UncleG

What's cheaper? 50 bucks....what? Been thru a variety of bikes over many years I will say that for me right now, 21 speeds is perfect. Those old 10 speeds did not have a low enough low... Ever. The 12 didn't help either but when we got up to 21, the low started being real granny and they're perfect.

So what gears are you caring that you never use? What can you do about it? First off chances are there's nothing you can do about it short of completely reconfiguring your chainring and cluster which is not Impossible but are chosing your cluster ratios are not sold OTS, prepare for custom prices.

So there's going to be a number of gears you will never use but will pass over routinely getting to the ones that are easiest to use and provide you with the drive a ratio that you need.

I have 21 gears, in reality I probably use maybe five, one of the reasons is the terrain where I'm located, it's relatively flat with mild hilly conditions , I can hardly call them hills... So I don't need a whole lot of gears but I have them because that's what the bike came with, and my load varies.

In a few cases the gears I choose are the ones that I can get to the quickest without losing inertia. So if I have to do a front chainring switch and then a cluster move, that's two moves, and extra time.

Your concern of getting the gears you need but keeping your gears relatively few, removing you're two least favorite chainrings and leave the cluster alone, is often discussed. If you took the offending parts over to a postal scale you would probably notice that the weight difference is minimal.

Can one even get a off-the-shelf custom cluster?