All of them. Give me all of the gears. I will find a place to use them.
Originally Posted by
Moisture
...Interestingly enough, I found a Biopace Mountain LX crankset made by shimano (28/38/48) . Never seen that sort of spacing before. Typically lower end mountain bikes come with 22/32/44. Woukd be interesting to give this unique ratio spread a try.
That Biopace will probably feel like smaller rings. That's the interesting effect I feel with my old school 52/42 Biopace on one road bike. The 52 subjectively feels more like my 50T round ring, and the more ovalized/eccentric shaped 42T feels more like the round 38 or 39 small chainring on my other road bike.
It's fairly subtle, but climbing in my bike with 42T Biopace small ring and 28T biggest rear cog feel about like the 38 or 39 round chainring (not sure which is on it at the moment, I swapped 'em recently) and 28T rear cog.
Not everyone cares for Biopace or other eccentric chainrings but I like 'em, although it's tricky to set up to prevent knee twinges. I prefer Biopace with shorter cranks, around 170mm. With longer cranks I felt some knee twinges that I don't get with 172.5 or 175 cranks on round chainrings.
It also depends on the orientation of the eccentric chainrings. Some folks found Biopace works better for them with the rings re-oriented, rather than the factory default. With older 5-bolt spiders choices are limited. More recent oval/eccentric chainrings offer more variety in mounting to suit the rider.