hello peeps

i’m in the market for new brakes for my birthday, so was thinking of either of these. SLX is about £150 for a pair from merlin or the deore is £100 from them too. The deore seem to get really good reviews, so i’m leaning towards them but just thought i’d better run it past the singletrack massive in case anyone has any strong opinion either way…

I realise i could probably save a little from rose, but i don’t have either the talent to change the hoses, or the time to wait for them to be delivered.

cheers

dave

Dave,

Don’t let the left/right hose swap thing put you off buying from a European supplier, as you’ll probably need to trim the hoses on whatever brakes you buy. If you’re trimming them, you can just swap them at the same time.

Shipping time from Europe can be a little longer, but there generally pretty quick (if the items are in stock) – what time limits do you have?

ActionSports have the 596 models in stock for about £75, factor in a fiver or so for delivery, and you’re still ahead of the game.

Rose and bike discount are pretty much as quick as CRC these days. I ordered on a saturday from Bike discount and the parcel was here tuesday! IIRC the cheaper Shimano brakes on Merlin are opposite hand at the moment anyway.

thanks for the replies guys. didn’t know that about merlin…sneaky. no mention of that on their www.

So to shorten the cables just unplug unscrew them from the brake, remove some wee bit (i’m assuming), chop, screw back in?

596’s pretty good though yeah?

I got my Deore M596 for about 60 quid off Rose last month. Thats for the PAIR. I had rotors already though.

I had to bleed them after swapping/trimming the hoses, which is a bit faffier in my opinion than the old Shimano brakes but not really that hard certainly compared to the likes of Avid.

Now that I have had them bled and set up to my liking I’m really rather impressed.
1 finger braking and less on/off than the SLX/XT/XTR units apparently.

They are properly powerful and for UK brakes I’m not sure you need anything more powerful. Maybe in the Alps you want the whole Icetech rotor finned pads thing.
Having said that I dragged my previous (2004 vintage ish) Saint calipers (with 160mm rotors) and XT levers round the Alps and BC for about 6 months in a year with zero issues. So maybe not.

In summary, buy either, they are both ace.

Get the deore and spend the difference on a nice new helemt or something?

Yeah 596’s are pretty good. Got mine from Merlin and they weren’t opposite handed