Seems like you could stay in the 50 ring all the time. Why even go to the 34 ring, except for a significant hill?
Well, that's what I did this morning, but I don't like pushing off from a stop in a 50 inch gear. If I was going to do that I may as well ride my singlespeed and walk up the big hill.
Like I said above, 50-34 is essentially a 1x with a poorly chosen single ring and an inadequate bailout gear.
Robert Capon once wrote a cooking book in which he goes off on a rant about knives, comparing the commonly sold knives to tin fiddles. His idea maps almost perfectly to my feelings about the compact double.
It is as if there were a conspiracy among violin makers (for whatever reasons) to provide the public only with violins made of metal. With enough control of the market, and with advertising sufficient to arouse the public's interest, they could reach the point at which no new wooden violins were available. It would meet with opposition, of course. Nobody who remembered having heard a wooden violin would think the tin one as good. No professional violinist would willingly play a tin fiddle. And there would be an active market in old wooden violins. All that notwithstanding, however, the tin ones would sell. With enough manipulation, the only thing available to the man in the street would be an instrument no professional would use: partly because some people never pay enough attention to hear any difference; but mostly because the people who really care about doing things well are not numerous enough to cut the mustard in the marketplace.
Compact double = tin fiddle
I'm sure the C&V crowd can see a few more applications for this analogy.
