Interested in the advantages of 1×11 speed over 2×10.

I’ll be the first to say I like the clean looks. For new frames, I can see that 1×11 would allow some suspension designs that wouldn’t be possible with a front mech. I’m not aware yet of any frames taking advantage of this though.

Fewer dislodged chains when changing into the granny ring and weight are the only things besides these that I can come up with.

I don’t really have problems with maintenance on a front mech. Cables and the mech itself last forever.

Anything I’m missing? Besides being more enduro.

New nomad is 1x specific, there are bikes designed around not having a front mech. Saves weight, less to go wrong and less clutter on the bars.

More gears on a single ring means less gear overlap- which means no doubleshifting/recovery shifting when going from big to little. It’s nice to have a seamless run through the gears.

Clean looks and less clutter, no front mech to get caked in crap, more chainring clearance, less cables to clean and lube and nothing to spike you when you impale your leg on the chainring, one lever to worry about and simpler shifting. From a design point of view it does enable different designs without a front mech, some bikes do use this. Short stayed 29’ers for example.

These were the reasons why I went 1×10 years ago. When 1×11 came out I saw it as a way of getting all the above but with a couple of extra bailout gears to protect the old knees. Considering a full group set X01 is now under £500 it’s a bit more stomach able if starting from scratch. There’s no way i’d convert my other bikes to it though when a one up ring does a pretty good job for a lot less.

I’ve never really got 2×10. To me if you’re going to hang a mech off a bike, at least use the 3×10 and have the full range, and as most riding is done in the middle you’ll have a perfect chain line most of the time, and the benefit of top and bottom when you need it. It does look prettier though!

Considering a full group set X01 is now under £500 it’s a bit more stomach able if starting from scratch.

Where from? Cheapest I priced XO1 at was £750 from Merlin (without Brakes)

I’ve never really got 2×10. To me if you’re going to hang a mech off a bike, at least use the 3×10 and have the full range, and as most riding is done in the middle you’ll have a perfect chain line most of the time, and the benefit of top and bottom when you need it.

Yep and a granny ring plus 34 cassette pretty much allows you to climb anything.

I’ve never really got 2×10. To me if you’re going to hang a mech off a bike, at least use the 3×10

24/39 was a hell of a range for me, more than I needed. 2x = bash options, chain device and all those nice things.

As above 1×11(10-42) Less weight, simpler, less moving parts, single ring. chain device if you want.
1×11 (11-40) all of that just without the full range so a compromise. I don’t have the cash and already have good running gear so staying 1×10 for a while with an expansion.

Considering a full group set X01 is now under £500 it’s a bit more stomach able if starting from scratch.
Where from? Cheapest I priced XO1 at was £750 from Merlin (without Brakes)

You can get an X01 groupset from bike-discount.de for about £540 and an XX1 groupset for about £650 or so.

I’ve never really got 2×10.

Dropping the big ring means more ground clearance and you can run a bash.

I never got why a MTB needs such a tall gear if ridden off road. 😉

That cheap bike-discount.de X01 is a combination of X01 with X1 chainset (which I didn’t even know was out) according to the description.

Probably a decent compromise to make to save £100 – or you could just use your existing crank with a thick/thin ring to save even more.

It’s not so much the up front cost, it’s the cost of the consumables that kills me, I could get into a £750 groupset if the cassette wasn’t made of gold.

Northwind: I agree completely. However, as least the cassette is steel (bar the 42) and I’ve read quite a few reports of people getting very good life from it by rotating 3 or 4 chains every 500 miles and restricting the aluminium 42 to bailout duties only.

If you were really careful, maybe you could get it to last 3x as long as an XT cassette and that makes it look a lot more reasonable. Bloody hard to compete with the older stuff atm though – an XT 11-36 is now £34 on CRC!

Northwind – I’ll watch the price of the discounted X1 cassette with interest 🙂

Another advantage not mentioned is that the chain interaction with the suspension can be more predictable (although some companies use the granny ring to change suspension characteristics deliberately).

