12 speed cassettes and hacked shimano gravel gearing

Gravel Cycling
1

So I love shimano hg+ and am very pleased with my road and mountain shimano groups, but their 12 speed grx is a little underwhelming, mostly due to their love of 2x and lack of cassette options. For me, in the places where I ride, a 1.25:1 is more than sufficient and I’d prefer 1x. So when sunrace released this thing this year I jumped on it.

Further hacking my drivetrain is a Ratio modified SRAM rival1. Does it shift as well as hg+? no. Do I have exactly the gears I want for most road and all gravel roads I’ll ride? Yes.

2

1.25:1? A lot of MidAtlantic/NE gravel have climbs where you appreciate the 32/34 setup!

3

Sure but in the Midwest I rarely have climbs longer than 4 minutes and I can always drop to a smaller chainring in a pinch.

4

Just a reminder that Shimano DOES make GRX 1x

5

Agreed and the Ratio hack is probably unnecessary, I was just curious. What GRX lacks, however, is coherent gearing. Going straight from an 11-36 to a 10-45 makes no sense.

6

Not really… Assuming you’re comparing 11-36 for 2x and 10-45 for 1x. Also… Shimano offers 10-45T, 10-51T, 11-30T, 11-34T, 11-36T, for there GRX Mechanical 1x. Not to mention if you wanted to just had the new XTR upgrade to your current 2x ( which can easily be turned into a 1x)you and can have 9-45T, or 10-51T

7

I disagree, the 10-45 is 2 cog jumps minimum, not especially useful for the smooth gravel in my neck of the woods. The 11-36 has sensible jumps but 327% is small even for midwest terrain. The 11-42 is a goldilocks that gives 11-12-13-15 and otherwise reasonable cog jumps with enough range for anything I’ll ride and more.

8

I find 1x gearing incredibly frustrating. Other than eliminating the FD/shifter combination it’s not as if there are any weight savings when you’re piling dinner plates into a cassette. The cog jumps are nonsense, whether you’re on flats or climbs. But I’m also a rider that favors cadence consistency.

Currently running 48/32 11-34 but I really want to upgrade to 12sp 46/30 11-32. I like the finer-grained jumps and see no reason for a 10 and 11 tooth.

9

I am a 2x fan, but I recently built up a bike with Wheeltop 1x13 as it was cheap and I wanted to give it a go.
13 speed is enough to not make me complain about big gear jumps.
The chainline still sucks when in the 4 biggest cogs though.

For racing gravel, 2x is still king for me.

10

What gearing on the 13sp 1x?

I’m curious… as the cassettes get more and more cogs, do they get that 1x ring to line up right with #7? Seems you’d get a terrible chain line on both ends of the spectrum.

11

I wanted to use the existing HG hub body on my wheelset so I went with 44x11-50 gearing.
It’s a ZTTO cassette from AliExpress with the following gears:
11-13-15-17-19-21-23-25-28-32-36-42-50

My other bike is an 11 speed GRX Di2 which just feels more efficient.

I think many people try to justify 1x as “less complicated”, which is nonsense as electronic FD’s are dream these days. They do provide more room for fat tires and are one less place to gather mud. Pros and cons of each setup.

I find the chain line decent from 11 to 32, so it’s only really noticeable on the granny gears.

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