Although it might seem straightforward, there’s a lot of engineering that goes into a bike cassette. For example, SRAM boasts a 520 per cent range with its 10-52t cassettes. How has SRAM arrived at this figure, and how do you work out your gear range percentage? Finance is subject to application, financial circumstances and borrowing history. Performance Cycling Limited FRN: 720557 trading as Tredz are authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority. We are a credit broker not a lender – credit is subject to status and affordability and is provided by Mitsubishi HC Capital UK PLC. Terms & Conditions Apply.

On the mountain bike side, Shimano uses its Microspline freehub standard for its 12-speed Deore, SLX, XT and XTR groupsets. Shimano’s HG freehub design was the most common option for many years. Felix Smith / Immediate Media SRAM XDR road cassettes are 1.85mm wider than SRAM XD MTB cassettes. With a spacer, you can run an XD cassette on a road wheel with an XDR body, but you can’t use an XDR cassette on an XD freehub. Mountain bike versus road cassettes It’s important to note that this figure is only indicative of the range of gears you have on your cassette, and is not the same as working out how far you will travel with your chosen gear ratio. Campagnolo 12-speed rear derailleurs can accept up to an 11-32. The only exception is Campagnolo Chorus, which can take up to an 11-34.There are new rear derailleurs on the market that are identifiable as being compatible because they have a ‘520% range’ graphic printed on the derailleur cage. SRAM Eagle AXS rear derailleurs are compatible with the new 10-52 cassettes. Unless you’re running a triple crankset, it’s unlikely you’ll want to use a road bike cassette on a mountain bike. Dave Caudery / Immediate Media These days, it is increasingly common to see higher-spec road bikes with 12-speed gearing, Shimano having joined SRAM and Campagnolo with 12-speed groupsets in 2021 with the release of its Dura-Ace Di2 R9200 groupset.

Where an 11-28 cassette would have once been considered a large training cassette, it now sits at the lower end of the typical range for road. Simon Bromley / Immediate Media For mountain bikes, 12-speed cassettes are largely the default for higher-spec groupsets, paired with a single-ring chainset. You may sometimes see brands refer to their cassettes as having a certain range in the form of a percentage. If you wanted to use an 11-34 cassette, as well as buying the relevant cassette, you would need to buy a compatible rear derailleur. In this example, it would be an Ultegra R8050-GS or 105 R7000-GS rear derailleur. The GS denotes that these are ‘medium cage’ derailleurs. The same rule applies to Shimano Di2 derailleurs.

SRAM PG-1070 10 Speed Road Cassette

If you are still using a triple crankset, you may have sufficient overall range with a road cassette, but this is a fairly specialist application these days.

You need to ensure you’re using a compatible rear derailleur if you’re using the 10-52 option, because the previous-generation Eagle mechanical rear derailleur’s cage is slightly too short. This saves weight and, since it isn’t subject to wear from the chain, the carrier is often made of a lighter material – carbon fibre in the case of Dura-Ace cassettes You will need a long-cage derailleur if you want to use an 11-34t cassette on a road bike. Simon Bromley / Immediate Media Now that 12-speed road bike groupsets exist, cassettes can have a larger range and the jumps between each gear can be relatively small.Where an 11-28 would have been considered an ‘easy’ training cassette a few short years ago, the smallest cassette available for a Shimano Dura-Ace R9200 is an 11-28. That might not sound like much but, when you consider pro riders would typically ride on 11-23 or 11-25 cassettes, it’s a sizeable difference. For example, at the lower end of the cassette, you can have as little as a one-tooth jump between the early cogs, and still have the range at the easier end. If you were running a 7- or 8-speed system, for example, in the same range, the jumps would be bigger. The most common system is the Shimano 11-speed HG-style freehub, which has 9 splines. Most Shimano groupsets up to the 11-speed era used this style of freehub. SRAM groupsets prior to the current generation of 12-speed groupsets also used the same freehub design, although there are a handful of exceptions with the larger cassette ratios on their 1×11 groupsets. Gravel bikes are best viewed as a crossover between a road and mountain bike. As such, it’s normal to see them specced with either a road or mountain bike cassette.

Well, the smallest cog is a 10-tooth, and the largest cog is 52-tooth, which is 520 per cent larger than the 10-tooth cog, thus giving a 520 per cent range. Shimano, for example, uses a system it calls Hyperglide, which is engineered to provide smooth shifting. Its latest cassettes have a newer system called Hyperglide+, which Shimano says reduces shifting time by up to a third relative to Hyperglide, and improves shifting performance under power, up and down the cassette. However, as groupset manufacturers have jumped onto the gravel bandwagon, there are now gravel-specific gearing options available on the market. The cage of a rear derailleur is designed for a certain range of gears. For example, Shimano’s outgoing Dura-Ace R9100-SS rear derailleur is designed for use up to an 11-30 cassette. SRAM also offers just two cassette sizes in its Eagle lineup – 10-50 and 10-52. The 10-52 is the widest-range cassette made by either manufacturer. Although there are currently two options, it’s likely the 10-50 will be phased out in time because it has been superseded by the 10-52.

SRAM introduced its XD freehub standard when it started rolling out cassettes with a 10-tooth smallest cog. It recently ported this design over to the road with XDR, which also allows the use of 10-tooth cogs, but is slightly wider than the road bike standard. SRAM eTap AXS rear derailleurs can take up to a 33t for road, and this is denoted by the ‘Max 33t’ written on the inside of the derailleur cage. There is also a ‘Max 36t’ option to pair with the 10-36 cassette, as well as an XPLR rear derailleur, which can take up to a 44t.