DavidfGR

I would like to ask if anyone has the info what is the biggest cassette that will work with Sram force AXS 2x12 RD. Official statement is 10-33, is that correct? I had the Force 1x11 and it worked with 9-46 cassette.

I was thinking how i could setup the AXS Force to be similar to my current setup, front 46/30, back 11/34.

With 1x12 Force-Eagle front 46 tooh, back 10/50 you get similar range but bigger gaps between shifts, anyone already tried this setup?

Thanks!

shoota 

Pretty sure the biggest 12s cassette for AXS is 10-33 for 2X and 10-50 for Eagle, neither of which are very great for 1X. It's crazy to me that the company that basically invented modern 1X systems doesn't see the glaring hole they left in the 1X gravel gearing.

raisinberry777

What I find even crazier is that the company that can fill that hole, being Shimano with the 12 speed 10-45 MTB cassette, has no way of using it on a drop bar setup. It's like we're so close, yet so far.

Caliper

Why would 12sp 10-50 be bad for 1x? This gear range about solves one of the two main shortcomings of 1x. 500% range finally puts 1x equal with the gear range of common gravel 2x setups and a wider than road subcompact that is the typical choice for smoother gravel. Add in 1 or two more gear steps (ie: 13-14sp) and 1x finally starts to look equal to 2x.

shoota 

Hmm, I didn't say it was bad. My point was that there is a large gap between 10-33 and 10-50. Not everyone needs or wants a 50t in their cassette. I'd love to have a 44 x 10-46 setup.

HTupolev

An average step size of 15.7%. Not a problem on technical stuff, massively annoying for a lot of people on non-technical stuff.

The alternative 2x setup at that point will also have 14 gears in back. That would allow a >500% road double with comparable (actually slightly better) spacing compared with current 11-28 11-speed road cassettes. Whereas a 500% 14-speed cassette is still going to have an annoyingly large 13% average gear step.

Currently, the only way to achieve classical road-like spacing and a >500% gear range is with a triple, or by doing something mildly crazy like coupling a half-step-ish arrangement with an ultra-wide-range "1x" cassette. (In a sensible world, Shimano would sell a half-step synchro Di2 option.)

Caliper

Ah, I see. I had read your sentence as saying that 10-50 was a bad setup. Agreed that there does seem to be a gap in the AXS cassettes. I'm really surprised that Force AXS didn't being in cassettes to replicate the 11-36 and 11-42 options currently in 11sp Force. Thus far, AXS appears to be targeted exclusively at the racier side of gravel riding. I'm OK with that because my gravel is closer to fat tire road than drop bar MTB, but others have been disappointed for sure.


Agreed that 1x is not an optimal solution except for a dedicated trail MTB. I've found 1x unsatisfactory when I tried it and keep seeing others on group rides experiencing the downfalls of 1x when I pass them either up or down hill. Still, for gravel a 450-500% gear range seems about right and the typical 11-42 does not get there but 10-50 does. If forced, I'd rather have slightly larger gear steps than run out of range on both ends of the cassette. Remember, even full on roadies used to run wider gear steps before there were so many cogs on a cassette.

A 2x14 could allow extremely large range IF manufacturers supported that with the right cassettes. Will they? Current trends from 10-11-12sp haven't really widened the cassette range that much. The reason I listed 13-14 speed 1x however is because a 2x11 drivetrain still only has about that many distinct ratios. Honestly, I'm extremely happy with the step spacing and range in a 2x11 setup but I wonder how the chain angles would be with a 1x14...

As far as the half step idea, I've mapped out some of those as well and think that with modern shifters it could work very nicely after some recalibration of your shifting fingers. You are right that electronic shifting would work well except that I'm not sure I'd always want to shift through each of those ratios.

HTupolev

In terms of what's actually getting used on the road, I think they have. I see tons of people on road bikes with 32T and 34T big cogs on 11-speed drivetrains these days. A 46-30 11-36 would be 500%, and some people are already running setups like that in 11-speed.

Depends on the particular arrangement. I'd peg my Shimano 50-34 11-28 at about 16 or 17 useful unique ratios depending on whether I'm shifting ambitiously at a given moment. 13-14 is about the minimum usefulness in current 2x11 setups.

The reason I mentioned Di2 is so that you wouldn't have to do the half-stepping manually, you wouldn't have to "recalibrate your shifting fingers." You'd use a single shifter, with a button set up for shifting up and a button set up for shifting down, and the electronics would sort out the actual front and rear shift pattern. Shimano already supports this sort of behavior with Di2 Synchro.

Racers used to compromise range for tightness whenever they could kinda/sorta get away with it. You can still find tons and tons of amazingly tiny 5-speed and 6-speed freewheels on ebay, some of them full-on straight blocks like 13-14-15-16-17. Sometimes they had no choice but to go wider, especially in the 3/4-speed days, but they certainly tried hard to avoid it.