am building up some road bike wheels for my steel chrome lugged Kona Kapu. I have some black DT350 hubs and some black DT R460 rims and I have been looking at spoke options. I was going to go for DT competition in black. However, for the same price I can get fancy lightweight DT Revolution spokes in silver and I’d get silver nipples to go with them instead of black. The question I have is will silver spokes and black hubs/rims look odd? Or as the bike is a faux classic style can I get away with silver spokes

Looks fine to me. That’s how I build all my own wheels now.

I like silver spokes with black nipples. Looks mean. Might be worth building with comps on the drive side rear for a bit more stiffness. Depends on spoke count and your weight. Personally, I’d use Sapim equivalents.

Silver looks purposeful. Like you aren’t bowing to fashion and adding unnecessary colour.

That’s what I say to myself anyway when I look at the extra pence per spoke for black and my extreme tightness kicks in 🙂

you’ll die of shame

Silver spokes with black rims & hubs look great.

I like using silver spokes to replace black ones – that way I know which ones were originally in the wheel and which have been cackhandedly replaced by me. 🙂

Black rim, hub and 27 spokes on my last bike. 5 black spokes…

32 spokes, so they should be tougher than the 24 spokes rear it is replacing.

Silver all the way for me. Black looks dead.

Silver spokes all the way for me, whatever the rim/hub colour (most recent have been black/black. Black spokes look dead.

I have a set of black/silver/black wheels and I think they look lovely.

Triple black is trying too hard, the silver spokes catch the light nicely when clean, and black spokes are more expensive. Plus big Al doesn’t like selling them cos there was once a bad batch.

Silver is back in fashion don’t you know.

Spokes must always be silver, black was always wrong. But then the only black on a bike should be brake blocks, tyres and maybe cable outer. Metal, except for the frame, should shine.

they look nice IMO but only if kept clean & shiny 🙂