Ask the experts

[toast2266]

These comments are like saying I won't buy a bike with a 31.9 seatpost.

I most definitely would not buy a bike with a 31.9 seatpost.

[Roxtar]

We all get the simple geometry part, but I've never heard anyone say it's a perceptible difference. Absolutely with Toast that new standards just for new theoretical improvement is a turn-off.

Define perceptable.
Perceptable to a WC racer or a beginner rider? And again, it's not a theoretical improvement, it's a real world, measurable improvement.
Did you perceive a big difference when 135 went to 142? When 142 went to boost?
Me neither, but each one DID make an incremental improvement. Can you perceive an 8% improvement? Maybe. Maybe not. Does that mean it isn't real? The difference in spoke diameters is probably more noticeable but that doesn't mean SB doesn't provide a real world improvement.
Maybe it's my engineering background but to me, a bigger turn off is to ignore opportunities to improve things just to avoid change.
Don't care? That's fine, too. That's why we have options

[Roxtar]

I most definitely would not buy a bike with a 31.9 seatpost.

Well played

[toast2266]

Define perceptable.
Perceptable to a WC racer or a beginner rider? And again, it's not a theoretical improvement, it's a real world, measurable improvement.
Did you perceive a big difference when 135 went to 142? When 142 went to boost?
Me neither, but each one DID make an incremental improvement. Can you perceive an 8% improvement? Maybe. Maybe not. Does that mean it isn't real? The difference in spoke diameters is probably more noticeable but that doesn't mean SB doesn't provide a real world improvement.
Maybe it's my engineering background but to me, a bigger turn off is to ignore opportunities to improve things just to avoid change.
Don't care? That's fine, too. That's why we have options

Well, 135 to 142 was (for most bikes) the swap from quick release to thru axle. So yeah, that one was noticeable. 142 to boost was less noticeable, but what's done is done, and that one's been done for a while now.

The thing with superboost is that it was invented to give more clearance around the front derailleur for plus size tires. Any other benefits were ancillary to that goal. Given that I run neither a front derailleur nor plus size tires, that benefit is lost on me.

Current proponents of superboost are touting the benefits of better spoke bracing angles and (in the case of WAO), a better chainline in the climbing gears. Like Andeh said above, I don't really have any issue with the chainline on regular boost bikes. And given that pretty much every wheel manufacturer is trying to figure out how to build more compliance into their carbon wheels, the bracing angle thing seems unnecessary. Plenty of companies have proven that it's entirely possible to build a brutally stiff wheel (both vertically and laterally) on the boost 148 platform - just ask Reynolds.

Wheels are the second most expensive part of my bike (behind the frame). I have a set of nice carbon wheels that I've owned for about 6 years now - they get swapped around between bikes I own. Frames come and go, the wheels stay. They've, at one point or another, been attached to maybe 6 or 7 different frames. Superboost screws that whole situation up.

[bagtagley]

I do swap wheels, but even if I didn't, one of the advantages to owning multiple bikes is the ability to poach parts if something breaks. I had my Waltworks built for SB because I do believe it's better (and backwards compatible), but the fact is, the industry has chosen. Having a minimally adopted standard on that bike ended up being more of a pain than it was worth. Every time I broke a wheel, that bike was dead in the water while I waited for a warrant replacement because not only did none of my other wheels fit, but I couldn't borrow from friends, and cheap options didn't exist if I wanted to sport for a backup wheel.

Just my experience. Folks should buy and ride what they want, but it's worth considering aspects beyond just swapping wheels between bikes.

[Eluder]

I agree. I buy a bike based on the bike. I buy it with the wheels I want and then ride it that way.
Don't most people? How many people actually swap wheels between bikes? I'd guess very few.
It'd be one thing if SB wheels weren't available from everyone but they are.
These comments are like saying I won't buy a bike with a 31.9 seatpost.

A lot of us have expensive carbon wheelsets we would want to put on there, especially if you are buying a frame only. The cross compatibility is just in case I blow up a wheel, and I want to pull it from my other bike. In this case, it also means I feel good about my chances of walking into a bike shop and being able to buy a wheel on the spot if needed. Most shops have 30.9 and 31.6 droppers in stock. A shop is much more likely to have a boost wheel in stock than a super boost wheel. I totally get there is a large group that doesn't apply to. For some, bikes are just a thing, for others they are a whole bunch of things together creating one thing.

