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chorus: repeat
i'm old enough to remember when road bikes featured downtube gear levers totally devoid of indexed shifting. the iniquities of having to reach down, mid-ascent, to pop it into yet another larger sprocket with effectively no assistance from the gearset. there's no denying that those of us faced with this daily proposition became quite skilled at so doing, if only in the interests of saving self and others from the crashing sound if we got it wrong. i'm also daft enough to admit that i rather enjoyed those days, though quick to state that i'm perfectly happy not to have cause to return.
because at the time, no-one had anything to compare it with.
it was pointed out only the other day, that the upcoming new year's eve will be the only time when all the adults in the world will have been born in the 1900s, and all juveniles born in the 2000s. on that basis, it's highly likely that there will be those amongst us who have never ridden a bicycle without indexed shifting and possibly one or two who have never ridden anything without a battery.
those downtube levers, though probably not on anyone's wish list, inculcated the skill of changing gear at just the right point before it became necessary. reaching down while climbing, as described above, had a tendency to unbalance the rider just a tad, to say nothing of the consequences of not hitting the right gear in the first place. indexing has removed those vicissitudes entirely; those thoughtful little ramps on the cassette sprockets lift the chain almost noiselessly even when stomping the pedals on a gradient that seemed perfectly doable only a matter of minutes before.
i figure that particularly scenario was tried to the extreme when riding this year's hot chillee london-paris. not by me, i'm eager to point out, but by the majority of my fellow pelotonese. it's likely that many, if not all, overestimated their ascending abilities within only a few metres of the climb and frantically scrabbled to find any gear at all, without falling sideways. several of them failed in that particular task. though i realise i'm being unbearably smug, i simply changed down well before the gradients began and smoothly rode to the top, untroubled by crashing sprockets.
on the occasions when i did need to change down once again, campagnolo's super record gears accomplished this with ease and scarcely a sound.
campagnolo chorus sits two tiers down from super record, separated by plain old record, but the absence of the word record from the carbon parallelogram at the rear, seems not to have lessened the gear mech's capabilities.
i do like to think of myself as reasonably competent in the velocipedinal mechanical department, as long as that does not include hydraulic or electronic facets. in the case of the chorus groupset under review, it was yours truly that assembled each component onto the steel ritchey logic frameset on which it currently resides. it has frequently been my experience that setting up gearchanging on the workstand, where spinning the chainset engenders no untoward pressure on the chain or rear mech, often incurs a few necessitous minor adjustments within the first few metres of the shakedown ride. however, in the case of this desirable set of italian componentry, that has yet to happen.
at that included (as can be seen from the accompanying images), dragging it through an endless stream of belgian toothpaste.
though the subject of this review will feature in at least one more chapter, i have so far covered several hundred kilometres on the chorus-equipped ritchey without need to grab an allen or torx key to make any adjustments at all. though, as always, everything is entirely subjective, the impressively positive changing at both front and rear has been a joy to behold. i am not fibbing when i say that neither have missed a beat; there have been no fluffed changes at all, a feature also exeprienced on the road to paris. i have been very convincingly persuaded, even though i was pretty much sold on the idea when i started.
though the bicycle has been smoothness personified, i've always delighted in the hand grip offered by campagnolo's sculpted brake lever hoods. this could possibly be a case of muscle memory, since alternatives were all but unknown when i took to the road, so it's possible that my palms and thumbs have always been campagnolo compatible. however, from the three options available to the intrepid road-going cyclist, a separate lever for each function (braking, changing up and changing down) has always struck me as the way to go. granted, the groupsets below chorus offer a less positive (dare i say, ergonomic) downshift lever, but the function remains essentially the same.
several years ago, campagnolo offered a set of record red brake/shift levers which allegedly offered stiffer shifting as preferred by the pros. quite how the modern chorus levers compare to that proffered stiffness, i know not, but suffice it to say that they do provide a particularly solid gear change, either up or down.
but while gear performance is an intrinsic part of every groupset, there still needs to be an efficient means of rolling the chain through the gears in the first place. i have heard negative mumblings about the aesthetics of campagnolo's latest carbon four-arm chainsets, though i'm inclined to disagree. for me, little will ever compare with the last of vicenza's polished alloy chainsets of yesteryear, but i rather like the current offerings, the design of which allows the user to opt between standard and compact, simply by fitting the number of teeth desired and worrying not about the bolt circle diameter.
but it must surely be the unsung bottom bracket bearings that provide such a smooth means of propulsion. without particularly long legs, i opted for 170mm cranks; i was originally of the opinion that carbon fibre was never designed to feature on this particular component, but such has been the perceived delights of the chainset/bottom bracket combination, i'm seriously disposed towards a revision of this stance.
that leaves only the brakes to discuss and though vicenza has now released its last-to-the-party disc brake project, i fear it may be solely for conformity with current trends, for i can see no missing link in the chorus skeleton calipers that would persuade me that discs could provide something these don't. i fully understand that rotors apparently offer heftier, more serious stopping power, but along with many, i seriously question whether this is absolutely necessary on a road bike, where it's more about scrubbing off speed, rather than coming to a sudden halt.
record and super record no doubt save a few grams (the former is around 300g lighter and the latter, approx 400g), but there can be little doubt that chorus provides every last morsel of the campagnolo experience at lower cost than either of its big brothers. and unless you happen to be nursing an impressive bank balance, or the need to reach a summit a few hundred grams before your peers, campagnolo's chorus groupset should probably be right at the top of your wishlist.
sunday 17 december 2017
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