WIDE WORLD OF CASSETTES

Modern world of cassettes is very full of gears and ratio whereas 70 years ago that was just one single sprocket or two attached to rear hub for all type of cycling and terrain.

Going very quickly through gears history to modern standards:

  • 3 speed freewheels using 1/8″ chain

  • 4 speed freewheel in early 1950 with 3/32″ sprockets and chains

  • 5 speed freewheel with widened rear axle spacing in late 1950, that was nearly the end of era of Mallard, Regina and Campagnolo freewheels

  • 6 speed freewheel with more widened rear axle spacing to 126mm, freewheel market went to Japan to Sun Race and Shimano – they had better sprockets and more unifide, stronger splines to work with.

  • 7 speed freewheel in 1980

  • 8 speed freewheel in 1990 with 130mm spacing

That was the end of freewheel era. Next evolution 8 speed drivetrain required further modification to rear hub axle. Wider axle spacing could couse not enough support for such big block of sprockets, bending axles and all complications with servicing freewheel internal ratchet mechanism. World moved to cassette rather then freewheel which was massive improvement. Basicaly ratchet mechanism moved into the rear hub and was called freehub body and casstte sprockets were joined together as sort of cluster unit with special groves on inside of it to slide onto freehub body. Axle was hollowed so much stronger then solid axle used in freewheel set up.

From 1990 we went from 8 speed through 9 speed to modern world of 10, 11 and 12 speed! cassettes.

There are the same types of cassettes to go along with matching freehub interfaces:

  • Shimano 8,9,10,11 and 12 speed compatible road and offroad share the same interface (splines)

  • Campagnolo 8,9,10,11 and 12 speed compatible

  • Sram 9,10,11 and 12 speed compatible for road (the same interface – splines as Shimano)

  • Sram offroad XD-drive  type cassettes for 10,11 and 12 Eagle cassettes – commonly used now days with 1x (single chainring on front) drivetrains

Gear ratio in modern cassette world is really impressive ranging from 11-23 up to 11-34 for road cassttes and 11-28 up to crazy 11-50! for offroad single chainring drivetrain also called 1x. You have wide range of choices to suit any bike you have and terrain and displine you do. Fantastic world of cycling.

Few words about single speed freewheels and fixed sprockets. We are all lucky to live in 21 century cycling wolrd in wich we can get really good quality freewheels from brands like White Industries ENO and Token. Also you can get wide range of fixed sprockets from White industries, Miche, Soma and Shimano DX. I strongly recommend these ones.

11 speed cassette compatible with 10 speed hub/wheel?

YES, you can still use you favourite a bit older but good quality 10 speed wheels/hubs (older ZIPPS or SHIMANO and probably few other brands) with modern drivetrain thanks to genius EDCO 11 speed cassette which is fully compatible with older 10 speed wheel/hub. It is designed to be used with their own EDCO Ten Eleven lockring. I’ve come across that little issue many times in the workshop when someone wanted to upgrade groupset to 11 speed Shimano for example and keep ie: ZIPP carbon wheels as well. I fitted EDCO cassette and problem was solved. Edco is very innovative wheel company with very long history being on market. They know what they doing.

I strongly recocommend using good quality cassettes (with as many sprockets attached to alloy or carbon  carrier/spider – Ultegra equivalent or higher) to fit on alumium freehub bodies. In that way you can prevent from  individual sprocket biting in to alloy freehub and further damage of this part. Most commonly used metal which cassette is made of is steel, some of the super ligh racing cassettes are made of titanium which saves few grams but it is also pretty soft so cassette does not last that long. Shimano in high end Dura Ace and XTR cassettes use combination of steel and titanium where 3,4 bigest sprockets are titanium and the rest of unit is steel. I also recommend a bit of maintenance you can do it yourself from time to time which is done simply by removing cassette from freehub and clean both, put a bit of fresh grease on freehub body and install cassette back on it. Probably good to do it twice a month to keep both parts in good knick.