I have a 10–36 cassette coupled to a 42-tooth chainring on my road bike. It feels identical to SRAM’s 11–32 cassette coupled to a 50-tooth chainring where you trade the 11-tooth cog for a 36-tooth cog. If I were doing longer, mellower rides (i. e. at endurance power) or lived in the alps, I might even get a smaller chainring.
I have proper mountains nearby, and the setup is completely fine for me. Ideally, I’d want another climbing gear for the one super long climb (think 1,000+ meters of elevation in one go), but for everything else, it is perfect. If you live in flatter terrain, the 10–33 cassette might even be enough.
“setup is completely fine for me” AND “Ideally, I’d want another climbing gear” don’t fit. Are you changing your gearing often or something?
There’s just no chance I want to be limiting myself with gearing unless there’s a significant performance payoff, but it’s the other way round if anything.
Tire size (effective wheel size) may also be a consideration when picking your ideal chain ring size (bigger tires will cover more ground at same gearing). Play with BikeCalc.com - Bicycle Gear Speed Chart to see what gives you the range you need / desired speeds you want to ride. (For me, I have a “race-y” gravel bike with more road-bike-like gearing with a 46t ring and 10-42t 11sp cassette and then a “rowdy” gravel bike with Eagle 10-50 and 44t ring. And my road bike uses a 48t ring w/ 10-44t XPLR cassette.)
I find that my 40t -11 gear is frequently not big enough due to extended mild descents or flats with tailwind or wanting to go hard etc. but I also have steep mountains nearby so I need the low gears which is why I was favoring 2x. But a 44-10 gear I think would cover 99% of my needs as would a 44-44 for climbing.
Ya good point. Running 42c/38c tires on my Crux in “gravel mode” but need more top end. Leaning more and more to 1x with XPLR. would save the need to get an entire new crankset/bb/fd.
I can almost guarantee that all those pictures shared of recent SRAM sponsored guys on 1x are because of front shifting issues and their ability to totally avoid it with SRAM’s mtb cassettes. It seems like a few of them train on the 2x but ditch it when its time to race because it isn’t worth the risk. I’ve made similar decisions in my own racing (like changing button mapping so that I basically can’t shift the front)
Except I did not write that, you have erased the context. I wrote that if I had more super long climbs around (= lived somewhere else), I’d choose a different cassette or chainring. But I don’t, so my gearing works perfectly for me.
Range-wise, 2x doesn’t give you more here, unless you use a 10–36 cassette to go below 1:1 on the climbing end. 40:11 =3.81 is much easier than 44:10 = 4.40. Going by my data, I use my 10-tooth cog as an overdrive gear on downhills, and on proper downhills even a 52:11 is too easy if I insisted to pedal beyond 65 km/h. But on public opinion roads I am fine with that.
I’ve used 40 paired with an 11-32 on my gravel bike, and the biggest issue I found was being in my 11, 12, and 13 way too much. You can feel the inefficiency, particularity in the 11. I actually prematurily wore an 11 tooth cog out in a short amount of time. It’s OK in most situations, but not great if you have a good amount of pavement riding to deal with (like I have).
Edit: Also, once your chain and cassette get dirty in a wet race, it feels even worse in those small cogs.
Might have already been mentioned but Josh Poertner covers the 1x vs 2x debate on most recent Marginal Gains pod. TLDR: 2x for all but the flattest courses. RIP my 1x Aspero.
I went with a 46t chainring. Got 11-40 in back. Works well enough for me, keeps me pretty much mid cassette. I don’t have a lot in the way of hills though.
40:11 = 3.64 is a very different gear than 40:10 = 4.00 > 50:13 = 3.85 or 42:10 = 4.20 ≈ 50:12. Sounds like you were undergeared to me and you should have opted for a larger chainring and different cassette
Oh for sure - not ideal gearing at all. I still don’t think it’s wise from an efficiency standpoint to be spending a significant amount of time in your 3 smallest cogs which could still be the for a lot of folks using 40 or 42t rings even with 10t cogs. You’ll be using that 11 and 12 way too much.
