Finally joining the 21st century and upgrading my road bike from 9spd to 11spd. Heady days…..

Looking at 11spd cassettes I can’t fathom the almost universal (not quite total) choice for 11T as the smallest sprocket in available road cassettes. Campagnolo seem to be the only mass market brand to have seen sense and have a bit more choice. Why? I don’t get it. 50/11 is significantly bigger (well, 3% bigger) than the 53/12 most of us road raced in the naughties and nearly 5% bigger than the 52/12 most raced as a tallest gear up to the middle 90’s. The best sprinters of all time, the likes of Cipollini and Merckx managed fine with less. It’s the equivalent of a 55/12.Add the bigger tyres most are now using compared to the past and the gear gets taller still. Vast majority of road bikes are not being road raced, let alone by sprint specialists but are being ridden around non-competitively by middle aged rank amateurs with a fraction of the power to turn over a big gear. And you need to be going 55kph downhill to spin out a 50/12T – most folks are enjoying the ride at speeds above that on a descent. It just feels like for the vast majority of users it’s a wasted sprocket that will virtually never be needed and it might was well be a 10spd cassette, just a little bit heavier. I’d far rather have the extra sprocket filing in a gap further up the range.

On flat with tailwind or in fast moving chaingang I’m glad I have it 🙂

what you appear to want is a junior cassette – reasonably common but not so common they are discounted so you wont see them at the major box shifters @ 50% off

But ill keep my 11 tooth thanks

I was just bemoaning this. I just swapped my old lights for a chainset, but it has 52/36 instead of my previous 50/34. No problem, I thought, I’ll just get a 30T sprocket at the back, and to reduce gaps I can get a 12t little sprocket. I never use 50/11 so I won’t use 52/11. But there’s very little choice in 12-30 or 12-32.

Sure, for the people who race in groups etc, but plenty of us don’t.

But ill keep my 11 tooth thanks

What do you do with it? Is 50/12 genuinely not enough for you.

On flat with tailwind or in fast moving chaingang I’m glad I have it

As I said, 50/12 gets you way beyond 30mph before spinning out is vaguely a thing. I spent most of my 20s in a chaingang full of 1st and 2nd cats. 35mph chaingangs was not a thing.

Don’t get me wrong, there will clearly be some people who have a use for it but they are definitely the minority.

11 speed means you can keep the 11 for speed and still have a 28 or 30 without to many jumps. I use mine lots with a compact chainset.

11 speed means you can keep the 11 for speed

You are genuinely spun out on the 50/12 on your block first before moving to the 11? Sure, I’m all up for the 28/30 bottom end, but for vast majority the 11th gear would be so much more useful somewhere in the middle narrowing the gaps.

I’m on 10spd using 50/34 compact with 12-28 cassette and hardly ever use the 12T. I’ve not looked at 11spd but one thing might be getting the ratio steps as even across 11spd. SRAM have gone with 10T but they have also reduced the chainring sizes – there’s a GCN video about it.

In reality I’d be happy enough with 50/34 14-32 – I currently have 11-32 but if I’m spinning out 50/14  I’m going plenty fast enough. I’m a lightweight at 55kg and just don’t have the power to push a much bigger gear than that at 100rpm very often. Closer spacing would be more advantageous to me.

Have a look at here for custom options

https://thecycleclinic.co.uk/products/miche-11-speed-primato-cassettes-for-shimano-sram

When my cassette wears out I may well give a custom build a try

why would i want to *spin out*

I want to keep uniform cadence @ 90-100rpm

at 90 rpm thats 33mph at 100rpm thats 37mph.

I have 48/11 on my winter bike and theres one fast slightly down always tail wind section coming back to town (10km) that i always lose touch with the chain gang due to the fact I’ve run out legs for coming through at anything beyond 110 rpm.

Yea, Im with the OP on this one, even in the summer with evening group rides peaking at an average 24mph* I never run out of gears on a 13-28 cassette.

However, there are 12-25 and 14-28 ultegra cassettes so what more do you** want?

*hottest day of the year and a conscious decision to avoid hills, I’m not superman.

**i would like to be awkward and ask for 13-30.

I’m still to be convinced there was any point going below 11 tooth off road, never mind on road. I know I’m in the minority. Pretty soon, no one will buy cassettes that don’t have the smallest possible small cog for mountain biking… and it’s already the same for road use… if you make cassettes with a bigger smallest cog, it’ll sit in the shelf. It’s irrelevant what people need, you have to look at what people buy.

It’s not so much the need for <11t, its the fact that a 10-50 cassette weighs considerably less than an 11-55 does with the same range, effectively swapping the 55t for a 10t.

