Now I was willing to accept this if you wanted something special. Mud tyres or spikes or combination road / gravel tyres or even doing 45° angle corner leans at 80kph down Alpe d’Huez or whatever but surely, SURELY, for just going A to B in an paved enviroment it wouldn’t matter?
Yeah no turns out the premium shit does feel great and rolls better. I can never return.
I can’t say the same for hubs. The more expensive they are the more obnoxious they seem to sound. With the exception of Onyx hubs and other one way clutch hubs. But the inexpensive Shimano hub that came on my mountain bike is almost as silent as a clutch hub, making just a slight ticking sound when coasting that I don’t even notice compared to the wonderful sound of my tires on dirt.
That basically works out along the lines of hoovers where people think if it doesn’t scream at you it’s cheap. There’s really very little technical need for them to do that and how good of a hub they are is also entirely removed from that question
“If my hub isn’t screaming bloody murder, how will I remember that it cost more than my first bike???”
I know in the case of mountain bike hubs, the trend for higher engagement points is at least partially to blame. I hear the fast engagement is nice, but I can’t take the sound. Maybe one day I’ll get to experience a clutch hub. I’m curious what it’ll be like on tricky technical climbs, but I mostly want the silence.
They’re also the most repair and service friendly, with their cup and cone/pawl design. Shimano has kind of solved bike components
Unfortunately I didn’t know this and ended up not servicing my hubs on my road bike until it was too late and the cup was pitted. I still repacked it and replaced the balls, but a new hub is in order if I get back to riding that bike. It’s also probably about time for me to service the hubs on my mountain bike now that I think about it, they get a lot more abuse.