Current proponents of superboost are touting the benefits of better spoke bracing angles and (in the case of WAO), a better chainline in the climbing gears.

Most super boost hubs arent even designed to take advantage of the spoke bracing angles. Paranoid Eluder is worried that the new chainline SRAM shoved down our throats with T-Type is a ploy to make super boost a thing to inturn sell more shit in a couple of years...

[beaterdit]

As others have said, it's just compatibility between new frames and current wheels, and the rest of the stable. Being able to poach a wheel from a different bike if you blow something up, etc.

If Superboost was widely adopted I'd be all in but it's just not. It was nothing but a hassle for me on that bike. As of now we have four mountain bikes in the garage that can all use the same wheels. My two bikes have more or less the same drivetrains and brakes and same with the lady's. Redundancy is nice.

[frorider]

Pretty sure Chris at Pivot publicly stated that they were moving away from super boost, and he explained his early adoption of it was partly driven by factors that aren’t relevant anymore.

To the extent possible I run non boost chainring (with thin BB shims if needed) with the boost 148 bikes I build for me & my friends. So the WAO justification for super boost doesn’t hold water really.

Anyway the industry was already concluding that SB didn’t catch on, and was fading out. WAO just hadn’t been paying attention I guess.

It’s not just about wanting to swap your own wheels at home. Anyone here done a road trip? You just arrived at destination X, and on day 1 you fkd up your rear wheel. So you see if your local friends or the shop has a wheel you can borrow or buy for the next 2 days before you go home. Who would want to have SB in that scenario? Guess you could travel with an adapter kit…

[Roxtar]

Those of you who have wheelsets you want to reuse, by all means, buy a boost bike. They're everywhere and not going away any time soon.
For the rest of us, I prefer to have a choice.
I'm old enough to find this all amusing. I heard it with 142, with 148, now 157. I heard it with 26" wheels and disc brakes. I heard it with 9sp, 10sp, 12sp, and now Transmission.
Yes, whenever there is a change, our old shit eventually becomes obsolete. And it's ALWAYS an industry con with the single purpose of emptying our wallets.

Somewhere out there is a rider staring at his beautiful 26x135/100 rim brake Chris King/Bonti Superlite wheelset; shaking his fist and cursing at the sky.

[singlesline]

While I agree that superboost is silly...I think y'all are way overestimating the average buyer. 95% of bike buyers probably never swap wheels. They only have one bike, or at least one bike per wheelset that makes sense to swap (probably not going to put their light XC wheels on an enduro sled). They don't go on trips where they'd be borrowing wheels off someone, and they don't really think about whether a shop might have a superboost wheel available.

They buy a bike, when they sell that bike, the wheels go with it. Even if they upgraded the wheels, they probably sold the OEM wheels as takeoffs and will just sell the upgrades with the old bike. The mullet thing is a fair point too...it may have a more appreciable difference than superboost, but you're not swapping wheels with other 29" bikes. And even if you keep the old wheelset, it isn't that hard to swap a hub out--sell the old hub and you can probably relace with the same spokes (I haven't done the trigonometry, but I relaced non-boost 27.5 front to boost without issue a few years ago)

Y'all are also forgetting that WAO is a *wheel* company. They LOVE that they can sell you a new wheel--it is a feature, not a bug!

[bagtagley]

I don't remember people caring that much about 142. It was just a matter of some buying end caps, and wheel capture ended up being pretty nice.

[Abies]

I think we have an expectation that bikes are like legos with perfect inter-compatibility but obviously that’s not true for half the parts on an average mountain bike. There’s fork travel, wheel size, two dozen “standard” shock sizes, etc. I’m not trying to troll I do like when I can swap parts but I also wouldn’t not buy a second mountain bike because it uses different shock mounting hardware than my other ride and I guess I feel the same about hubs, just another part.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[toast2266]

I think we have an expectation that bikes are like legos with perfect inter-compatibility but obviously that’s not true for half the parts on an average mountain bike. There’s fork travel, wheel size, two dozen “standard” shock sizes, etc. I’m not trying to troll I do like when I can swap parts but I also wouldn’t not buy a second mountain bike because it uses different shock mounting hardware than my other ride and I guess I feel the same about hubs, just another part.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

If my $200 seatpost isn't compatible with a frame I'm building up, that's annoying. If my $1800 wheels aren't compatible with a frame I'm building up, that's a deal breaker.

