Originally posted by Frejus
Got to disagree in industry circles, Record stands alone on its own with the technology and material used by CAMPAG.
Chorus has a much closer relationship to DA with it use of alloy/ti rather than carbon
Centaur is aligned with Ultegra and so it goes on down the models.
Campag now have gone 10 speed almost thro its range.
From a servicing view point.....Shimano are continually changing ther models and very soon a groupset in road or MTB very soon becomes obsolete. From a bike trade point of view this becomes a real pain.
Up until recently Campag current model hub axle and cones were interchangable with Nouvo Record grouppo's of the 70,s as well as bottom bracket axles, with the introduction of sealed bb units the later ones still can be used to service a wide range of Campag and of course they have retained the square taper axles.
The price difference in countries is related to buying power and quantities purchased from Italy if you are ordering larger quantities you buy at a better price.
Some mail order 'shops' discount heavily as they do not have the Real Estate retail shop over heads and are happy to turn the stock over with smaller markups.
Note
Your ordering quantity argument doesn't stand up. Do you know Price differences are between 70 and 120% this is huge and is way to big to be explained as Quantity related.
And someting you forget Shimano may be changing faster and so making it difficult to replace things(they also change to make you buy, thats also partly why campa uses carbon in more and more parts). I have some brand new and 10 year old shimano gear and can still get parts to fit, they may not be the exactly the same but sora casette works fine on a 90's 8 speed group.
Whats a real argument older and cheaper shimano's tend to make noise in the shifters but whats also impoirtant here in belgium campa is a pain in the ass if you need spare parts from campa you'll have to wait wait and wait.
