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Nobody’s mention the joy of trimming your mechs for silent running on the move.
Alluded to, but I guess I left out the "joy" portion:Nobody’s mention the joy of trimming your mechs for silent running on the move.
Thumb shifters are great for obsessive fiddling on quiet rides where you can hear the ticking and make proper adjustments to get it straight.
If you set up your mechs properly in the first place the indexing just works and you can enjoy the ride. Personally I welcomed the demise of thumb shifters and the improvement that rapidfire shifting brought to cycling. When your bouncing around on the gnarly stuff getting a perfect gear change every time is important.Nobody’s mention the joy of trimming your mechs for silent running on the move.
JudgyIf you set up your mechs properly in the first place the indexing just works and you can enjoy the ride. Personally I welcomed the demise of thumb shifters and the improvement that rapidfire shifting brought to cycling. When your bouncing around on the gnarly stuff getting a perfect gear change every time is important.
I had thumb shifters on my early bikes and preferred them in friction mode as the indexing never worked reliably for me, but worst problem with them was you couldn't keep a good grip on the bar and change gear.
Mind you not all the 2 lever gear shift sets were a good idea, I particularly hated the combined brake & gear setups as it stopped you upgrading your brakes without also having to buy new gear shifts as well.
I remember the 200GS that came fitted on my 1991 Trek Antelope 820 bitd, not impressed by the function or looks of those shifters/ levers combo. The bike was kitted out with a full 200GS groupset and it was a bike I was not sad to get rid of!Nostalgia innit. That and the earliest rapidfire were a bit shit. My very first upgrade bitd was getting shot of the 200GS crap on my MBK.
I went with Exage ES rapidfire plus, I still have a set and they work great, much better than the prior efforts.
Thumbies are fine, I prefer the Suntour variant to Shimano though, lighter action and simpler internals.
If forced to stick with one shifter for ever though I'd pick M950 XTR, that's when they really nailed it in my opinion.