There must be a lot of people with very grabby big powerful hands saying shimano have no modulation. Saint and deore that I run are easy to feather, lock and everything inbetween, you just squeeze less firmly!

Absolutely glasgowdan. Any brake gets grabby if you are ham fisted!
Shimano has plenty of feel. I have had SLX on two bikes for five years which have been bled but remain working perfectly. SRAM on the other hand never worked from new on my sons bike and despite warranty work never got much better

Shimano every time. They just work

For some yes, I’ve had a lot of sets blow up for me. I’m on Hope E4s now, which I haven’t needed to touch once since cutting them about 8 months ago – in that time I probably blew three sets of Shimano.

They’re fine as you can just use the warranty to get a new pair each time, but I was getting fed up or not having brakes for a few weeks at a time.

There must be a lot of people with very grabby big powerful hands saying shimano have no modulation.

They’re grabby *compared* to Hope or Avid. Which is a wide range of brakes – which all have a very high level of modulation, so putting them in context with those, they’re grabby.

Any brake gets grabby if you are ham fisted!

As above, it’s not being ham-fisted – it’s that in comparison to the other popular brands Shimano brakes are less modulated. It’s how they’re designed, Shimanos get progressively weaker in power the more you pull, Avid and Hope get progressively stronger the more you pull.

That means the first pull is harder on Shimano, and they don’t get much stronger. Hope/Avid generally are weak in the first pull, and get much stronger the harder you pull the lever. That’s a pretty good example of low vs high modulation.

There’s not a right or a wrong, just a preference. Implying people are idiots and ham-fisted is just plain wrong, it’s just physics and mechanics.