The on-one Codeine is another example of a 1x specific frame.

Yeah, fair point that… But then again you hear things like “I took my new XX1 drivetrain to the strathpuffer and now I need new everything”. I suppose it just comes with racing, sometimes you’re putting the drivetrain through hell…

As someone who crunched his front shifter in a stack a week ago, I look forward excitedly to my first 1x X bike!

Will be simpler to clean too.

Northwind, I’ve put hundreds of miles on my xo1 x 11 can’t see how you could wipe it out on one race. It’s still going strong. I mean how could you wear out a chain on one race? Common. Brake pads maybe but not a drive chain.

Maybe 1×11 advantages over 1×9 would be a better comparison.

I run 1×9 with a Sram shifter and Shimano clutch mech. Works fine. Never seem to run out of gears (only traction) and the steps between the gears do not seem too big. Sometimes miss a bigger ring up front.

The other thing with XX1 is, from user reports, it looks like the Sram front rings wear pretty fast and they are £50+ each.

With the uneven bolt circle, Sram have made it impossible to either rotate the ring by 1 hole to spread the wear or run it backwards flipped around to reuse. I have one mounted on a Leonardi (Hollowgram) spider and, whilst it’s possible to mount it on backwards, the chainline will be quite off and the tabs don’t sit nicely.

What would be really nice is if someone came out with a “reverse spider” which would allow you to run all of your worn chainrings backwards. 😀

Pawsy_Bear – Member

It’s still going strong. I mean how could you wear out a chain on one race? Common. Brake pads maybe but not a drive chain.

The puffer’s probably an extreme example, it destroys bikes- horrible conditions and long distance. But racing’s hard use in the UK, you can have a drivetrain absolutely packed with mud within minutes then just have to keep on riding on it for the rest of the day. Then often not ideal maintanance between practice and raceday too. My big bike goes through drivetrain probably 3-4 times faster than the xc bike because of that

Pawsy_Bear – Member

“It’s still going strong. I mean how could you wear out a chain on one race? Common. Brake pads maybe but not a drive chain”.

End of lap 1… 😀

Actually this didn’t wear out the drivetrain, though I doubt it did it much good.

Horrible for the drivetrain but you can see, in thick mud it would be much better without a front mech, especially on a 29er, where the front mech is effectively a mud scraper for the rear tyre.

Thanks for all the replies guys, be interesting to see how cheap the new X1 kit gets on bike-discount.de or CRC.

In the meantime, I’ll stick with 2×10 XT. Current drive chain need a bit of an overhaul, but new cassette, chain, chainrings should come in under £100.

Someone up there –^ mentioned running 1×11 with a third party narrow wide chainring. Would that work? Or is the chain a different gauge? Could be a cheaper upgrade route.

My drive train was generally tired in all respects so swapped to a race fave narrow qide front rinf and then an slx cassette and zee 10speed mech and shifter. The resulting 1×10 was pretty much bang on for church stretton yesterday. Some good discounts on crc

As you say, didn’t wear out the drive train. That was my contention. I’ve had similar conditions. Let’s be honest at that point it’s time to dig out the crap. It still wouldn’t wear out new chain or cassette or front ring. Those conditions would equally affect any chain set up 1 x 10 or 3 x 9. Just don’t see his point when he says a sram 1 x 11 wears out faster? Urban myth.

I didn’t say it wears out faster. 😕 People kill all sorts of transmissions in a hurry under bad race conditions, I put a 9-speed XT-and-KMC setup in the bin after just 4 or 5 rides- kinlochleven and fort william grinding paste mainly. Sometimes drivetrain wears fast, it’s a consumable in harsh conditions. One thing when it’s a £40 XT cassette though.

He didn’t say it wore faster, he said hearing about people wearing out a cassette and chain put him off, and at £350 a pop for a cassette I have some sympathy with that view.

hearing about people wearing out a cassette and chain put him off

Fact? Hmm along with it doesn’t pedal like its weight LOL

Yeah no issues from me if you need to change your drive train every 4 rides I’d be at the SLX and Devore end of the range. Cost for the average user? Well I’m not sure it’s any more expensive I don’t bother if the conditions are that bad as the photo. Mines been everywhere in last couple months, Exmoor, Wales and Keilder and hasn’t missed a beat or worn out.

