make people want the lates/greatest.... I'm perfectly content with my 9-speed D/A and 8-speed Sora...I don't even use all the gears. I mean really- it wasn't that long ago that we had 5 speed cassettes with standard doubles. What's next? 12-speeds? It's getting ridiculous- how shameless these companies are in just trying to make something new, no matter how unnecessary.

/rant

I think you're right though- to want to keep things so that they'll be compatible with stuff you already have and allow you to switch-out wheels.

i will stay at 10 for a good while...unless forced.

I have Campy 11 speed on all my road bikes. I remember starting out with 5 speeds, then 7, then 9, then 10 and now 11.

I also remember that each time the same arguments were made: 1. Just marketing and/or 2. Unnecessary upgrade.

Personally, I find that the extra gear gives me more choices and makes riding more enjoyable.

Should everyone make the switch? Probably not.

Is the 11th gear worth having? In my case yes.

YMMV,

Good luck with your new bike.

Ride safely.

5 cogs seemed a bit lacking...even as a kid.

+1 !!!

I have the new DA 11spd. Frankly the additional cog was incidental when getting the group and to a certain extent a nuisance at first when choosing potential wheels. That being said I'm really liking having both an 11t and a 28t for my rides, and now that pretty much all the hub manufacturers have either compatible hubs or freehub swaps available looking at another wheelset is no longer a big deal. There have been some decent articles written though that wheels will be better (maybe stronger) when axle length is increased to allow for the additional spacing needed. I don't know I only have a couple hundred miles on my current wheels and they seem perfectly strong to me :)

With all this though, would I let something like the number of cogs direct which group to buy... not in my case. I bought Shimano DA because I prefer the style of shifting and brake performance to the SRAM, if I were to buy SRAM or Campy it would be for the same reasons if I preferred the performance of one over the other.

Good luck I'm sure you'll enjoy any group you get!

Changing from 8 up through 10 was easy and required no new wheels... this business of having to get new hubs is annoying and will probably keep me off 11 spd for quite a while.

having said that if I were starting from scratch with a new bike, I'd probably go 11. You can run 10 on an 11 but not 11 on a 10, so there's that too.

"My bike has too many cogs on the cassette" Said No One Ever. :)

I like more gears, as long as I can afford replacement components. 10spd is my limit, because Shimano has all levels of components, from affordable for guys like me, to pricy and light for the racing types/weight weenies (no offense, but I have weight to lose, bike weight is not that important right now!)

8 speed has a lot of gaps in gears. 9 speed is much nicer, and I expect my new 10speed podium 2 to be better yet to find the right gear combo, especially on pavement.

Offroad? I'm fine with 9 and always will be. Or just one (see my signature :rolleyes:)

Would you not have to adjust the limit screws on the rear dealliuer when go from 11 to 10 or vice versa?

I think the guy in post #2 pretty much said it. Or did you mean Ever since then?

I'll believe it when he sets the limit screw on his RD to only shift through 8, since 8 is plenty.

Seems silly to have a bike with 9 if you believe 8 is perfectly sufficient. Or maybe you're being stealth-sarcastic because the guy in post #2 is clearly a luddite.

going from a Tiagra 9 speed to Sram 10 speed was a pretty cool jump for me. I wonder if going from Red 10 speed to Di2 11 speed would provide the same feeling?

Personally, I prefer 9 speed.

Good durability, easy shifting and adjustment; enough cogs to have smooth transitions, few enough to be more tolerant of setup and with the spacing to run a more durable chain. 9 speed was the sweet spot for me, too bad the industry blitzed through it like a stepping stone.

I spend a lot of time on e-bay snapping up old upper-end 9 speed componentry. 10 is a bit of a novelty to me. I despise 11 because of the gross compatibility issues with everything else. Planned obsolescence in the bicycle world is one of my least favorite aspects of the business. I like new tech, but deliberate obsolescence makes me feel resentful at times.

There are many valid reasons to prefer 9 speed, none of which include the inconvenience of having a 10th gear. :)

I only have the 9 because that's what came already-on the upgraded, used bike that I bought. I have no problem with 9's though- they still seem durable enough. Now excuse me while I get back to raising this barn and digging a new one-holer....

