Have always had Avid mechanical brakes for the last few years, the ones before BB7 but look the same. Want to put discs on the Mrs bike (before she wears out another rear rim) so I thought I’d buy some new brakes and fit my old Avids on hers.

Any recommendations for a nice simple powerful first set of hydro brakes? It’s either that or another set of bb7s

Maybe stick with Avid, (Juicy and Ultimate I think) then you can use the same pads.
I have always used J5s and been very happy with them
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If you like the BB-7’s then stick with them. They are very good disc brakes.

Avid hydraulic brakes are for the tinkerers though. I run a Code / Elixir / Juicy mix and they do like their maintenance.

Shimano SLX seem to be universally liked along with the new Deore ones.

Get some new BB7s they are great brakes. If you must have hydros I really like Shimano. I still prefer my old Avid BB7 though!

bb7 fan here …. ive had hope mono4`s , old xts and new XT servowaves

still go back to the bb7s and think WOW powerful brake on the SS

hmmm I am leaning heavily that way

they seem to have gone to the roundagon rotor for 2009?

Yeah the roundagons came on mine. I prefer round discs as opposed to the wavey ones. The font does get a bit of judder with roudagon rotors. I prefered my Shimano XT discs on my BB7s. The supplied rotors did stop well though. The BB7s are getting very pricey though

Deore, had them on the bike for 4 years and done nowt expect pad changes.

Can’t go wrong with Deore if you want hydros – had one set on 3 different bikes now dating from 2002 and never had to do anything apart from new pads, no problems.

Although I do like my BB7’s I have on another bike, but as mentioned they do seem pricy for what you get compared to a hydro set that will usually include levers, hose, etc – got mine from Hong Kong a couple of years ago as they were cheaper then.

I’ve run BB7s and liked them too and was a bit scarred of hydros. I finally went for a set of Shimano LXs (which I got for £105) and much prefer them. If you shop around you should be able to get some good deals on Deores or LXs.