Biggest advantage of 1x for me is the removal of another thing I can get wrong when tired and stressed. Too easy to start shifting wrong side or wrong direction.

and at £350 a pop for a cassette I have some sympathy with that view.

And the rest, £210 at CRC, plenty of others a similar price.

A quick lashed up comparison in this weeks de rigueur wheel size:

Its the numbers in Red that matter Big numbers are harder to pedal, smaller numbers are easier, obviously not exhaustive but sort of handy IMO…

That 10t sprocket on XX0/XX1 is worth quite a bit, I’ve shown it with a 32t chainring, but a 30t or even 28t makes plenty of sense as you’d get lots of range for climbing and still have a usable top gear…

2×10 obviously gives you more overall range if thats what you are after, but 1×10 with a T-rex isn’t a bad compromise, and changing cassettes and chainrings about on a 1xN drivetrain is all about tuning the gearing to the user, rather than having 20 combinations some of which might suit… you pays your money etc, etc…

Just to throw another option in…

34×13 on a Rohloff gives you 14 evenly spaced gears from 19″ to 100″. 😛

Weighs a whole lot more, costs more, and is less efficient if those things bother you though.

A Rohloff Probably costs about the same as XX1 and will require a rear wheel rebuild too…

I fairly recently went from 2×10 to 1×10. I “thought” i’d miss the advantage a 2x setup has of being able to drop a large ratio change in by simply changing into the granny ring at the front, generally at times when you come hareing round a corner at high speed and find a rock/stepup or other obsticle that suddenly needs a low gear. Obviously, with just 1x, you could be a large number of shifts away from a low gear potentially.

Except, in reality, that just hasn’t happened and in fact, i find myself more “in the right gear” for more of the time with just 1 shifter and only 10 ratios? Can’t quite work out why, but frankly, i’m sold! (add in a quiet drivetrain, without any of that usual front mech rub etc and it’s even better) I’m running 32/42 and that so far has got me up anything my legs can manage, and so far, the higher ratio 32/11 has pretty much just about been enough for road sections etc

Are those bottom gear figures for 32/42 and 32/40 correct. Seems like a very small difference for the XX1 and Hope T rex – rounding masking a near gear inch difference?

FWIW the gap caused by the missing 17t on a T Rex is pretty irritating. It’s both noticable on the legs and also needs a slightly firmer shift.

A Rohloff Probably costs about the same as XX1 and will require a rear wheel rebuild too…

Fully accept that I did a very quick Google and may have missed the cheapest places, but they seem to be £1000+ for a disc one, so more than 30% more expensive than XX1 for something heavier and less efficient.

They have their place, but IMO they’re not really a comparator to XX1 for most people.

For me I think the biggest pro of going 1×10 (with a standard cassette and a reasonably sized chainring) is that it’s forced me to man up and pedal faster up the hills, thus making me a stronger and quicker rider! The biggest con is that there is no bail out for when my legs are knackered – but if the bail out option was there I wouldn’t have been forced into pedalling harder.

1×11 wouldn’t have had that benefit but I can see the appeal of getting rid of the front mech – that’s the second biggest pro of 1×10!

FWIW the gap caused by the missing 17t on a T Rex is pretty irritating. It’s both noticable on the legs and also needs a slightly firmer shift.

I thought you were meant to replace the 15T with a 16T to compensate? Or is your experience with the 16T as replacement?

The 15-17T “gap” which is filled to some degree with the later “Big cog” kits (because they come with a 16t as well) doesn’t seem to be much of an issue for me so far. With a 32 or bigger front ring, it occurs at a speed at which really i’m only going to be travelling along flat smooth roads/tracks etc, and so it’s easy to either just slow down by 1mph or go faster by 1mph to accommodate the ratio step. In fact, it’s probably good “spinning” practice 😉