the first track bike i bought was from a guy who raced in the 70's, it came with soldered super champion gentleman's/sunshine hubs. i rode those wheels forever and never had them trued. i also never realized how rough my ride was until i got a new wheelset.

There's some talk about "increasing torsional stiffness" and "lateral stiffness" and "increasing the virtual flange height of the hub."

And, while lateral stiffness is a good thing in wheels, I haven't read any real information supporting this claim. I might be wrong, but I don't think most 32/36 spoke wheels that you would be tying really have a problem with lateral stiffness.

See: http://www.competitivecyclist.com/ro...962.266.0.html for modern marketing copy about it.

As far as I know, there are two ways for rims to go untrue (which seems to be the argument made in this thread):
1) The rim gets deformed due to an exerted stress beyond the elastic limits of whatever material it is made of.
2) The spokes stretch or the nipples simply unscrew some amount.

I don't see how this technique would have an influence on either of those.

http://yarchive.net/bike/tying-and-soldering.html

I'm inclined to agree. If tying and soldering spokes was such a big deal, you'd see it at the pro level or world record attempts where this would matter. You don't. So the bottom line is that it doesn't do anything except add weight.

Well, the pros wouldn't care so much about durability and wheels staying in true for years, would they? They'd just flip on a new carbon fiber-titanium-uranium wheel, whatever. I really don't know if tying and soldering is a good thing to do or not. Hardly anyone does it anymore, tho it does seem to be resurfacing. Everything old is new again. I rarely bother with it any more. The thing I posted before was just an interesting anecdotal bit of evidence, though, whatever that's worth. I was amazed to see that wheel still perfectly true after all these years.