Question for the bike gear nerds???

[Hilltopperny]

The best thing about Chorus 12 IMHO is the sub compact crankset and 11-34t cassette. I used this on the Parlee Chebacco at this past years Dirtphalt and it was my favorite mixed surface group to date. There are some pretty steep dirt roads out that way and having the 48t big ring worked great for the road and flatter sections.

I have a mountain spindled EC90 on my Warbird with both 32 and 36t oval front rings to swap between. I run them with a 9-34t e13 cassette or an 11-36 1170 cassette. They work well with the larger tire volume and the places I ride the bike.

My Moots Psychlo X has a White Industries 44/28 sub compact mated to an 11-25 9spd rear cassette. I have not ridden this combo off road too much yet as there is just too much snow, but it works well for pavement and hard pack. I will probably swap the rear cassette for an 11-28 for the 1/1 this spring.

I ran my old Kirk MRB 1x and while it was great for the off road sections I had too small of a ring up front for it to be a good gear ratio for road riding. I think this could have been mitigated by a bigger front ring and a different rear cassette.

My old Drifter with a 44t up front and 10-42 in the rear covered most of the bases for me. The jumps were large, but I never felt under geared on the group rides I did with it. Wouldn’t have worked that well for competition, but everyday use was not an issue.


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[NHAero]

I think that all that's been said here is accurate, but I also feel that a properly configured cassette with 12 or 13 cogs could work fine as a 1x for many of us. An example is the Ultegra 11 speed HG800 cassette. It is 11-13-15-17-19-21-23-25-27-30-34. I rode my CAAD10 1x with this cassette and for my riding on Martha's Vineyard, no long hills, it was fine. The best part of this cassette is that they keep the jumps reasonable in the middle of the cassette, where I'm doing 80% of my riding. If Ekar added two more cogs, say 39-44, this would be a 400% range.
I'm going to set up my upcoming Strong as a 2x, 44-30 with this cassette, 650bx38. That is 453%, gear inches 23-104. I rode D2R2 on my Anderson with a similar range in 2019 and it worked well. I can always drop the 30 to a 28 and bump the range to 486%, still with good jumps. Planning on a Dura Ace 9100 RD initially, which is what I have shifting the same cassette on my Firefly with a 46-34.

[djg21]

I relied on this in choosing to go AXS 44 x 50-10 on my gravel bike.

https://lindarets.com/blogs/blog/gra...nges-and-speed

[BRad704]

Originally Posted by jkbrwn

It's never been about range. It's about finding the perfect cadence. Never gonna happen with 1x.

I tend to go the other way. Since I ride a lot of singlespeed and fixed, cadence has become less of an issue and I look more for total range on my geared bikes.

The Crockett is 40x11-40 and I've been fine in fast group rides as well as hilly, steep gravel rides and races. That said, I certainly wouldn't rely on 40x11-40 for anything competitive on the road...

[bambam]

Originally Posted by mtechnica

I've found 40 or 42T front with 11 speed 10-42 to be surprisingly useable on the road.

...

I agree with this. I have 1 1x 40,10-42(?) from a 11-36(?).
Used to race it cross and moved to the 42 for 2 courses with huge climbs.
(road prefer triple(52/42/30) or standard double, hate 34-50.)

Fine on the road over 30 mph in top gear is enough on a flat road and lower low end than the 39-27.

The 1x with eh 12-36 was fine by myself but on a fast Group ride or TNW it is harder to sit in the pack comfortably with the one by because of the gear jumps. I find myself flipping back an forth and never getting comfortable with what seemed like either an 80's or low 100's cadence in some cases. This was most notable with fluctuations in speed. I feel more comfortable in the same ride on my fixie than in the 1x. Probably because the option of gears as opposed to being locked in and tuning the circles.

Rise safe,
Bambam

[Gibran]

Originally Posted by phishrabbi

Great, so do this.

50/11 = 4.55
34/32 = 1.06

So the Ekar 42t with the 9-42 gets you both a higher (4.67) and lower gear (1:1) than the 50/34 x 11-32

The way Campy is doing their cassettes, there are as many 1t jumps as possible on the small end of the cassette, you're much more likely to need a specific cadence in that part of the cassette than you are when climbing.

Are there tradeoffs? Yes. Should every roadie ride a 1x? No.

But Math is Math- don't argue that you can't get the range on a 1x because you can.

Many people won't mind ever so slightly larger jumps between gears, others will.

This. Exactly why I set up my Ekar with a 38t chainring and the 9-42 cassette. I don’t race and also don’t feel the need to pedal much over 35MPH (or even 30). I’ve been road riding for 35 years and, gasp, I feel like Ekar is everything I need for pure road riding too. Although I have 4 other road bikes so I won’t be going solely 1x anytime soon...