[VTskibum]

^^^ agree completely

[LeeLau]

^^^ agree completely

Ditto

[North]

My RS Lyric saga continues...

Sent it into RS warranty and they noted water (?!?!?) in the damper and dirty oil. To me that seems like a red flag that would warant further investigation, but they just rebuilt the damper and sent it back.

I'm struggling to understand how water could end up in the damper if there was not some sealing issue? Damper was rebuilt by me 1 month prior to warranty claim (no, I didn't add water) so all user replaceable seals were fresh. Anybody ever heard of this? Probably time to set this thing on fire and move on.

[Eluder]

They probably found some sort of contaminant in the damper fluid. I’m betting the fluid just looked milky or something. It could have just been air in the system or maybe some cleaning agent? Maybe the seal at the top of the damper…

[Tailwind]

I think we need pitchforks for real issues in cycling.

We Are One is producing a very aggressively priced bike that rides well, is produced in canada by a small business with workers who are paid well and all we’re all saying ‘hub standard is different it’s garbage’. So we buy bikes that cost way more and don’t support local manufacturing? Compare the pricing on this to a Megatower that’s similarly built and just supports Pon holdings.

If you’re building up a frame I get why that’s annoying. Usually when I’m getting a bike I’m selling a bike. So it’s easy for incompatible parts to go out the door.

But… Also not hard to sell something of one size and buy something of another. IE post your $200 wrong sized dropper for $150 and find another one in the right size for $150. Selling a carbon set of wheels and buying the same set with a different hub spacing takes an hour of time and if you do it well is a break even proposition

Point being : I don’t think there is a logical argument for a strong opposition outside of the principle that bikes shouldn’t have multiple standards for expensive parts.

But… this doesn’t just apply to Superboost. What about mullet bikes? Not compatible with 29’er wheelsets. What about different rear shock sizes? Can’t swap those around at all. Fork dampers are different so they can’t be swapped!

The argument earlier was “what if you’re on a trip and you break a wheel that can’t be a repaired and you want to buy a new one but the local shop doesn’t have superboost?”… that’s a pretty unique circumstance for me at least. If it’s a rim, get a new rim laced up, you probably would do that with a boost wheelset. If it’s a hub that can’t be repaired (I’ve never had this with a nice hub) then I’d probably just demo a bike and shop for something once I was home. Also the We Are One wheels are burly so you probably won’t break and won’t have to go to the shop…

If my $200 seatpost isn't compatible with a frame I'm building up, that's annoying. If my $1800 wheels aren't compatible with a frame I'm building up, that's a deal breaker.

[toast2266]

No one has their pitchforks out. Noting that a bike has a dumb "feature" that is disqualifying for my purposes doesn't constitute a pitchfork wielding rant. It just means I'm not going to buy that bike. There are lots of other bikes that have similarly disqualifying features. I take no issue with WAO as a company; their wheels (non-superboost, of course) are still near the top of my list.

I'd wager that superboost as a standard will mostly cease to exist 5 years from now. No major player has adopted it, and the largest company that uses it (Pivot) is moving away from it. The fact that a handful of people are so militantly defensive of a dying standard could go in the "things that amuse me" thread.

[Tailwind]

Point taken on future support. I do think 157 will be around for DH bikes but I think it might be less prevalent. I don’t love superboost. I’d prefer if bikes moved toward 148 but 157 isn’t a dealbreaker for me. I also wouldn’t be at all surprised if 12x148 was replaced in the next few years… maybe something that better supports e-bikes? We’ve seen that trend.

I just want We Are One to be successful as I think they’re doing something unique in cycling that should be celebrated. I don’t want that to be overlooked in wake of hub spacing concerns as I think it’ll be expensive for them to make new molds so it might not happen overnight.

