I'm looking at building up a new road bike with Campag groupset. My current bike has Centaur equipment, which I'm very happy with, so I am looking at either Athena 11, or Veloce 10; I don't need 11 speed and would like to go with the 10 speed Veloce, but how does it compare to the Centaur and Athena?
FYI ...
For all intents & purposes, the
current mechanism from Athena-and-downstream-groups is the updated XENON mechanism which was re-labeled as the
QS mechanism about 10 years ago ...
Nothing wrong with the XENON-design,
per se.
I think that if you get the latest iteration of the Xenon-mechanism shifters, you will see that the thumb lever is now similarly shaped to the ones found on the EPS shifters ... so, there will be little confusion in the capability as the thumb lever is already positioned near what would be the bottom of the down stroke.
So, the difference between a current Athena shifter & a current Veloce shifter is the indexing + cosmetics -- that is, a carbon fiber brake lever vs. black
/painted brake levers OR both brake lever & shift paddle being "silver" alloy on a pair of Athena shifters vs. a "silver" alloy brake lever + black composite shift lever on the lesser variants ...
The first iteration of all of the V3 shifters shared the same shift mechanism design which is still found on the Record/Chorus shifters
If your current CENTAUR shifters have the older ErgoShift (
pre-QS) mechanism AND
if you know that you prefer being able to
move the chain across more than one Cog at a time with the thumb lever, then you will need to pony up for a pair of Chorus or Super-./Record shifters ... OR, find a pair of first iteration V3 shifters.
If your current CENTAUR shifters are QS, then you just need to decide on how much you want to pony up at the moment and in the future ...
BTW. The 11-speed Campagnolo shifters can be used with an 11-speed Campagnolo drivetrain (
of course), a 10-speed Campagnolo if you either fiddle with the rear derailleur cable's attachment OR if you use a Shimano rear derailleur ... OR, you can use a wheel with an 10-or-11-speed Shimano/SRAM Cassette (
when using a Campagnolo rear derailleur).
With an 11-speed Campagnolo (
Chorus mechanism) shifter + a 1998-to-2007
medium cage Campagnolo rear derailleur (
either knuckle style; but, the earlier versions have a B-screw which mimics Shimano's -- a good thing), I have been able to use a wheel with a wussy, 11-
36, 10-speed Shimano Cassette.
The more recent Campagnolo rear derailleurs whose outer parallelogram plate shrouds the knuckles are MORE LIMITED in the size of the largest Cog which can be on the rear Cassette.
BTW2. If you want "silver" alloy brake levers, then your choices are limited.