This kind of common sense has no place in this thread
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I assure you I have dumber more biased material 
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In principle this is true, but if you had no overlapping gears you’d need to do the double shuffle every time you reached one of two speeds, & the rear part of that shuffle involves going through the entire cassette.
It does provide some benefits when it comes to lumpy terrain, where in any instance you’d be changing two or three sprockets at the back within the space of a couple of seconds, you can instead do a chainring change.
That’s an awesome way to display a gear comparison! I used to make up charts in Excel for this purpose.
Yes, & I absolutely agree with you. A triple is a waste in the hands of someone who just wants to get on their bike & commute over relatively flat land, or pleasure-ride the local paths, & not have to think about this stuff. Often it’s a waste even having gears at all. The number of bikes I see with the usual 28/38/48 triple & 6-speed 14-28 cluster, parked in the 28:14 gear makes me go 
. Please for the love of god give them a single-speed with a 2:1 ratio. Or at least a single 36-tooth chainring with the same cluster where they can put it on the 18t at the back for the majority of their riding. They have three gears lower & two gears higher if they want to use them… perfect.
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Okay here’s another opinion.
These so-called “cassettes” that are moulded in one piece for user simplicity, or because the design of the hub/spline has made a one-piece construction necessary, we need to start calling them “clusters” again. “Cassette” implies (to me anyway) that you can take it apart & interchange parts.
True, you might have to bust some rivets on a cassette, but the rivets are not structural & they only aid in installing it quickly on the spline.
As soon as I get back from vacation. They won’t be pretty. It was a race bike in my younger days. Aluminum frame. Carbon bars and stem. Grip shift. The frame, seat post, hubs, fork (Judy) and cranks (White Brothers) are still original. I busted the rear derailleur but had an extra hanger. Can’t find those anymore. I do have a pic in my phone of the seat.
Found another one in my phone. It’s all dressed up.
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Very nice….i think that is an earlier frame than 1998, though. The canti brake stop in the rear was only on for the first model year or two, IIRC.
Love knowing there are still some of those “out in the wild”. 
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Aaaaaaaa. Burn it with fire
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Hah! I actually have fond(ish) memories of GripShift from back in the day. My shop’s Sram rep was a great guy and it was the height of Shimano’s anticompetitive practices in the 90s. I had an as-little-Shimano-as-possible project bike, so I was happy to use the fancy new SRT-500(?) shifters the rep gave a bunch of the mechanics.
I was using them with a Sachs (remember them?) New Success rear derailleur (Shimano front, the Sachs front der was terrible), Sachs chains, and Sugino cranks. Paul brakes, I think? Actually worked really well, too. But could never get away from Shimano cassettes or bottom brackets.
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I think the Gripshift might be my most detested cycling product in the world, right up to this day. It begat a lifelong hatred of SRAM that shows no signs of abating lol.
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Loved my x rays, might still have them in a box somewhere.
Pretty sure my brothers bike still has some too.
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I raced an original set of 7-speed Gripshift for about 2 years back in the early 90s. I think that I had Shimano 600 front and rear derailleurs and cassette. Later transferred the shifters to my Shogun Kaze TT bike on original Scott clip-on bars when I got my first set of brifters (DA 7400). Still have fond memories of those shifters. However, I may have donned a set of rose-colored glasses in the interim.
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One of the guys on our school team raced on the road with GripShift back in 88 / 89…not a lot of people remember that the original Gripshift was on the road and not MTB. 
We used to do bumping drills on some of the fields on campus…I would grab his cables and drag him wherever I wanted him to go.
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Shimano was just so dominant in the late 80’s, early 90’s I really focused on trying to use anything but. I rode Suntour Microdrive for a while and apart from popping teeth off my cassette periodically as a young, low cadence gorilla, it worked really well. Again, apart from having to periodically warranty cassettes for broken teeth. And those first few generations on the transition from thumbshifters to trigger shifters weren’t so great for anyone.
I was basically anti-Shimano and anti-Microsoft in the 90’s, as they had parallel anticompetitive trajectories. I’ve loosened up on Microsoft, but Shimano, apparently not so much.
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I was rabidly anti- Microsoft, my goal in high school was to take down Bill Gates. Didn’t work out!
But the difference is Shimano makes far and away the best products while Microsoft was cobbled together junk.
Yep. In retrospect, I’m pretty sure 20 year old me was anti-Shimano mostly because everyone was in love with them. It’s a bit of an old, nonsensical grudge.
And don’t get me wrong, I’ve used Shimano almost exclusively for the past 25+ years. That said, the SRAM Force/XO1 AXS mullet setup on my gravel bike has been pretty much flawless, so I’ll probably end up migrating over to that for all my new bikes for at least the next few years.
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I’ve only been riding since 2019, all on Force/Red SRAM electronic drivetrains, and I’m in love with them. I see no reason to try another brand.
Can’t compare due to lack of experience, but I’m thrilled with SRAM. Not sure why Shimano is considered so superior to them.
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I think in general, the quality in cycling - frames, equipment, wheels, etc - is extremely good. For the most part, the complaints we all have are nitpicking.
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Most people wouldn’t be any faster or slower 1x vs 2x under most conditions once they became accustomed to using either/or.
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I did, actually. And being able to continue hanging in the fast group while only training 2-3 hours/week instead of the previous 10-12 hours is a nice bonus too. Sure I can’t close gaps like I used to or roll as many turns, but why tow a group that just decides to blow me up on the climb? Being less fit has made me enjoy the sport more.
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My dislike of 1x has nothing to do with speed. I’m just a little snowflake with a preferred cadence and 1x doesn’t let me ride at that cadence.
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