I'm gonna be honest from the start and plead uselessness at my job. I'm a desperate mechanic who's been charged with building some Hope Pro3 hubs of the SP variety onto some 819 rims – and it's not going well…

Hope only do one length of spoke (the ones that come with their Hoop wheels) but they're too long for this application. I can't find anyone else that stocks these spokes – help me please.

(And he wants black nipples, but I haven't had the courage to tell him that aluminium nipples are a load of junk.)

Just jump into a time machine

Yes, yes, nice idea. However, not sure how battling Morlocks will help in this case, but thanks anyway. 😉

Mavic used to use them?

Chicken and Sons for Sapim? Not listed on the Chicken's website, but Sapim do SP spokes and black nipples, in fact I'm pretty sure Hope use Sapim SP spokes

Mavic 819's on Hope Pro 3's?

Didn't think you could buy the Hope Pro3 straight pull hubs on their own?

Why does he want the 819's over a set of Stan's rims (also tubeless) that Hope build their Pro 3 hubs into from the factory?

How are you by the way? Been riding much?

Hope Special order the spokes from Sapim, hence the reason you can't find them in shops and the reason they won't sell pro3 hubs seperate. You can do things like this when you buy 200,000 at a time!

They managed to catch someone who was stealing stock from the factory like this as some one took the hubs into a shop to build, who then phoned Hope to ask where to get the spokes from, Doh!

as mboy said, stans are the way forward. And for black spoke nipples DT do them. you sure your a bike mechanic?