Originally Posted by
CarloM
Well I admit I'm getting lost. All I know is that I live in an area with a lot of slight-to-moderate extended slopes (my subsection of L.A. was built in a hilly area which over the last 100 years have been smoothed out a little by urban sprawl but the inclines are still very real...especially noticeable on a bike).
I find that the jump between 2nd and 1st on the rear cassette to be so big, that I have to change the front gears often which then throws off my cadence and I play this game of "hunt the gears" between the front and rear ones. When I rode the FX S5 and 6 around the same areas, I had much less issue and didn't even have to change the front gear at all. Also because the loaner bike is considerably older and the group set is of much lower quality (I believe it's a base FX from a few years ago) the shifting is nowhere near as instantaneous and snappy.
As I said, the loaner was a 6 speed plus a bailout gear, probably paired with a triple. If you had an 8 speed cassette paired with the same compact double chainring, you would have noticed no difference at all in shifting, as the math doesn't lie. The difference between an 11 and and 8 or 9 speed cassette are more closely spaced big gears, almost no difference on the small gears.