Oh good lord. I thought we'd have all made up by now. Yes, I'm back. Nice ride... I was thinking about good, fun, things.
Well, in any case, I've calmed down. My last pair of shoes just died (the sole started peeling off from the heel forward), and I needed to test ride a new pair I'd just scored on Ebay -- found a pair of the new Shimano R215s in my size, and won them for about $100 USD (reg. $240). Not bad. Good news is, they even feel good, aside from making me look faster than I am. Just climbed a hill I hate climbing, and I hated it a touch less because my feet looked dipped in platinum.
Ok boudreaux... because I feel like I sort of know you, I think I understand what your point is. Allow me the presumptuousness of putting myself in your mysterious head. Clearly, in the interest of preventing riders from pursuing and building upon ill-informed notions -- particularly those which favor basic marketing darlings and flashy, expensive fads -- you've made it a mission to stamp out anything on these forums which even resembles a careless endorsement of hype or bad conventional wisdom.
Right? I can respect that. I think you go overboard from time to time and **** people off, but I understand the motivation. As such, it chapped your hide to see the suggestion here that Tiagra was a substandard groupset -- something you culled from the specific language tossed around. Preventing other visitors from coming away thinking that Tiagra regularly mis-shifts, looses its chain, and requires bending the pulley cage to get it to work, seemed like a worthy crusade. For the friggin' record, if I ever suggested that the above was the case (which I didn't), I recant it.
Fine of you to tackle that notion, but really, this has become a word-game as much as anything else -- a byzantine cross-examination, and not a discussion about drivetrains. Have a little more respect for the newbies you claim to be thinking about -- assuming they're reading my posts, I promise, the situation ain't that bad. Compared to whatever package of words we're fighting over here, how many times did I state that Tiagra was a sufficient, solid group? I think I said it quite a few times.
Sure -- tune drivetrains to precision in a lab and stage a blind test, the differences can diminish; how far they diminish depends on who tuned them, what two groups you're comparing, and how sensitive the tester is. But we don't live in labs. We certainly don't ride in them, and we don't have trained engineers tuning our drivetrains every day. Under ordinary conditions, like all of your friends here experience, these groups can feel distinguishable.
That I've personally found Tiagra to be slightly clunkier and less precise than 105 isn't up for debate. For the record, I've personally found Tiagra to be clunkier than Ultegra as well. I've also personally found that 105 is clunkier than Dura Ace, but that hardly stops me from endorsing 105. It does not mean that I find 105 a chain-dropping, mis-firing mess. I like the damn group.
Again, the varying degrees to which these groups compare against one another when held up to the infamous "reliable shifts" standard are relative, and perhaps subtle. In my opinion, they exist nonetheless. Maybe not in hype-supporting, hooey-rific fad-level glory, but they exist, in small, occasionally palpable degrees. So please, put the crusade on a temporary hiatus. Do it for the sake of dialogue, for Coppi's sake. If you've got reason to disagree, lay it down for the sake of those newbies you loose sleep over.
And go for a tough ride before you type a reply. It seems to make you ramble on longer (witness above), but it's a more pleasant experience. Nighty night.