Not in my experience, although it depends somewhat on your self-selected cadence at speed. I am using them about as much as the 12- and 13-tooth cogs on my old 2x setup (50/34 coupled to a 11–32 cassette), i. e. not too often. On the flats with favorable winds I was/am typically in my 50:15 = 3.33 or 50:14 = 3.85/42:13 = 3.23 or 42:12 = 3.50 — at a cadence of 100 rpm (my self-selected cadence at high rotational inertia/speed) that is about 50 km/h. I’m usually not that fast — or at least not that fast for long. 35–40 km/h is much more common, and I am more towards the middle of the cassette at those speeds.
When I was on Shimano 2x, I couldn’t quantify this, with SRAM AXS eTap, I fortunately can. According to the data I rarely use my 11-tooth cog, it is one of the least-used cogs. The 10-tooth cog sees much more use, because that is my overdrive gear (i. e. when going downhill). The same was true on 2x, I’d only use 50:11 on downhills and avoid 50:12. Even on a compact chainset, harder gearing was rarely called for. I had a loaner with a 52:11 top gear and there are two, three descents where I could make use of that extra gear — and in one case not for long as I can exceed the speeds of basically any gear on that descent (I managed 86 km/h once, but don’t feel like I need to do that very often).
Ditto with climbing gears: gear-wise I could have made do with a 11–28 or 11–30 cassette, but stuck to the 11–32, because I liked to cross chain and use 50:28 on occasion.
Feeling-wise, it does feel a little different with the smaller chainring, but that is hard to quantify. When I got my 1x11 hardtail, it initially came with a 30-tooth chainring, and that did not feel great in 30:11. I got a Rotor 34-tooth Q-ring on sale (for 30 €!), and that works much better. Although I still feel like I spin out too easily. The solution is obvious: get a 12-speed groupset. But I’ll have to hold off on that for a little while, my minister of finance wouldn’t like me chucking a perfectly functional 1x11 XTR groupset.
I’ve been following this topic for a while now. And I think most of it comes down to “it depends”.
In my humble opinion when you live in an area with very steep climbs then maybe a 2x with a 11-32/50-34 would be better. In all other situations I would go 1x.
With a 12 or 13 speed and some good research about your cadence and power you can tackle everything with a 1x setup. You have the range and small steps required for flat, hills and even mountains. And drivetrain loss is relatively small with a clean (and waxed) chain (source: How Slow Are SRAM Chains and Other Drivetrain Efficiency Questions With Adam Kerin - YouTube).
And also as mentioned earlier, how much time do you spend in your 9/10/11 cogg? If you spend a lot of time there, you have the wrong gearing. The 80/20 rule applies here as well. 80% of the time you should spend somewhere in the middle of the cassette. The other 20% you should spent in the biggest or smallest cogs.
I use a 1x13 from Rotor with a 46 chainring and a 10-36 with a waxed Shimano XTR CN-M9100 12 speed chain for road as well as gravel. I live in an actuall somewhat hilly part of the Netherlands. And this combo is spot on for me (around 300watt ftp) for all the terrains I have nearby. For the flats at cruising speed (33kph) I sit spot on in the middle of my cassette (17 tooth cog). When going up or graveling I’m somewhere in my 19, 21, 24, 27 tooth cogs. Still a straight enough chainline.
And if I want to make it really exotic, I also have a 10-46 cassette when I go for some singletracks, Alps or very long gravel rides. For example Unbound 2023.
I know, it’s hard to believe… I live in the central/east side of the Netherlands. The city of Apeldoorn region… Appearently some glaciers during the last ice age stowed (is that word?) the earths crust upwards.
Yep, I’m a lower cadence rider - I like to be in the mid 80s when pushing on the flats at higher speeds so my preferred setup is 50/34 with an 11-32. My most common gears in this setup are right in the middle of the cassette according to the data from my etap.
Where’s that then?