NickM
Veteran
- Location
- Darwin's birthplace
I too used to spend ages in Excel looking at gear tables, trying to work out the best deal... but that was in the days of 7-speed (at most) cassettes and horrors like half-step gearing (with down-tube levers, even - urghhh).
In the age of the 9-speed cassette everybody has "crossover" gearing. That is, you spend most of the time on one ring, crossing over to the other(s) only for steep ups/downs or howling gales. You pick your cassette to give you the ranges you need, both at the extremes and in normal use on your preferred chainring. You probably stick with the chainrings that came with the chainset, because smooth changing on chainrings now depends to a great extent on them having all their ramps and pins in the right places relative to each other. And that's it
In the age of the 9-speed cassette everybody has "crossover" gearing. That is, you spend most of the time on one ring, crossing over to the other(s) only for steep ups/downs or howling gales. You pick your cassette to give you the ranges you need, both at the extremes and in normal use on your preferred chainring. You probably stick with the chainrings that came with the chainset, because smooth changing on chainrings now depends to a great extent on them having all their ramps and pins in the right places relative to each other. And that's it
