mustang1
Legendary Member
- Location
- London, UK
See, a while ago the lowest gear (biggest cog) was 25. Then 27, 28, 30. Then 32 and oh lordy a 34. The other day i was watching a video and the guy had a 38! I had no idea I don't even know if that's a road cassette or did the guy stick on an mtb cassette to his road bike.
It's a bit like when CD players came out for PCs (remember, they used to call them "multimedia PCs" - what a tosh that was and I'm not even talking about Toshiba). Now where was i? Oh yes... so those CD players started off as single speed, then 2x, then triple speed. A year later 4x, the following year 6x, and finally 8x. People kept upgrading their CD players every couple of years (or did they?). Then 10x, 12x, 14x, 16x, 20x. Around about this time, people just stopped giving a crap. If those manufacturers wanted to go from single speed to 2x, and then straight to 20x, they could have. But oh no, the marketing people stopped the engineers from fulfilling their speed demons.
"If we give those dumbasses 20X right away, what the heck are we going to sell them for the next several years? We have to increase the speed of those CD drives slowly, over time, and get those consumers buying stuff every fewe years, we have to elongate the process".
And that's what I think of bike cassettes. A slow trickle. I know SRAM have a 50, but that's because they need ot use it with a single chainring (they never were good at shifting the front derailleur but that's whole different marketing scam - less is more and all that crap. So anyway, when we have double chainrings and the rear cassette grows to be as big as a 700C wheel, then they'll start over and that's why people say "history repeats itself". But by then, there will be a new breed of cyclists on the block and they wouldn't have gone through all those dinner plate size cassettes so everything will be new to them.
And so it goes.
Oh, and for another topic, don't even get me started on a little "hi fi system" the size of an big iPad that can pump out 1000W. It probably starts distorting at 50W and goes down hill from there. OMG now you got me going on front-loaded volume controls, ya know where you turn the knob quarter way and you already have half the volume so the punter thinks "oh wow i only turned it quarter and it's so loud, I've got another 75% to go". I really outta shut up now but I hope I gave some insight about cassettes.
Ps: you might see me frequently on that "things that annoy you" thread....
It's a bit like when CD players came out for PCs (remember, they used to call them "multimedia PCs" - what a tosh that was and I'm not even talking about Toshiba). Now where was i? Oh yes... so those CD players started off as single speed, then 2x, then triple speed. A year later 4x, the following year 6x, and finally 8x. People kept upgrading their CD players every couple of years (or did they?). Then 10x, 12x, 14x, 16x, 20x. Around about this time, people just stopped giving a crap. If those manufacturers wanted to go from single speed to 2x, and then straight to 20x, they could have. But oh no, the marketing people stopped the engineers from fulfilling their speed demons.
"If we give those dumbasses 20X right away, what the heck are we going to sell them for the next several years? We have to increase the speed of those CD drives slowly, over time, and get those consumers buying stuff every fewe years, we have to elongate the process".
And that's what I think of bike cassettes. A slow trickle. I know SRAM have a 50, but that's because they need ot use it with a single chainring (they never were good at shifting the front derailleur but that's whole different marketing scam - less is more and all that crap. So anyway, when we have double chainrings and the rear cassette grows to be as big as a 700C wheel, then they'll start over and that's why people say "history repeats itself". But by then, there will be a new breed of cyclists on the block and they wouldn't have gone through all those dinner plate size cassettes so everything will be new to them.
And so it goes.
Oh, and for another topic, don't even get me started on a little "hi fi system" the size of an big iPad that can pump out 1000W. It probably starts distorting at 50W and goes down hill from there. OMG now you got me going on front-loaded volume controls, ya know where you turn the knob quarter way and you already have half the volume so the punter thinks "oh wow i only turned it quarter and it's so loud, I've got another 75% to go". I really outta shut up now but I hope I gave some insight about cassettes.
Ps: you might see me frequently on that "things that annoy you" thread....
