Apologies in advance for the basic question!

I decided to check my chain for wear last week – it was just at 0.75 on the chain checker thingy so decided to buy a new chain. Fitted an KMC 9 speed chain on Friday and went round Hamsterley with a fellow STW-er (hi P20!) on Saturday. Cue horrible gear slippage and general cursing as I realised that the cassette is knacked too.

I’m now bored at work and browsing the internet for cassettes. The original cassette and chain on the bike were SRAM 9 speed. The rear mech is Shimano XT Shadow. Will it be OK if I buy a Shimano cassette to go with the KMC chain, or do I need to stay with SRAM? And, if it is OK to go with either, what’s the best cassette that is reasonably hard wearing and won’t break the bank?

Thanks!
Hannah

Mix n match. I’m guessing SLX is probably good value for money these days unless you want light weight which would be XTR and a remortgage.

Judging by the amount of homemade flapjack I hauled round Hamsterley on Saturday, I don’t think I should really be bothered by the weight of the cassette!

Looking at this one on CRC – it says “for use with super narrow 9 speed chains”. Is that what I have?

yeah that’s fine.

HG61 is a lot cheaper but a bit heavier (but not as heavy as HG50).

You can get SLX for about £26-30 from a few of the german places but you will have to pay postage – worth it if there is other bits you want.

I use SLX as I find them the best price to weight ratio and have an alloy spider in case I get a wheel with an aloy freehub. Not as many sprockets on the alloy spider as the XT one though so not sure how well they fare.

Sweet, thanks!

Put the old chain back on and run it a while longer?

Yeah, that’s what I’ve done in the interim. Much better! However, it still skips in a couple of gears now (not sure how as it wasn’t doing that before I put the new chain on!).

Final (hopefully!) quick question: will I need any sort of adapter/lockring thingy if I get the shimano rather than SRAM cassette to fit it to the wheel? Or will it be a straight swap?

straight swap legolam, nothing to fear! 🙂