No participant of any alpine fondo ever said „I wish I had tighter gearing and a taller smallest gear“.
I did a 2800m of climbing - century in the high Alps yesterday. 48/35 10-36.
There were two short bits where I was in the smallest sprocket. I averaged 250 to 280W (at 70kg bw) on all 4 climbs (all of them are 600m elevation gain + at 7%+ average). I never had the feeling of „oh wow, these gear jumps completely throw off my cadence!“ but more often „nice that the jumps are a little bigger so there is an actual relief“.
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I don’t find that’s the case. That’s not unique to SRAM’s 11-36 cassette. My old road bike had a Shimano and a SRAM 11-32 cassette with said 28-32 step. Also my new road bike with its 10-36 cassette has the same combo. And my mountain bike has the same combo as well. 11-32 cassettes are completely standard these days.
I find larger steps on the climbing end don’t bother me, quite the contrary. Especially the last gear is more of a bailout gear, so even larger steps would be ok with me. I’d trade closer gearing on the quick end for larger steps on the climbing side of my cassette any day.
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You should look at the relative changes in gearing ratios, not the differences in cogs. The relative difference between 28- and 32-, 32- and 36-tooth cogs doesn’t qualify either as a bailout gear in my book.
You have the same relative jump in other places of the cassette as between 28- and 32-tooth cogs. Have a look, relatively speaking, the jump between 28- and 32- as well as 32- and 36-teeth cogs is the same size as the jump between 25- and 28-tooth cogs, about 14 %. In fact, you also have a 14 % jump between 16- and 18-tooth cogs on Shimano’s 11-32 cassette. You have a similarly sized 13 % gear difference between 17- and 19-tooth cogs on Shimano’s 11-28 cassette. In fact, I think I wouldn’t mind even larger jumps between climbing gears (as on e. g. SRAM’s 10-33 cassette or Rotor’s 10-39 cassette). If you turn back the hands of time and look at Shimano’s 10-speed 11-28 cassette, the difference between the two top-most gears is 17 %.
Regarding tight gearing on the top end, I don’t think even when you live close to the mountains you always go either up or down. Even when I go downhill, I am not always in my tallest gear either because of things like traffic and serpentines. If I didn’t want 1-tooth jumps on the top end, I’d go straight to a 11-40 or 11-42 cassette. Shimano’s 11-34 cassette is just weird, for an extra 2 teeth you give up 4 cogs that are 1 cog apart on the top end, but you get tightly spaced gears in the middle. Makes no sense. IMHO it is just a bad cassette.
Sure, until people figured out their utility for other purposes. That’s how it usually works. Almost all road bikes are ridiculously overgeared for people, but in more cases than not feature way too few low gears. IMHO an 11-36 cassette with chain rings smaller than 50/34 should be the standard on most road bikes (perhaps 44/30). Groupset manufacturers aren’t giving customers the flexibility they need, although SRAM is 10x better than Shimano at this. E. g. SRAM should have debuted their new Force and Red eTap AXS groupsets with the 10-36 cassette. I would like to see a 10-40 cassette as well for e. g. gravel riding.
I beg to differ: by choosing appropriately sized chain rings you should move the region with the closely spaced gears to be close to your cruising speeds. The size of the cassette should be chosen to gives you plenty of climbing gears. In case of doubt, err on the side of having an easier climbing gear. That’s what I did for my new road bike and I’m very happy with that.
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Yeah, I was excited that SRAM went 46/33 chainrings for 12sp road, then I saw the cassettes start at 10t.
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They also have a 43/30 crankset, although I’d still consider this pretty tall for most. 43:10 = 4.3 lies between 50:11 = 4.55 and 50:12 = 4.2, so compared to a compact crankset you are losing about half to two/thirds a gear. I’d like them to go way lower, 40/27 or so. Also on 1x, I think a 36-tooth option would be nice.
Yes, about 50 km/h. That’s plenty for most, perhaps even on the fast side when going flat. For enthusiasts I might go even lower than 4.00 as a top gear. Are you faster when going downhill? Sure. But do you really need to pedal? In most situations on public roads I don’t think so. (With my 42:10 = 4.20 top end gear on my road bike, I can pedal up to 65 km/h, perhaps a bit more. On the flats at about 50 km/h, I turn my pedals at 95–105 rpm, which is my jam.)