I’m planning on swapping my gx to the narrower shimano 12s option once it wears out. But at the same time drop the front chainring by about 10%. Same climbing gears, closer spacing, and especially on a mountainbike the top end just isnt usefull (ive got a gravel bike if i want to ride downhill on the fire road).

The other advantage of those big wide cassettes is counter intuitively better chainline in the usefull gears. Imagine an 11-32 11s cassette on a road bike is actually a really close ratoo 13-27 7 speed, the two gears at either end are just bail outs to be used sparingly.

However, there are 12-25 and 14-28 ultegra cassettes so what more do you** want?

I’m guessing the 12-25 is intended for road racers using a standard chainset on flatish courses.

14-28 – that’s a curious one and not sure quite what it’s for. It feels like overkill knocking out 11,12 and 13 (even I would concede it would be easy to get spun out on 50/14) but at the same time not giving the amazing bottom end you can now get with the new tech. Like you a 13-30 would seem like the perfect sportive (or a sportive like ride on the other 364 days of the year without all the nause) cassette.

At least off road you can shrink it all: smallest smallest-sprocket means smaller largest one (and all the others in between) & smaller chainring (and in theory mech & shorter chain.

All lighter. But bigger/less even jumps sometimes, and wears out faster. But at least you can run a smaller chainring(s).

On road it seems less of an advantage. I’d like a smaller chain set, and 11-28 please (11 speed. Or 1×12. Or 13 even! or something. 11-40 1×13? Maybe.)

I’m still to be convinced there was any point going below 11 tooth off road, never mind on road.

It’s so you can use a 28T chainring for even lower gears and not run out of gears on the road ride home.

oh and see compact chainsets.

eyeing up at 56T oval for my TT bike to let me go 1/10 close ratio at the back with the chainring in the right position for a good chain line across the whole rear range.

14-28 – that’s a curious one and not sure quite what it’s for.

junior gearing.

also miche do their primato in an almost endless set of sizes including 13-30.

also miche do their primato in an almost endless set of sizes including 13-30.

Just googled and found – perfect, that is my solution and not too silly money wise. Thanks.
Link for others interested.

Damn – what am I going to have to moan about now! Still mildly irked you have to go custom to get what should be an obvious mass market solution.

For the amount of use 11/12/13 get when my gear cable worked with my 34/50 chainrings, I’d much rather have a more tightly spaced 14-34 cassette.

But then more than 99% of my road rides are solo and there’s only a few of my familiar descents I’m happy to press on rather than cautiously freewheel. Plus my passion is climbing, despite my unsuitable weight/age/FTP.

I find pretty much the same as the OP, the 11T is probably quite seldom used on a ‘normal’ road bike with a 50/34 chainset ridden by mortals. But then thats the same reason that compact chansets are now normal where “Standard” (53/39) chansets are really for He-Men and fewer are probably sold now…

Having been unable to find a decent replacement for my old 10 speed Ultegra 12-30 cassette (plus fancying a slightly lower bottom ratio), I recently caved and bought an 11-32 SRAM PG1070 cassette, it’s apparently a Road bike Cassette now, but a handful of years back it would have been sold as an MTB one. It shifts nicely, is a reasonable weight and gives me the slightly lower bottom gear I wanted, but the 11T is pretty much un-used and the steps aren’t quite the same. So I have found myself toying with the idea of dropping the big ring down from 50T to 48T to shift the whole range down a touch, I long ago accepted that I am not a mountain of Watts, but with the right set of ratios I can spin all day (well most of it).
Perhaps it’s just easier to accept a normal cassette and play with the chainring tooth count to get a range that works for you.

My other ongoing drivetrain experiment at the minute is my winter road bike, which I’ve got setup 1×9 at present (42T x 11-34) and I am using the whole range. There’s room to go for a bigger sprocket too (old, long cage XT mech), and the 11T does get used but the whole point of the bike is different it’s a cold, wet weather plodder not an ego-charriot… But it has got me considering the idea of gong 1xN on my “For best” summer road bike…

Link for others interested.

That would be the same link as I posted above would it.:-)

I’m running 11-23 with a 38T front on my cross bike on the road. Fine for medium chaingangs (21-22 mph average on rolling stuff), but need a bigger ring for the very fastest group. My 11T is seldom harmed, even on a flat TT course with a tailwind. I have almost spun out on 53×11 down the ski slope in Wales on a 25 (130 RPM at 79 km/hr).

I prefer closer spacing rather that absolute range. Molly, you need Dura Ace casettes for waht you seek.

