All i need is a 12 speed xd cassette to finish off a build and after months of searching the internet for a GX cassette, i have decided to give up for now as it looks like nothing will be available until March 2021.

So i started looking at other brands of cassettes and i’m thinking of picking up a Twenty21 Cassette as a temporary measure until SRAM stock appears again. So has anybody bought or are using a Twenty21 Cassette at the moment? and and issues?

Is that the new brand by Cyclorise? Think they only just released them but I’d presume they are rebranded sunrace/sunrise aliexpress/ebay cassettes.

Might help but I saw BikeShredz(the shop in Caerphilly) respond to someone on instagram saying they had cassettes in stock, could be worth a call?

Thanks! they do have a couple in stock but just as my luck would have it they only sell in store, and i stay in Scotland.

Twenty21 is Cycolrise’s own brand.

My brother has been trialing one of the GX replacements on his bike for past few months, including a week in the Pyrenees. Works absolutely fine and can only recommend.

Full disclosure. I know the owner of cyclorise and ride with him regularly. It was me buying a cheap Ebay cassette earlier this year (that turned out to be bloody good quality for the price) that led to him looking into importing them himself to try and fill the gap in the market left by SRAM/Shimano supply issues.

There is defo a huge gap in the market & i understand the difficulties companies are facing but at the end of the day SRAM et al need to realise consumers don’t have the patience to wait 6-8 months for a part. if the Cyclorise Cassettes turn out to be half decent is there really a need to go back to Sram and pay through the nose.

I’ve been building up a Trance 3 but i then got a SolarisMax frame so had to steal parts off the Trance to complete the SolarisMax. I’ve been struggling for months to find 12 speed parts, all i need is a cassette to complete the build so it’s been very frustrating knowing that one part completes the build but you can’t get it anywhere.

Fitting one this week, will report one I’ve ridden

Judging by the photos on the 12speed HG cassette, it looks like a “Sunshine S-Z” job which can be had for £60 on Amazon, make of that what you will.

Seems like a welcome addition to the current market but I guess their prices will have to come down a fair way in time.

I ended up buying a Garbaruk one recently. Horrifically expensive, yes, but when I’d have had to pay upwards of £140 for an XT and a boat anchor Deore was over £100 (if either was available at all), £180 for something that seems akin to the fanciest SRAM/Shimano ones suddenly didn’t seem so silly. Ultimately, I went in part for the availability (not instant, but defined and quick enough for me) of direct sales. Seems to me that Twenty21 has that same benefit. I might order one of their chains, which have a remarkably familiar looking outer plate design.

I’m running a ZTTO cassette off eBay, it was less than £30 for an 11 speed 11-50 HG cassette. There are options and availability outside of the big two if you don’t mind a bit more weight, I’m incredibly impressed with the quality and not just for the price I paid.

i understand the difficulties companies are facing but at the end of the day SRAM et al need to realise consumers don’t have the patience to wait 6-8 months for a part.

I’m sure Sram/Shimano would love to be able to supply you with a cassette, it’s not like they are deliberately holding them back just to spite everyone. I know that a lot of the available parts are going into bike assembly as the other worldwide shortage is complete bikes and unfortunately the gear manufacturers get a bit more cash for a complete groupset for the 1000s of complete bikes than they’d get from you for one cassette.

Cassette has landed, next day delivery from tarty bikes

The cassette is now on. It was more of a pain to mount than the SRAM models. This is down to the alloy spider. The shoulders on this were on the soft side. This meant that unlike the SRAM cassettes that will only screw onto the XD driver when aligned, it was possible to start screwing this cassette on when not perfectly aligned.

Once that was addressed and the relevant narrow spline alligned with the correct slot in the cassette all was well.

Once there was just the faintest distortion in the largest ring, as if it wasn’t perfectly flat.

I took the bike for an experimental spin up the road stomping the pedals and riding against the breaks to establish that my chain skipping issues were a thing of the past. All appears well. I cant speak for multi shift changes as e-bike shifter is limited to single clicks. No discernible issues with shifting.

Quick weigh in brought the cassette in at 515g, which is all of 65g above the SRAM 1275 weight. I can live with that. So I got 1,000k out of my last cassette, lets see how this goes. This time I’m going to follow the rules and change chain at 0.50 wear rather than letting it get to 0.75. I’m also going to stick to wet lube (muc off e-bike) as I’m not convinced the water based squirt dry wax lube was appropriate for an e-bike.

65k commute tomorrow with 600m of climbing, so if there are problems I’ll know about it.

So what have I learned?
Well I didn’t ride the bike yesterday, I took the road bike to work instead.
This morning, I thought I would order another cassette for my analogue bike that I’ve been re-building. It would seem that exactly the same Twenty21 or xx21 cassette is available on Amazon under different branding (it turns out 7 different brands) for around half the price that Cyclorise are marketing these at.
I feel like a bit of a mug now. The only difference was that the cassette I bought was in the UK on next day delivery, the others are shipping in a couple of weeks from their native China.
So disappointing
I note that Cyclorise are pre-order only for the SRAM XD version. Given the rate e-bikes chew through cassettes, the budget Amazon options at £70 or so seem like a great idea, provided the current Twenty21 proves worthwhile.
So my question now, is:
Do I just swallow my pride and order an Amazon special for my analogue bike and at least have the consolation that even having overpaid for the Twenty21 cassette, I’ll still have had two 12 speed cassettes for less than the price of a Sram 1275 GX?
OR do I double down and go for the GARBARUK?
I suspect the latter while lovely will also put an indecent pressure on my marriage

Amazon or AliExpress.

I’m glad this enterprise has popped up, as it’s made me more aware of the ability to source the same products direct from China/Taiwan.

Anyone able to compare the quality to Sunrace higher-end offerings?

The quality is never going to worry even Sram NX level kit, but from my experience of sunrace, possible on a par. What you are getting is a cluster of stamped rather than machined cogs on an XD carrier. On an e-bike where you change one gear at a time, this is probably fine.

I did look at my ZTTO cassette a bit closer and it is exactly the same as this one but for less than half the price off eBay

The quality is never going to worry even Sram NX level kit, but from my experience of sunrace, possible on a par.

The nicer Sunrace stuff is really good quality and very durable actually.

And comparable on price to these, with the UK markup.

I’ve now completed a few rides on this cassette and can comment as follows:
– Single upshifts even under power (e-bike) are fine
– Downshift from larger rings also good
– Downshift from smaller rings. so five smallest on cassette, can be reluctant, with either the chain not dropping down at all, or requiring encouragement of a double down and back up shift to get what you want. I’m 120k in and nothing adverse to report.
I’ll keep a close eye on chain wear and see how long it lasts.