(BTW Ritzelrechner/gearcalculator many times. It is a very useful tool. In fact, I have linked to it in an earlier reply 
)
That’s ignoring that the second gearing option has a much easier climbing gear with 30:36 = 0.83 as opposed to 34:34 = 1:1 = 1. A 1-to-1 isn’t all that easy a gear for a lot of folks when the terrain gets steeper and the climbs longer.
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Wolf tooth Roadlink + 11-40 cassette will solve everything
To me that way of thinking is antiquated. I know lots of climbs nearby where many people would need 1:1 or lower to keep a comfortable cadence. For example, last weekend, I was doing Z2 rides outdoors (it was a TR rest week), so I limited myself to 230ish W where I could. I still wanted to ride new roads, and there were a few climbs peppered in. With my 42:36 = 1.17 my cadence slowed to 55 rpm in some places just to keep power below FTP. That’s why I typically do not like to climb things when doing Z2 rides — too much temptation. I have quite a few team mates whose FTP might be around 230 W or lower (I live in Japan, so people are lighter).
Also if you are more into endurance, long-day-in-the-saddle-type of riding, you can’t do much more than Z2 or perhaps Z3. And lower gearing would be good. But people still might want to let it rip on other days and hence, need closely spaced gears at the top.
Plus, FWIW Phil Gaimon uses a 34-tooth chain ring and a 11-40 cassette on his Everesting bike.
That’s not my experience at least. I know plenty of people who while not fast, spend a whole day in the saddle some days and are fast on others.
I have a mountain bike background, and to be honest, I never heard that kind of thinking back then. We just rode up stuff, even if it was hard and we had to take breaks. 
We would benefit from making our sport more accessible to people, and on the road bike side, gearing is IMHO an issue. Shimano’s attitude is atrocious, SRAM’s is better, but could use some improvement. (SRAM let’s you mix-and-match 1x vs. 2x, and lots of cassettes, and has a reliable power meter to boot.)
Sure, and my first mountain bike had rim brakes and no suspension. We still climbed up many a mountain. I remember the photos in Elmar Moser’s Bike Guide riding down things with a rigid mountain bikes that has rim brakes that I’d struggle with on my fully. But this is much easier with newer mountain bikes.
PS I’m enjoying this exchange. 
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Shimano’s 11-34 cassette is just weird, for an extra 2 teeth you give up 4 cogs that are 1 cog apart on the top end, but you get tightly spaced gears in the middle . Makes no sense. IMHO it is just a bad cassette.
I’m a bit confused. Isn’t this just 11-12-13-14 vs 11-12-13-15 ?
Very interesting discussion! What about changing crankset? Will something like GRX FC-RX600 46/30 work with 105 (R7000) groupset in a T47 bottom bracket?
My point was that even a guy as strong and light as Phil Gaimon may need climbing gears way smaller than 1:1. You can get the same ratios with e. g. a 11-36 cassette or 10-36 cassette with a smaller chain ring up front.
If my current bike were e. g. a 3T Exploro, an Open UP or something dedicated to climbing, I’d have considered something like a 11-42 cassette with a 1x drivetrain (I prefer 1x). I reckon I’d be supremely comfortable with that since my (3x10-speed) mountain bike has a 11-36 cassette that has identical gearing, save for 10th cog, which is a 37 and a missing 11th cog.
In fact, I think this is another point I’d make in favor of way easier gears for most, and that is that road bikes fit wider and wider tires, which means you can take the path less traveled.
Like what? I’ve been climbing very slowly on my mountain bike. I reckon there’d be climbs where the front wheel might lift off (I’ve had climbs like that at Lake Garda on my mountain bike, loved that).
My point is that the 11-34 cassette sacrifices 4 or 5 (!) closely spaced gears at the top for only 2 extra teeth. If I am willing to do that, I’d much rather get an 11-40 or 11-42 cassette instead, because then the sacrifice is really worth it. Or I’d get the SRAM cassette if I wanted closely spaced gears.
I should say that I’m not very sensitive to differences in cadence at speeds lower than 33–35ish km/h, which I reckon has to do with the rotational inertia of the wheel, which grows quadratically with angular velocity. So the more tightly spaced gears in the middle of the 11-34 cassette don’t really matter to me.
Saibot aka Rides of Japan does the same. If I were riding more by myself and/or had more gravel routes nearby, I’d have chosen a setup like that, too. But Japan is mostly about road bikes. Mountain bike trails are intentionally kept secret, which makes it supremely annoying. A gravel bike could be useful, though, but I’d still use that in a “mostly roadish” configuration.
