Love these brakes. Sorted out my hand and arm pain, the power gives me lots of confidence so I’ve stopped comfort braking. I’m offended surprised by some of your findings, so let me share my experience.
The headline feature on the Dominion brakes is the Crosshair caliper alignment system. Essentially they’re grub screws that allow you to fine tune where the caliper sits astride the rotor after you’ve done up the main bolts. While it no doubt works, it’s not reason enough alone to buy these brakes. There’s noticeably more space between the pads and the rotor anyway so they are ironically very tolerant of mild misalignment.
They do run closer than SRAM. They were harder to align, despite the crosshair feature. And almost every time I refit my front wheel they end up catching audibly for a few mins. I’m yet to see how they deal with the dirty gritty water of winter.
Presumably related to this pad-rotor spaciness, the Dominions have a relatively large throw before they bite. And that’s even when the contact point adjuster is set to minimum, i.e. earliest bite point possible. Similarly, the lever reach adjust was never used as bringing it any nearer to the handlebar would have resulted in it hitting the grip. This combinations means there is limited useful adjustment.
Mine are about the same amount of throw as my old SRAM G2 RSCs. The contact adjuster is set to earliest bite from the factory, IIRC they advise not changing it. I have my levers biting when parallel with the bar (so some way out), and there’s plenty of room to go. I’ve brought the reach in a bit more on the rear one to trick myself into using less rear brake, a habit that lesser brakes was letting me get away with.
Perhaps the key USP of the Dominions is their relatively short lever.
They’re the same length as SRAM G2 RSC from pivot to tip, IIRC.
