Originally Posted by
znomit
Gear changing is via a twist at the end of the bars? Is this more work than STI or friction shifters?
I do not find it to be more effort than a Shimano bar end shifter. With 14 gears, when I want to change a lot of gears, like cresting a steep hill where in a very short time I want to go from gear 1 to 14, I find that the most gears I can easily change at once by rotating my wrist are three shifts with each twist of the shifter.
The indexing is in the hub, not the shifter, there are two cables and one is pulled to upshift, the other for downshifts. The cables are normally slack and you have to have some extra play in the cables. If your cables are too tight, you can land in between gears when you shift. I might leave my cables looser than most, If I am in gear 10, I can turn my shifter from about 9.5 to 10.5 with just the looseness in the cables. When you are used to taught cables with the indexing in the shifter, this might take a bit of time to get used to having a loose feeling shifter.
I included the link in one of my previous posts to a list of other options, that includes a couple companies that make aftermarket hardware that allows you to use brifters or a flat bar type ratchet type shifter.
The Co-Motion twist shifter that they make for larger diameter drop bars likely turns less of an angle per shift because of the larger diameter. Thus, maybe you can get four or five shifts when rotating the wrist.
When the Rohloff hub was first designed, it was intended for mountain biking, not touring or road biking. Thus the twist grip shifter that is designed for smaller diameter flat bars. That smaller diameter is why I needed an adapter to fit it on my drop bars.