Originally Posted by
livedarklions
When did cross-chaining stop being a thing? My '94 Allez has the original Shimano 600 derailleurs, and it definitely does NOT like being cross chained and tells me so quite vocally. "Buzz crunch crunch buzz". Go up or down one gear in the back and she's quiet as ever. It's not a subtle difference.
Funny, my experience seems to be the reverse of most folks.. Bitd, I had nine effective gears. The only one I can say for sure I never used was small/small. Large/large meant not having to drop to the small ring (anethema in my teeny rigid racer's mind). Who couldn't get up hills in a 52-21? It didn't make grinding sounds, perhaps because it got used relatively often,
also the Ron Cooper rear triangle was famously rigid. I imagine that I used the small ring, living as I did at the top of a 500 climb in southern VT, and doing lots of hilly training and racing, but I can't say for sure.
Now, I have so many gears on some of my bikes, I don't know what to do with them all,*
so I just don't bother with the 2 extreme cross chained gears. Not because they're noisy, though they might be. I just have no reason to.
Eric
*my most modern is an 02 Lemond Zurich and it's got 20.