Well-said!

Personally I was (and still am) happy with my 7700. I do now have other bikes with 10 speed, but it's because I like the Sram shifters better and they don't make 9sp. And now that I'm thinking about it the only reason I left 8 speed was because I had DA and it wasn't compatible with anything else.

I dunno that other guy well enough to declare him a luddite. But I do know people who were happier with the durability of 9 and lower speed chains and found the gear choices more than adequate.

I realize 'progress' is inevitable, and I would expect road disc and 135mm rear hubs to become standard. I'm hoping I'm stocked well enough to hold out until then and whether that means 12sp or CVT so be it.

I prefer just to shift with the right hand, more gears in the rear would be better for me. But this is from a guy that started on 10 speeds and just learned to shift from the hoods...

For those who climb on a semi-regular basis I can see the advantage of 11 speed. It basically gives you the benefit a fairly tight range 11/12-25 10speed cassette with an (11th) 28T granny gear. No more need to swap out rear wheels or cassettes for longer climbing days. That being said, replacing the chain every six months would suck. Also, 11 speed is still only being offered at the higher end of the market which is great if you're dropping $4k+ on a bike (and sucks for the rest of us.)

This is a classic optimization problem, with the caveat that what's optimal for you may not be optimal for me. Though there are single-speed devotees, most roadies would agree that optimal is not below 8. Where's the sweet spot for most easily finding the right gear to spin without too much added complication, cost, and weight? For me, me I notice big gaps with my 8 speed Sora, which sometimes causes me to seek something better by switching chain rings, but that seldom happens when I ride my 10 speed 105 or DA bikes. I don't feel the need for 11, but if I rode it all the time, i can imagine I'd notice the advantage of having that extra gear - particularly adding a great hill climbing gear that I'd seldom need but would occasionally appreciate.

But let's put it a different way - how many cogs would you want before you'd be willing to do away with the FD altogether? Say you had a 16 cog cassette going from 12 sprockets up to 35 or so and just one chain ring? Would that be just marketing, or a real improvement? OK, so maybe that doesn't seem feasible, but one day....

Where will it end? 15 cogs? 20 cogs? At what point does it stop being "progress" and start being unnecessary or fragile?

At some point in the future, will a manufacturer have the nads to say "less is more" and revert back to fewer gears, and tout the durability and/or lightness...and then will others follow suit? Seems like that scenario has already played itself out with chainrings- i.e. triples......maybe even to some extent already, in general, e.g. the modern interest in fixies (Which is as much an extreme in the opposite direction).

Just because the technology exists to do something, doesn't necessarily mean that it should be done. Look at cars today: You have small 4 cylinder cars so burdened-down with gimmicks and luxuries, that they don't get any better mileage than older full-size 8 cylinder cars. A bicycle no more needs 11 cogs than does a Hyndai need a 13-speed road ranger transmission...

That's kind of the whole point: Why have so many rear cogs, when we can have 2 or 3 chain rings? People act like it's a big deal to shift the FD. Why? Is it common practice for people not to keep their FD in good tune? I tend to shift my FD more often than the rear. I'm a masher, not a spinner....I don't appreciate the small differences in one-tooth jumps on the RD....when I shift, I usually want a more substantial change. Little differences I can achieve simply by pedaling faster or slower or harder or lighter......

And I suppose you argue that we should all adopt your pedaling style? I think you're entitled to your own style and to prefer a 5 speed cassette or whatever, but in return it might occur to you that your preferences are not a good way to generalize about what other people find useful vs. frivolous.

No, I don't really think he's a luddite, I was just teasing, unless he really is raising a barn right now... but my original point that you contested was that nobody minds having MORE gears on the rear cassette - all the objections are related to planned obsolescence or reliability or incompatibility with existing equipment and all of those objections are perfectly valid in my book. I don't want to spend $1000 or more just to get that 11th cog so I'm sitting at 10 (and 9 on my backup bike) but it's not because I wouldn't mind having 11.

If I could have 18 gears in the cassette without any of the downsides, I'd want 18. Heck, give me a CVT back there, I can think of plenty of occasions when I've wanted an intermediate gear between two cogs that are only two teeth apart.

what he said....