No one has their pitchforks out. Noting that a bike has a dumb "feature" that is disqualifying for my purposes doesn't constitute a pitchfork wielding rant. It just means I'm not going to buy that bike. There are lots of other bikes that have similarly disqualifying features. I take no issue with WAO as a company; their wheels (non-superboost, of course) are still near the top of my list.

I'd wager that superboost as a standard will mostly cease to exist 5 years from now. No major player has adopted it, and the largest company that uses it (Pivot) is moving away from it. The fact that a handful of people are so militantly defensive of a dying standard could go in the "things that amuse me" thread.

[One (+) Sentence]

I'd wager that superboost as a standard will mostly cease to exist 5 years from now. No major player has adopted it, and the largest company that uses it (Pivot) is moving away from it.

Are they? I thought Pivot’s deal was any bike with a 27.5” rear wheel would be standard 148 Boost, and any with 29” rear wheels would be 157 Super Boost. Is there a newer bike in their lineup with a 29” rear wheel and standard Boost axle spacing?

Edit: I see their xc bike, the Mach 4sl is indeed standard Boost.

[toast2266]

Are they? I thought Pivot’s deal was any bike with a 27.5” rear wheel would be standard 148 Boost, and any with 29” rear wheels would be 157 Super Boost. Is there a newer bike in their lineup with a 29” rear wheel and standard Boost axle spacing?

I have no insider knowledge, but the fact that the company that invented superboost has *any* non-superboost bikes in their lineup seems like a harbinger of things to come.

[Eluder]

I just want We Are One to be successful as I think they’re doing something unique in cycling that should be celebrated. I don’t want that to be overlooked in wake of hub spacing concerns as I think it’ll be expensive for them to make new molds so it might not happen overnight.

I think all of us are stoked with what WAO are trying to do. If I were in the market for wheels they would be my first stop.

Stepping into the carbon frame game is an expensive and risky move. In 2019 molds were costing the company I was working for about 90k per size. This is why companies like WAO and the late GG use the same front triangle across models. We would try to use forgings across models because those too cost a lot of money to develop. The sharing of components like this creates compromise though.

Knowing how long development can take it's entirely possible they took a bet on superboost being the next thing. Two years later when they actually released the bike, the market had shown otherwise.

Relevent data point... When we were developing a new frame there were target design goals, and the use of the normal standards and seat post insertion were very high on the list of must haves. If you had to stray from the "must haves/use" list to make something work you went back to the drawing board. I can't think of a defendable real world reason to incorporate a superboost rear wheel, but that's just my opinion.

After all, this is just a thread asking "experts" personal opinions....

[carlh]

I have we are one wheels on a musa carbon frame by a company that just went out of business(gg). The wao frame looks sharp and sounds like it rides well but they are making their uphill battle steeper with the super post issue. I bought my wheels for my previous bike and carried them over onto the new bike and super boost would have been an obstacle to that. Selling and rebuying used would loose warranty coverage on the wheels and buy another new set would have been a solid chunk of extra coin. I’m a cheap ass and bought my new bike used but might have considered wao frame as it looks good for my use case other than the tiny stack.
For the person buying a new high end complete I agree this is a non issue but those people mostly aren’t buying boutique frames.
I like the idea of supporting these small companies but they need to let business decisions outweigh technical ones at least sometimes if they want to survive.

I think all of us are stoked with what WAO are trying to do. If I were in the market for wheels they would be my first stop.

Stepping into the carbon frame game is an expensive and risky move. In 2019 molds were costing the company I was working for about 90k per size. This is why companies like WAO and the late GG use the same front triangle across models. We would try to use forgings across models because those too cost a lot of money to develop. The sharing of components like this creates compromise though.

Knowing how long development can take it's entirely possible they took a bet on superboost being the next thing. Two years later when they actually released the bike, the market had shown otherwise.

Relevent data point... When we were developing a new frame there were target design goals, and the use of the normal standards and seat post insertion were very high on the list of must haves. If you had to stray from the "must haves/use" list to make something work you went back to the drawing board. I can't think of a defendable real world reason to incorporate a superboost rear wheel, but that's just my opinion.

After all, this is just a thread asking "experts" personal opinions....

[VTskibum]

Pick a hub width and be a dick about reigning supreme here, but really hope WAO succeeds. Headset cable routing is when I'm pulling out the pitchforks though