What would you do? New bike came with SRAM Guide R brakes. I thought...no bother I’ve got a nice set off Hope M4 with braided cables and floating rotors. I’ll just swap the over. The Guides actually feel pretty good though. So the question is keep the new Guides or service the old M4s and swap them over. The ones not chosen will be fitted to my old Alpine 160 and sold.
Black/gold Mono M4, silver/black Mono M4, Tech M4 or Tech Evo M4?
Personally, I'd go with the Hopes. Everyone I know who has has Guides recently has had some sort of issue with them (OEM on Spesh Enduros), and I'm not sure the Bleeding Edge tool is available from Epic Bleed Solutions yet - one lad ended up having to get it from ze Germans for £25-30 to get the lever back to somewhere remotely usable.
And Hopes will easily fetch £100+ to go towards some new Tech 3 E4's at some point if you fancy newer bling.
If you are going to service them anyway might as well keep them.
What bike's it for?
My Guides have been really good on a hardtail but another set on an enduro bike weren't really up to the job.
I've not had hopes since the old mono mini / C2's, but I do have the newest Guide Rs.
Been running hem since Mayband they've been faultless so far. I've got an epic bleed solutions Sram kit and got a bleeding edge tool from eBay to connect to it, but they haven't needed bleeding yet to try it out.
I guess it depends how the power and modulation of the Hopes compare to the Guides. Go with whichever you prefer the feel of.
Note mine are on an enduro bike with 200mm / 180mm Sram centreline rotors with standard pads. I've got some Sintered and race matrix pads from uberbike which I haven't tried out yet but would expect to be better than the standard organic pads in mucky weather (not that I've wanted for power so far).