Generic on the trainer is fine.

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Kiwami Racing Team

Any shimano /sram compatible 10s cassette will work. Shimano, sram, Sunrace, microshift etc....

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Yeah, on the trainer does not matter at all. The advantage of dura ace is weight.

On the road I choose ultegra cassettes. Almost as light as dura ace but much much cheaper.

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Ed O'Malley
www.VeloVetta.com
Founder of VeloVetta Cycling Shoes
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Fantastic, thank you all! Sounds like I've got a generic cassette purchase in my future.

Any bike shop that puts a Dura-Ace cassette on a trainer should be fired.

Just think how many grams you are saving for when you need to move/carry it though!

25/1 - Noted in my diary, I agree with Jim ;-)

My response to the OP is that whilst you can use SRAM and other brand cassettes, there's probably not any good reason* to not use a shimano one, and that will shift at least as well as the other brands. Does depend slightly on how much you believe some of the marketing stuff about the ramp profile (the grooves on the cassette to help the chain move). However, definately don't go Dura Ace - that's light weight and low life span. Go down the Shimano range to 105 which is great value. Ultegra also fine, bit more pricey, no better for a trainer. Actually for racing I use ultegra on all my bikes, aside from one dura-ace as I couldn't find an ultegra in stock in the right size, but doesn't shift or run any better than the ultegras and I only remember it's DA as the lockring says that.

But, the message here is that you should move the DA back off the trainer as soon as possible, and put the new 105 on there before you wear it down. On the trainer the wear is a lot slower than on the road, but over the course of a few months then you can still do some pretty decent KM on the trainer and that could start to be an issue if the chain is worn.

In simple terms, the chain is the first thing that wears out on the drivetrain. Cheapish and easy to swap. You can get a neat little tool that checks the stretch and lets you know when to change. But, if you carry on after .75% stretch, then you start to accelerate the wear on the cassette, which is then more expensive - need new cassette and chain. But where it really goes bad is if you let the cassette and chain go and then it accelerates the chainring wear, and that's $$$. Eventually then cassettes and chainrings wear out anyway of course, but it's much much slower if the chain is kept in spec.

Swapping the cassette is relatively easy, but you'll need 3 tools to do it, and probably only have one of them. You need a chainwhip, a lockring tool and a big spanner . The lockring tool is basically an adapter for the spanner to the cassette. The chainwhip stops the cassette turning backwards on the ratchet (as it does when you freewheel) and the process is a 5 minute job the second time you do it. Honestly I did it under 2 mins at the weekend. Parktools have a great walkthrough of how to do it, and honestly, unless you live above your bike shop, this is one of the tasks where learing and doing it yourself is going to be easier than taking things into the shop.

^^^^This.

I use DA or Ultegra on my wheels, cheap generic cassette on the trainer ($20 on Amazon).

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ECMGN Therapy Silicon Valley:
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+1. That's what I thought. Besides the extra cost for no reason on a trainer, and lower weight DA wears faster.