Now thats what i call a Cassette !!

[Mick F]

I'd like to see you ride a fixed gear down this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DhBPFr3RRso

Very impressive and skilful and also strangely compulsive to watch.

I'd be far more impressed if he could ride back up.

[100%JR]

Most high end MTBs are fitted with 1X12 now...I believe Shimano have a 13speed in development.
Good old Marketing.
First it was 3x6,then 3x7,then 3x8,then 3x9,then 3x10...you always needed more gears...until you didn't and it was 2x10,then 1x10...then all of a sudden you need more again and it's 1x11 now 1x12 and soon to be 1x13
Plus you get to pay more for less!
Glad my MTB days are over.

[alexnharvey]

I'd like to see you ride a fixed gear down this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DhBPFr3RRso

Very impressive and skilful and also strangely compulsive to watch.

I'd be far more impressed if he could ride back up.

I think that would be a task for Danny MacAskill.

[foxyrider]

Surely a single freewheel, maybe with a back-pedal brake, would be plenty for riding downhill

That of course, is how mtb riding started over in Marin County

[Cyril Haearn]

Most high end MTBs are fitted with 1X12 now...I believe Shimano have a 13speed in development.
Good old Marketing.
First it was 3x6,then 3x7,then 3x8,then 3x9,then 3x10...you always needed more gears...until you didn't and it was 2x10,then 1x10...then all of a sudden you need more again and it's 1x11 now 1x12 and soon to be 1x13
Plus you get to pay more for less!
Glad my MTB days are over.

When will it stop? Ever more expensive, specialised, fragile, I think the limit was crossed a while ago

[100%JR]

Most high end MTBs are fitted with 1X12 now...I believe Shimano have a 13speed in development.
Good old Marketing.
First it was 3x6,then 3x7,then 3x8,then 3x9,then 3x10...you always needed more gears...until you didn't and it was 2x10,then 1x10...then all of a sudden you need more again and it's 1x11 now 1x12 and soon to be 1x13
Plus you get to pay more for less!
Glad my MTB days are over.

When will it stop? Ever more expensive, specialised, fragile, I think the limit was crossed a while ago

It’s just ridiculous now.
50tooth cog on the cassette!!?
Someone somewhere must be laughing their head off at actually getting away with it.

[NATURAL ANKLING]

Hi,
I was passed on a slope by a bike, racer with thumping large cassette like one posted with a single up front.
But I was on my skip trainer, faster down hill and the racer seem then to run out of puff on next slope.
I shouted that's a large one you got on the back and mumbled some words with fashion in there somewhere the reply was garbled but probably technical and it was lost in the traffic.

Not sure the riders of such can handle the gaps between gears...........maybe nobody told them.............

[100%JR]

When I rebuilt my last HT I tried 1x10.It was 10-speed anyway so I just needed an expander ring and N/W front ring.I opted for a 32t front and 11-36 cassette with 40t expander.After 2 rides in the Peak District I removed the expander ring and went with 11-36.
With the chain on the 40t my legs we’re spinning by about 4 revs to one wheel revolution!
I’d hate to try a 50t with a 30t front as fitted to the bikes now

[Cugel]

Surely a single freewheel, maybe with a back-pedal brake, would be plenty for riding downhill

That of course, is how mtb riding started over in Marin County

MTBing in fact began in 1959, in Marsden Quarry at South Shields. I know, as I saw the group of lads who had converted their Hercules bicycles into mudguardless things with a tiny chainwheel and big knobbly tyres, as they hurled themselves about the old quarry from which all the stone for the Tyne piers was got.

There were incidents and accidents. There were copycats who derived even more bizarre off-road chuggers from gawd-knows what odds & sods.

But they weren't Yanks, so they didn't go about boasting of their activities whilst pretending they had invented something no one else could, which would make them millions when sold to fashion victims here and there about the world.

Cugel, relating some alternative history.

[Brucey]

some bikepacking fashion victim MTBers, circa 1890

cheers

[hercule]

61 x 11 fixed is a good downhill gear.

and cheaper too.

I'd like to see you ride a fixed gear down this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DhBPFr3RRso

clearly a 60 x 11 course that one

The airborne bits might be a bit tricky on fixed...

Scary video, I found my increasingly sweaty palms clutching at non-existent handlebars watching that. It’s exactly like some of my nightmares!

[foxyrider]

Surely a single freewheel, maybe with a back-pedal brake, would be plenty for riding downhill

That of course, is how mtb riding started over in Marin County

MTBing in fact began in 1959, in Marsden Quarry at South Shields. I know, as I saw the group of lads who had converted their Hercules bicycles into mudguardless things with a tiny chainwheel and big knobbly tyres, as they hurled themselves about the old quarry from which all the stone for the Tyne piers was got.

There were incidents and accidents. There were copycats who derived even more bizarre off-road chuggers from gawd-knows what odds & sods.

But they weren't Yanks, so they didn't go about boasting of their activities whilst pretending they had invented something no one else could, which would make them millions when sold to fashion victims here and there about the world.

Cugel, relating some alternative history.

Read what I said, not what you think I said!

My gravel biking started circa 1978 which pre dates the current 'craze' by over thirty years. Of course we didn't have disc brakes or fancy gears just cheap and cheerful stuff on an old frame used for mixed tarmac and bridleway/byway riding - seem to recall the special gear ran to Michelin World Tour 27x1,125 tyres!

[Mick F]

We were riding our threewheelers at the age of five or six up and down the paths and trails, and fields too.
1956/7/8 or so.

There's nothing new under the sun.

[PH]

There's nothing new under the sun.

Does anyone under 50 ever say that?
Maybe nothing new but plenty of new variations. So people have always ridden over mountains or run 1X transmissions or gone bikepacking, and none of it is new, becoming mainstream can be something new as can doing it in a slightly different way. And if someone gets a kick from discovering something, where's the benefit to anyone in telling them it's been discovered a thousand times before?

[Mick F]

You are correct of course.

It ain't what you do, it's the way that you do it.