I switched from a mountain bike to a road bike about three years ago. Roadie culture is very different from mountain bike culture, and in many ways not in a good way. In my experience, mountain bikers tend to be much more laid back. It doesn’t matter what socks you wear (I thought this was a joke when I first heard it), and when you go on a tour, people wait for one another without stressing the other person out. It is much easier to go riding with people of very different ability. You just chill and eat a little while waiting for the others. IMHO this makes mountain biking much more inviting to newbies who are willing to suffer, but who are stressed out by others being much faster than they are.
My sister is starting to get into cycling, and I hear her being a little self-conscious every now and then. Roadies should learn from mountain bikers when it comes to this. Our sport should be more inviting and make it easier for people to start. One of the obstacles IMHO is the unsuitable gearing. Somehow people think they are their gearing, i. e. if their bike has tougher gears, they’ll be faster. Physics doesn’t agree with that, obviously.
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Thanks! It is the case, GRX chainline is 3,4mm wider and it needs a new front derailleur. Both parts are not very expensive, but I’ll have to buy a new Stages crank though. Could be my winter project
In our team paceline speeds on the flats are just higher than that, they are in fact in the tightly spaced part of my cassette (by design, I chose my gearing very deliberately). On my aero road bike, I can do 35, 36 km/h in Z2 by myself (unless we have strong winds). In groups we do 40-50 km/h, no problem.
It seems our life experiences are different then. 
I lived near the Bavarian alps for over a decade, and when people want to go riding, we all want to go uphill, either on road or off road. The more, the better. Ditto for Japan, which has a big hill climb TT scene (about 50-70 minutes at race pace, 1,000–1,200 m of elevation and roughly 20-25 km distance). Quite a few people I ride with regularly do 2,500–3,500 m of elevation on a weekend ride. Now that I have a child, I usually can’t spend as much time in the saddle in one sitting, but I still try to get in one ride per year with >3,000 m of elevation.
Next time I’m in your area, the two of us will go on a climb fest!
I have a 42:10 on my road bike as my highest gear, and at high speeds my self-selected cadence is about 100 rpm, a bit higher than yours. Certainly, I do spin out, but that is in excess of 65-68 km/h at about 120 rpm. There are only a few descents where I feel I can safely reach those speeds anyway, though. I wouldn’t say no to a 13th cog (“I never met a gear I didn’t like.”), but honestly, I am ok with spinning out at those speeds.
Traffic is a concern, yes, although fortunately, at least where I live, when it gets that steep, there are typically few cars on the road.
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I think there’s a difference between thinking Shimano didn’t do their market research or are somehow stupid (they clearly aren’t) and wishing that they would offer some variety for people doing different kinds of riding. To whit, I went for a recovery ride this morning on the B-G and saw many cyclists, some commuting, some very not. I did not see anyone riding in a group, but I also didn’t see many people who are spending much money on their bikes, which is probably the whole story of why there isn’t gearing built for them. I do agree with @OreoCookie’s premise that most bikes are ridiculously overgeared simply because most bikes don’t get ridden in a way that people in this forum identify with.
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Precisely. And while I see some cases for that where e. g. people with means like to ride the same bike as a TdF winner (just like most people who own a Porsche GT3 RS never go near a track and don’t know enough to drive it “properly”), the end result is detrimental for the people.
That’s one thing Walter Röhrl remarked when he started working with Porsche on their high-end road cars: if they set it up as they would for experienced drivers who drive their GT3 on the track, they’d likely kill a lot of drivers in the process.
Not really, at for the speeds I travel at on the flats. On my previous bike, I was typically in 50:15–50:12 at speeds between 36–50 km/h. On my new one (SRAM eTap AXS 1x) I’m on 42:15–42:10, which is at the top end of the cassette. (My self-selected cadence at speed is 95–105 rpm.)
Compare my old setup, Shimano Ultegra/105 drivetrain with SRAM 11-32 cassette with the 11-34 cassette, for me the relevant speeds for the flats lie in the gappy part of the 11-34 cassette.
I don’t think it is that, IMHO they have designed themselves into a corner and the 11-34 cassette is a result of limited rear derailleur capacity. SRAM’s Force 1 derailleurs can take up to 42-teeth cogs, eTap AXS Wide rear derailleurs can do 36.
