Originally Posted by bikemig

This is a good thread as I run more than a few older wheels and lately I've had spokes break on 2 different wheels. I've used the tighten until they taco and then back off idea for building new wheels (I think Jobst Brandt used that in his book on wheel building) but I'm hesitant to do that on old wheels. I think (and maybe I'm wrong) that old wheels tend to lose some tension over time so I nearly always tighten them up a bit before riding. I guess I need to break down and buy a spoke tension meter. It will take some of the guess work out of fixing up old wheelsets and obviously help in building new ones.