After months of pondering about whether I wanted to replace my rigid steel 26er hardtail (ridden in gravel-guise) with a ‘proper’ gravel bike I’ve come full circle and ordered what I think I always wanted – a Singular Swift.

To save costs initially I’ll be transferring the kit from my current hardtail to the Swift frame but I will need some wheels.

I ride mostly road (some of which is pretty rough in itself) but with some bumpy XCish off road and need wheels to suit. As I want to run mountain bike tyres (probably around 2″) I was thinking a lightish set of 29″ XC wheels and would normally have had something built up by CRC around Hope hubs but I’m open to recommendations and pointers to any bargain factory wheelsets.

Being a bit of a tart I’d ideally like white rims, but this isn’t a deal breaker; the hubs will need to be QR (or convertible to) and I can’t really afford to go much beyond £300.

I just bought some Hope 20FIVE-RS4 wheels and I’m very pleased with them. Slightly over your budget though.

White? I’d rather go silver on a swift, either shiny or dull. You can get a lot of your other parts in silver, and they’ll look less overpowering the white and still look “light”.

Velocity have some decent rims in a variety of finishes and widths. Blunt SS, Blunt SL. I built some Blunts on A2Z hubs for the wife’s Swift. I cant find the A2Zs aren’t available any more, but silver is available in budgets from Deore, Hope, King, Phil Wood and on…

I’ve got all silver finishing kit on my current bike which will be transferred across, although it’s got a white headset and rims and I’ve always quite liked the way it looks (although silver might work better with the lighter coloured Swift frame). What’s important I suppose is to make the right choice in terms of wheels rather than colours.

As the Swift is steel it’s not going to be the lightest build and I’m not worried about racing roadies; I was wondering about Hope Tec XC wheels (I should be able to get a pair for a smidge over £300. They should be reasonably durable and up to being knocked about off-road.

Having a look at the Hope website the 20FIVE-RS4-J and XC wheel weights are pretty much the same but I guess that the XCs would be a better match for the Swift.

Bump for the morning crowd.