That would be the same link as I posted above would it.:-)

Mine’s betterer 🙂

Current thoughts now I’ve (me you note, not you) found that option is to buy extra sprockets and swap them in and out depending on the event – say 12-27 most of the time and maybe 13-30 or even 13-32 for a super hilly event. Would normally have just bought 2 cassettes but this way around it all wears at a slightly more even rate and saves a bit of cash.

I’m with the OP. Old school 53/39 12-25 here (and I do race, albeit rarely).

Quite happy with my 11-32t, never really thought about the smallest cog until now.

So I reckon you’re the one who’s obsessed OP.

I’m actually a big fan of semi-compact 52.36. But don’t need the 11T. My old road race bike ran 50/34, and that’s why I used the 11-23 casette, 50/11 is a good top gear for my puny sprinting efforts – and three on the front is one on the back. Hence the old school. Moar gears meant you could run 12-28 instead of 12-25 which is a better gear for climing. That was lost on most people when they saw Oooooh 11 speed AND and 11T

So I reckon you’re the one who’s obsessed OP.

I’m not really thinking it’s users who are obsessed. Most are innumerate sheeple who just buy what’s put in front of them. It’s the manufacturers who I think have got the 11t stuck in their head as the default sprocket choice.

I am, I confess, obsessed with setup though – managed to waste 2hrs the other day faffing with lever and bar setup when putting new bars on. I’d like to think of it as marginal gains. My wife has different words for it that would not pass the STW filters.

People still ask for 48 x 11 top gears on hybrids, saying that 44-11 is too low (on a 700×35 or larger tyre).

50/11 is a good top gear for my puny sprinting efforts

You do realise that is a bigger gear that Cipollini had to use? He was a lot of things, but puny was not one of them.

I’m still to be convinced there was any point going below 11 tooth off road, never mind on road. I know I’m in the minority.

Agreed, the way the smaller sprockets skip when full of mud isn’t great, the 13-14s don’t do that so much.

No racer here, but spend plenty of time in 50:11 (riding in the Peak District). I’m generally pretty disappointed if I don’t break 40mph on a ride, 50:11 @100rpm gives me a gnats over 36mph. Average cadence over the course of a typical ride for me is mid-high 80s which is in the 28-32mph league.

I mean, you are all pedalling downhill as well as uphill, right?

I used to run 12-25 10s with 39/53 rings. When I went 11S, I went for a compact crank and an 11-25 cassette, so same gear spacing in each ring (but a bigger gap between rings) but got a higher top and a lower bottom. What’s not to like?

I’m happy with my 11 sprocket, not that it gets used massively, but it does get used.
I’m not a huge fast cadence guy, more than happy using a bigger gear in a sprint or cresting a hill with a lower cadence than most.
If it was removed I probably wouldn’t notice, but it’s there and I’ll use it.

When I was road racing, it wasn’t unusual to see speeds of 50-60kph on the flat with a tailwind and 70kph+ on descents and therefore a 11 or 12 sprocket was necessary to keep up as you constantly need to keep ‘topping up’ your speed to maintain position in a bunch

Campaign is readily available as 11 speed starting with the 12 sprocket.

Damn auto correct, Campagnola!

50/11 feels about right as a top gear to me.

I only really “spin out” on long, straight downhills, and it feels nice to turn on the flat.

But then 50/12 did too when I had that.

I’m generally pretty disappointed if I don’t break 40mph on a ride, 50:11 @100rpm gives me a gnats over 36mph. Average cadence over the course of a typical ride for me is mid-high 80s which is in the 28-32mph league.

I mean, you are all pedalling downhill as well as uphill, right?

There is pedalling downhill and there is pedalling downhill. Have look at tour footage and I’d be surprised if you’d find much of anyone pedalling when they have hit 40mph. I managed to hit 100kph in a race in Switzerland years back and I can assure you I was not even thinking about turning the pedals! TBH I’m not sure if the aero effect of pedalling over feet level in a silly tuck would slow you down after certain speed rather than speed you up.

Semi compact on a 12 25 I regularly spin out on descents, only notice it when in a group with riders who have an 11. It’s annoying but overall I prefer the closer spacing

When I was road racing, it wasn’t unusual to see speeds of 50-60kph on the flat with a tailwind and 70kph+ on descents and therefore a 11 or 12 sprocket was necessary to keep up as you constantly need to keep ‘topping up’ your speed to maintain position in a bunch

And that is kind of my point. How many cassettes that get sold see a road race? If you are road racing (and if you spec a road race specific bike with a compact which for a UK based racer I’d see as a curious choice) I can totally see it’s need. But that is a marginal activity. 5% of road cyclists road race maybe. And even then most ride different wheels with different cassettes on their bike for the vast majority of the time.