Quiet Hubs: Onyx, Alto, Phil Wood, Shimano, Project 321 quiet pawl
 

Looking for quiet hubs for some custom wheels. It seems Onyx are nearly silent and Shimano are very quiet. Any experience with Alto, Phil Wool or Project 321's quiet version? Or, other suggestions?

What, you don't want a hub that sounds like a swarm of angry murder hornets? :lol: This seems to be the fashion ATM.

Definitely want to avoid the angry hornets! To each his or her own, but I don't understand the desire for loud hubs. I love being able to silently move through the world; it is one of the best characteristics of riding a bike. Unfortunately for people who want quiet hubs, you seem to be right that loud is in.

i was briefly looking for a rear wheel assembly & could not find those other brands you mentioned to have a non early 90s honda civic @ 8,000 RPM with a limp rod bearing noise. The for sure thing is to stick with the tried & true Onyz.

Uh, Onyx are as silent as hubs get. They are not lightweight, but it isn't physically possible for a hub to get much more silent--as there is no ratchet at all.

Yes, sounds like Onyx are the king of quiet. Wondering if I have other options that are similar to Shimano's level. I will probably end up with Onyx. Their Vesper hubs are not too bad on weight.

I should have said, this is for road wheels with disc brakes

Don't coast.

The Vesper is their newer product line. It used to be with Onyx hubs all of them shipped standard with ceramic bearings. Which, yay/nay/indifferent, they are very blingy and they back then were the same price as their competitors like King etc with steel bearings. And they actually were a bit cheaper than now, yay for COVID logistics. The Vesper line also changed the hub body and flange geometry quite a bit, but the FH body looks the same, I presume they're still sprag clutch--but a bit lighter.

I do love my set, had them laced to Light Bicycle rims.

A friend has Shimano 105 and it's barely audible when freewheeling.

Coaster hubs are silent 🙂

Rim or disc brake? For rim brakes you can find older Shimano silent clutch hubs, pretty sure they never did disc brake versions.

The most common was the LX level, but you can newer Nexave hubs sometimes. I built one into a custom wheel for a 26" mountain bike.

Some hubs are loud some are not. If it's too loud you're too old.

Or something.

A couple of quiet/silent options in this video;

Still you better say "on your left", "passing left", "bike back" or ring that bell when you get near me. When I'm walking with my wife, you might get clothelined when I point at something across the way.

Those that do stupid stuff to your announcement are noobs that will later learn what to do. Noobs will always be among us. As are the people that show up in the spring for their one or two walks a year on the MUP that will be forever noobs. <grin>

Any how, that is my opinion and I'm sticking to it.

on the second day of a 600km brevet, I was so sick of listening to my Hope hub that I pedaled on downhills.

When I was buying hubs for my gravel bike recently, I considered getting an Onyx. One of the other mechanics told me he had trouble with the reliability of his Onyx hub, so I went with another Hope. If I get another hub for my mountain bike, I probably would go with Onyx. They will engrave a custom graphic for you.

I had the old Hope trials/SS hub long ago, even louder than the standard one. Only hub I've had someone yell/ask "what the heck is that thing?"

I think this trend of loud hubs came about because of of the popularity of Chris King hubs, which off-roaders love because of the super fast engagement. To get that fast engagement, they have more teeth which makes more noise as the pawls click over them.
The reason Shimano hubs are quiet is because they have relatively small number of engagement points, which makes for slower engaging hub but also a lot less drag and noise.

Engagement probably doesn't matter to most road riders. It's really only a factor if you're ratcheting over technical off-road terrain and find 20 degrees of pedaling before the hub engages to be problematic. Regardless, Chris King hubs are quality stuff and many road riders use them, and may other high end hub manufacturers have similar high-engagement designs, so the noise is now associated with high-end hubs.

Those Onyx hubs look like a really cool alternative. Instant engagement and no noise, but the trade off is a bit more weight and I've heard that they can feel a bit squishy on acceleration.

P321 has a tandem option with 6 pawls. I'd talk to them and see if you're light enough to ride with 3. The regular version has unnecessarily high engagement IMO. It also only engages 2/6 pawls so I bet that running 3 pawls in the tandem version will be just fine.

standard version has 1.7 deg engagement
tandem has 2.5 deg engagement
tandem/2 is 5 deg.
DT 36T is 10 deg. And that's considered fast
DT 18T is 20deg. I have no issues with mine.

My 2006 Bianchi had a Fulcrum Racing 5 wheelset with THE LOUDEST freehub. I used to use it in place of calling 'On your left'. Well last spring I discovered cracks on the rear rim around nearly all the spoke holes, so I bought some NEW Fulcrum Racing 5s and they are SILENT. No longer does coasting down a fast descent sound like a marlin just took the bait and ran. I like it better, honestly.

I've had some vintage Shimano LX level hubs that had a silent clutch. They were noticeably heavier than the standard LX hubs of the era (1995 - 2000). The target market for those hubs was police bikes. I don't know if they are available anymore or not.

LOL. TLDR, no they don't ever learn....and those people far outnumber the people who know what 'on your left' means'.

Thanks all for the helpful replies. I ended up ordering wheels with DT Swiss 350 hubs with the 18 teeth. I have heard and read that you can keep these reasonably quiet by greasing the pawls instead of just oil. If they annoy me, I may have the rear wheel rebuilt with an Onyx hub. The conclusion seems to be that Onyx is silent, Shimano is nearly so, and the others range from somewhat noisy to very noisy. I would still like to know how the quiet version of the 321 sounds, as well as Alto and Phil Wood. Thanks again

A DT Swiss 350 hub has a start ratchet, not pawls. Adding grease between the ratchets help quiet them.

Thanks! I will do more reading on it so I know how to service it

Being a lubricant...it is a temporal 'fix'. The device is fairly simple IIRC--so it isn't hard to do, it just needs done again after so many miles of freewheeling.