Just built up my new Cotic Soda which looks great. Built on XT, Thomson and easton finishing kit. It weighs about 24lb. I would like it to weigh less. I have Mavic 317's at the mo with Dt swiss hubs. What wheels for about £300 would you get to make the bike lighter. Discuss and thanks

Take the wheels off, the discs off, and the cassette off & weigh them if you like. It's then easy to work out whether another wheel is heavier or lighter. I would suspect that there's not a great deal to be saved in the wheelset unless you have PG spokes or the DT hubs are particularly heavy (are they?). Possibly more to be gained with lightweight tyres.

When lightening up my Ti hardtail (Van Nicholas Zion) I went for American Classics. They were a bit over the budget you mentioned (£400) but do seem very nice:

My bike is currently 23lbs (actually weighed with pedals and some mud!)but still has a few heavyish bits on it – Deore brakes, Fox Float F80RLT forks etc. It actually feels pretty good at that weight, so I'm not that bothered about lightening it further. I've got a set of SID Race forks for it but while they're a fair bit lighter I prefer the Fox forks.

My bike had Hope XC/Mavic X717 wheels before and I was surprised just how much lighter the American Classics were.

There are plenty of new bontrager wheels on ebay you should pick up some rxl ones for £300 or less. Or maybe some stans?

Which DT swiss hubs are they?

Regarding rims,317s are OK but 717s would be about 40g per rim lighter,and something like Stans 355 lighter again.

So a bit to be saved at the rims,but not much,hubs you may save more but need to know what you have now.

As said above what tyres are you running? Many 2.1s are 600-700g each.Swapping to soemething like a Nobby Nic or Maxxis Aspen might save you 100g or more each end,if you can live with them,and a much cheaper way to lose significant rotating mass.

You can save a bit using some ZTR rims, going tubeless and using some lighter tyres?

Great advice folks, thanks. I'll pop some tubeless on at the weekend and go from there. I have just remembered i may have super cast iron beaded tyres, which believe it or not wont help.

not a bad weight, got my large soda down to 22.75LB 😉
girlfriends small is 20.72lb (not the new Soda) so got to loss a little weight my self.

As the others are saying go for some stan rims and go tubless! might be worth looking into keeping the hubs and get some stans rims built up on them.

take a look at maxxis rendez tyres!