Originally Posted by
Tourist in MSN
s. In general, a 1X is limited in total range from lowest to highest gear, that range simply is how much bigger the biggest sprocket is compared to the smallest. But the 2X or 3X systems offered a wider range, but are a bit heavier, cost more, take more time to setup well and maintain, etc.
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A Shimano 10-51 12spd. cassette paired with say a 1X with a 36 ring, gives a decent low range - 18-99 gear inches, as my triple system, 12-34 9spd., 26-36-46 rings, just has 3 fewer gears in the middle (and mine only goes to 20 inches). So it's never really been the range, its more that there are fewer gears on a 12 spd cassette system period. And it's not like there's a plethora of different 12 spd. cassettes available, the Shimano line has 2 and all are oriented towards 1X systems.
Shimano has somewhat fixed the miss-match of road systems and mountain systems with the GRX group, having brifters mated to rear derailers and cassettes with almost the range of an XT group. Unfortunately it's an extraordinarily expensive group, easily 20% or so higher than Ultegra for component costs as far as I can figure. I can see where it's driving marketing managers nuts as they try to build touring and gravel bikes with this system and cannot make a price point.
I would suspect that if you were building up your own touring bike, it would be cheaper to source NOS 9 spd. triple stuff with spares, than do a new 2X GRX system.