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Looking to change my cassette from a sram pg950 11-34 to a sram pg980 11-32 it just under 200g lighter, is it worth theft extra or should I just get another pg950? Will I notice/benefit from difference?
Can anyone help?
How often do you use the 34T. 200g is a glass of water, so you won't notice it. You may notice the missing two teeth, however.
I've no experience of either of those cassettes, but personally I would go with the 11-34, I'd rather have the little extra gear for emergencies than save 200g in the centre of the rear wheel
Possibly a good point given I ride single speed up front. The reason I'm looking at 11-32 is based on an offer I saw, weren't sure how much of a difference the 2 teeth made.
I use 34T, it makes a bit of a difference... TBH on a triple or double it's just another super-low gear, don't use it very often at all but on my single bikes I reckon it's worthwhile, the weight difference between comparable cassettes is titchy (25g is it, on XT? Something like that).
Even if it's just psychological, it's worth it 😉
32 to 34T sprocket is about half a gear (..-30-34T on an 11-34T casette, ..-28-32T on an 11-32T casette)
Do you need/want that half gear?
IIRC PG980 as you say is claimed at about 280g? in 11-32T. 11-34T is 20-30g heavier
Shimano SLX is almost exactly the same weight (3g or so in it), I've recently being buying pg980/slx depending on which is cheaper, always ended up going 11-34T just to have that half a gear extra. When on up/down/up/down type trails I end up staying in the middle (32T) ring up front, so any extra range in the casette out back is welcome to me then too
Both slx and 980 have 'spider's/'carrier's on the biggest 3 sprockets, so if you got an sluminium/soft freehub body it might be an idea if you're current 'all individual sprocket' casette digs into the freehub body quite a bit?
Shimano XT/PG990 are about 20-30g lighter again, the spider covers 2 or so more biggest sprockets, but generally cost quite a bit more
You're not spinning hub/rotor/casette weight like you would rims/tubes/tyres, but supposidly it can still make a difference having a heavy wheel when hitting bumps/lifting the rear wheel etc. Though nearly 200g difference in casettes isn't going to be like the difference in having a hub gear would make? (Have never ridden one)