Ultimately, I think Shimano is getting into serious trouble now with their rigid line-up. Shimano drive trains are by-and-large reliable, yes, but in my observation they have never initiated new trends that helped make biking better and just reacted. Shimano is super conservative and they have been missing trends left and right, e. g. 1x on MTB and road, >11 speeds, wireless groupsets, Bluetooth, larger range cassettes. I think 10-36 cassettes as the new normal are a great development, because they either make 1x a reality for sporty riders or give riders a boat load of range when they opt for 2x. In fact, I’d like to see more range for e. g. gravel. Oh, and another cog, please, 13 or 14 would be nice, thank you very much! 
Just compare that with SRAM’s eTap story: all components are completely compatible. Let’s say you want to build a gravel/do-it-all bike. Depending on your taste, you can use a road 1x crank and a MTB rear derailleur and cassette with drop bars. You can choose any 1x chain ring size you want, essentially. For smaller chain rings, you need to use a mountain bike crank, obviously. But SRAM has those, too. Or you could go for a gravel 2x crank with 10–36 cassette. It is purely a matter of personal taste. I guess you could also go for flat bars. What if this is more of a road-focussed bike, what groupset do you have to choose? The same.
Compare that with Shimano’s story: it is fragmented, and it tries to segment off parts of its market. With GRX you have much more limited options. Even the GRX 2x derailleur does not have more capacity and a dedicated cassette.
Perhaps, although I’d say that everything is in short supply at the moment. I had to wait >4 months for my bike. I got the only Force 1x 165 mm crank in Japan according to my LBS. I originally wanted to go Red, but then the wait would have increased to half a year. Crazy times.
I don’t think that is correct: Shimano has no official 1x story for the road. Nada. They do have GRX 1x, but that is meant for mountain bike 11-speed cassettes and the chain ring options are limited. Or, of course, you can just get a non-Shimano crank (e. g. by Rotor) or use your Shimano crank with a Wolftooth chain ring. Ditto for smaller chain ring sizes: for road components, the smallest is a CX crank, although that won’t give you smaller climbing gear. You could mix and match, but then you have to pick parts from different groupset lines that weren’t designed to work optimally together. You can use MTB Di2 components with 1x and create a mullet setup similar to SRAM, but that isn’t officially sanctioned and at least if you want to stick to 100 % Shimano you are limited by the few 1x chain ring choices GRX has.
To add to the confusion, they have road rear derailleurs with and without clutch. I don’t think I have seen the clutched ones in the wild yet, though, and I don’t remember seeing a bike specced with them. (Although I am sure they exist.)
Compare that with SRAM’s story where every imaginable combination is officially supported. The only downside is that mullet setups are still very pricey since they haven’t released GX Eagle eTap AXS yet. But I reckon that will come in due time.
I understand that you can put larger cassettes in, but that’s different from designing cassettes and making derailleurs that officially support larger cassettes. The trend is clear: more and more customers go 1x, other customers want more range on a 2x setup. Either way, that means you need to offer (officially supported) cassettes with larger range. They can continue to offer an 11-34 cassette for the folks who want it, but in addition, I’d have liked to see a 11-36 cassette and official support for 2x with 11-42 cassette. Give customers the choice in what they want to ride
PS I am not a SRAM fanboi, my 9-year-old mountain bike has a 3x10 XT drive train, XT brakes and XT hubs. I have never serviced the hubs, they are still perfect, ditto for brakes (apart from yearly bleeds and new consumables). I’m in Japan so sticking to Shimano would be much easier in terms of availability. They have modern 1x12 mountain bike drive trains, and I’d have no issues with getting a Shimano drive train for my next mountain bike.
However, their on-road stuff does not suit my needs in terms of gearing and I don’t like their STI levers. If I had to go with a Shimano drive train, I would have used a setup similar to yours, probably: get third-party cranks (Rotor perhaps), use an 11-40 or 11-42 cassette (with perhaps a Wolftooth expander) and call it a day.
PPS Nice bikes. Is the second one a SuperSix?
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I did the Triple bypass with a 28 at the back and a 34 at the front and that was plenty of gearing (for an 80Kg at the time rider). For the Alps, you can never have enough gears, so get at least a 32 and you can get up any of the classic climbs without too much drama. I now run a SRAM AXS 10-36 with a 46/33 crank set as I was meant to be doing a Cent Cols Challenge this year, but that is postponed to 2022.
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Has anyone had any experience running the Sram 11-36 with the Ultegra 8050GS derailleur? I am currently running a 11-30 cassette but am thinking it would be nice to have some extra range when I do Lincoln Gap in a few weeks. I would pick up the Shimano 11-34 but can’t find one it stock