Affordable hubs??
 

I am looking at building a lightish wheelset next month. decided on going with the 20 front, 24 rear spoke count.

what do you reccomend hub wise that is not overly expensive ?? at most i may get the white industries t11's... but i would like to find cheaper hubs...

just built up an 1100 gm set of tubulars with, get this, "Circus Monkey" hubs. (where do they come up with these names?).

these.

i bought the 24h, but they are available in 20h too, and some other hole counts. anyway, i had the rear one apart and found the design to be very nice. four pawls, not three as advertised. quiet too, once i put some more light grease in the freehub. lighter than dura-ace 7900's if that's of any importance. so far, so good. we'll see.

i've got some WI hubs too, a couple of ENO eccentrics and a front road hub. they are fine, but the finish is getting a little dull. not really holding a shine as much as i would expect them to.

Ultegra 6800 is good, but you may have to go to 32 spokes.

There are a number of decent quality, sealed bearing hubs out there (some of them are re-badged). I have Novatec hubs that I'm happy with and I'd also consider some from BHS (mostly because these two vendors, bdopcycling and bikehubstore, have a pretty good record when it comes to communication and prompt shipping). One word of caution - not all of the lighter weight front hubs are engineered to be laced radially, so if you want to do that, just be sure that the flanges are up to the task.

If you go with Novatec or Bitex (rebadged as BHS, Circus Monkey and others), I would recommend ordering from one of the above named vendors. Both of those hubs can be spec'd with varying qualities of bearings and Bdop and bikehubstore both use upgraded versions.

Agree. I've used Bitex (BikeHubStore) hubs on a couple of wheelsets with a few thousand miles on them now. They've been great so far; smooth, free spinning, no looseness. I suggest the SLF85W front for $50 and the SL210 rear for $75 as a good compromise in weight and robustness. Their actual weights were 81 and 216 gm respectively. Call BHS and they'll be happy to talk to you about it. I'd happily spend more on hubs if I thought there was any significant performance benefit to doing so.

that may be the route i take... if i do not go after the White Industries.

I find that hubs are one part of the wheel where it is not necessary to overspend. The Bitex as sold by BHS are quite good. Likewise the Novatec from BDOP. Both highly recommended.