"8 speed cassettes have big gaps vs 11 speed"

[rochester21]

I was looking at a modern bike review the other day and the bike featured an 8 speed cassette, being part of the shimano claris groupset.

Anyway, the reviews struck me in one area, which is the difference between the old 8 speed cassette(and older) and the new 11, 12 speed cassettes which are being presented as superior because "the gaps between gears are smaller".

Huh? Having gaps between speeds is now bad? Isn't that the whole point behind having a multispeed bike? If the cassette i am using only has a two teeth difference between each cog, doesn't this mean i have to change more gears to get the cadence i want when i have to climb a hill for instance?

This is just ridiculous. No logic here.
I'm a lazy guy, the last thing I want on a bike is more gears i don't need and more sprockets to jump between when changing gears.

Ignoring all of the above, doesn't an older 3X9 bike have a lot more gear ratios than any 2X12 or 1X setup?

So which is it, then? Are more gears better or worse? Because from what i'm seeing, the industry wants to have it both ways, by eliminating the front derailleur and mashing up more gears in the back.

I don't get it. I must be 100 years old.

 

[velofrog]

Don’t blame me!

1x vs 3x: The Maths

Long post alert! After some recent debate about the merits of 1x versus 3x gearing on this site, I decided to go through the maths. There are tables of gear ratios and so on to be found elsewhere but I wanted to investigate for myself. I’ve been wondering about some of the new, flat bar gravel...

www.retrobike.co.uk

 

[greencat]

I think it's a hangover from racing. Corn cob gears were seemingly popular among wannabe racers back when road bikes were called racers. I can see if you are trying to optimise your performance in a race why optimising your cadence/power output would lead to wanting lots of closely spaced gears. That might even be true of MTBrs. One of the better innovations at the cheaper end was the introduction of the mega range - fairly closely spaced gears with a massive jump to a big cog when the going gets tough. The granny ring on 3x offered a similar bail out gear.

With regards to 3x v 1x, I can see that clicking one button to get the next gear down/up is a lot easier than figuring whether you should front/rear shift or both. As has been documented many times in the past, a few of the gears in a 3x system are not desirable (ie at extremes) or duplicated - meaning the number of gears isn't quite as many as the marketing suggests.

Personally, I would be happy with 3 gears - a super low range equivalent of 50x30 (or even 50x22), a middling one of around 16x30 and a 11x30. Finding a mech that would do that however....

 

[hamster]

It's the hideous jump between too hard and spinning out that's bad. It makes a surprisingly big difference on a road bike in my view.

All said, I think an 8-speed cassette is absolutely adequate and i still happily run 7 on my tourer. Bulletproof reliability and better wheel dish are well worth it.

 

[My_Teenage_Self]

 

[Chopper the ex Copper]

Manufacturers of bikes and components need new trends, ideas and fashions to drive sales.

When nothing new comes along they'll make something up instead, pure fiction if necessary. Something that no one previously cared about and most people never even noticed suddenly becomes a very bad thing.

Manufacturers will tell us this, but not to worry as they have a new product on hand to save us from the shame and indignity of being slightly unfashionable.

As such 3 out of 4 cycling products fosted upon us in the name of progress are nothing of the sort.

Look how Giant got on the crest of the wave early with 29ers, but when everyone else got in on the game and their market share started to slide they then steered the discerning buyer to 650B instead because 29ers are bad, they said, despite having rabidly been saying the opposite for several years.

Look how cyclocross bikes have evolved into 4 or 5 distinct consumer sub categories, each of which does exactly the same job as the other.

And so it has become with gearing.

It's so cynical it is actually quite distasteful at times, but while people keep falling for it the manufactuers will keep doing it.

 

[was8v]

Yeah do you even ride bikes?

I'm most efficient at a cadence of about 90rpm

i choose a gear to keep that cadence on the terrain i find myself

therefore closely spaced gears help with that

on an mtb 12 speeds help me have the range required for the variety of terrain

1x has no overlap of gears, and i don't have to keep flicking up and down the front whilst changing the back at the same time to get the gear I want

 

[Chopper the ex Copper]

My cadence changes with the level of exertion required to maintain a given speed in a given situation. The idea of a steady cadence is a fiction, because no one rides on a billiard table smooth road with no gradient and no wind - we all go higher or lower depending on the load required from our muscles, and that changes with a multitude of factors.

Uphill into a headwind on a steep, uneven incline I'd dearly love to spin at say, 90, but it ain't happening for me or anyone else. Until someone develops a highly effective CVT for bicycles no one will be toddling along at a steady cadence, much as some claim they do.

 

[was8v]

I agree, that's why we have gears

More gears and closer gears means you can get closer to that ideal

 

[pigman]

it all depends how you ride and who you ride with.
I tend to now ride more socially, so not being in the optimum gear isnt really an issue. In fact i tend to ride mostly on a mudguarded winter bike with a 7 speed cassette.
Contrast this to a few years ago when i rode chaingang with racing lads who were much younger than me and being in the "wrong" gear meant i was in danger of being dropped. Even that gap of 2 or 3 teeth meant i was choosing between over-heaving or over-spinning, so for much of it i was on the back foot or being knackered for the next effort.

My (limited) experience of serious (non competitive) MTB is that its more about managing the terrain than it as about matching the group speed