‘These go to 11’

14 thoughts on “‘These go to 11’”

1. Thanks for the laugh.

2. Ha…I was just explaining the cultural legend of “these go to eleven” to the wife the other day.

   That’s kind of an odd story with one photo by Sirotti and the rest taken by the writer with his cell phone. Perhaps Sirotti wanted too much for more photos?

3. While I love Campagnolo and all, I was pretty well satisfied with the original Ergopower with “only” 8 cogs in back. We still have a couple of now-ancient Bianchi’s living out at the in-laws place in Santa Barbara with those parts and the wife’s winter bike has old 8-speed as well. I don’t really find a whole lot of difference between those and the almost newest-latest 10 speed setups from Vicenza we have on some other bikes in the CycleItalia stable.
   Have yet to ride an 11-speed one though the nice guys at Campagnolo have talked about letting us put our clients on their Athena 11 equipped Italian demo fleet next year. I’m happy they ditched that “this one goes to 11” slogan, now it’s “BE 11” (which sort of describes the maturity level of most of the Tea Party folks!)
   I guess it’s a tough sell just using the old Campagnolo strong points of durability, spare parts availability and serviceability to compete with the “It’s broken? Throw it away and buy a new one!” mentality of their 10-speeding competition?
   It’s amazing such a tiny company, making only high-end road bike stuff can compete at all with the giant “S” firms…kinda like tiny Ducati slugging it out in MOTOGP against Honda and Yamaha. It takes a passion unique to Italians I think — but of course I’m biased as hell!

4. Larry, I like eight-speed just fine, too. In fact, the past couple weeks I’ve been riding Ultegra eight, on a Steelman Eurocross sans bottle cage during cyclo-cross practice. The shifting is just fine, though it’s a longer lever throw than nine-speed, and it just happens to be on one of my favorite bikes.

   The lever throw on the SRAM Rival 10-speed adorning my whizbang Jamis Supernova feels like an equally long throw, and the front shifter is fiddly — occasionally it likes to deny my request for the big ring — so I don’t feel I’ve gotten my money’s worth from the “advance” of technology.

   But I got the bike for free, so who cares?

5. As anyone who’s raced without sponsorship will say, “the free stuff is ALWAYS the best!”

6. I loved the old 8 speed stuff – 9 speed too – they all worked flawlessly. I think I rebuilt the 9 speed “brifters” (I hate that term, but it’s a good descriptive word) twice, I got that much life out of them. That said, just before I left Italy in September I was given a loaner rig one day from my shop owner friend in Greve and put a two hour ride in on the new Super Record 11 group, this attached to a new Cervelo. Really, really nice stuff: super smooth, lightening quick, positive, quiet. In my mind, a step up from the 10 speed Record group I’m riding now. Mind you, there is NOTHING wrong with the 10 speed stuff – the 11 was just “nicer”. Am I ready to toss the old group? Not a chance, when it comes to replacement time…?

   Oh, by the way, the Cervelo loaner was a new R3sl and I HATED it. It felt incredibly “wooden” and lifeless, but that’s just me and my tired old body, YMMV…

7. I have a friend who is drooling over the prospects of some electronic shifting get-up from some company in Europe. She is a mighty fine racer (in more ways than one naturally!) in her own right but I can’t see the “reason” for it. And then it hit me: it’s new, different and completely useless for the whole scenario!

   Bring back 8 speeds (maybe 9 depending) and make it simpler!! I don’t want to ride a single speed because I like to shift. I don’t ride a 10-speed because I like to shift more than five times. I don’t ride a 20-speed because I am cheap. Call me a retro grouch but I don’t care because 8/9 is the best of both worlds. I can go fast with a 53/11 or cruise with a 39/26 if I so choose. There is not a single need for me to be able to shift from the 16 to 17 to 18 to 19 to 20.

   Spinal Tap are gods btw.

8. But guys….THESE go to eleven!

9. Eight was nice because pretty much ANY narrow chain worked OK on it. Each time they’ve added a cog things have become a bit more specialized with 11 obviously the latest and most part-specific. I have little doubt the newest-latest 11 speed groups are anything but wonderful — due more to improved manufacturing, materials and know-how rather than the extra cog. Campagnolo claims they did it to respond to racers wanting an 18 cog in a specific stack without giving up any of the others already on it. In any case it allows them to one-up the competition in the same way it’s been going for years…I can still remember Ultra 6, the six-speed freewheel taking up no more space than the then-conventional five-speed, but I am fairly ancient!
   Interesting that you hated the Cervelo Davide…it’s been a loooong time since I’ve tried any of the plastic bikes out there. Since I weigh enough to make weight savings from a 14 lb bike compared to a 20 lb one rather silly, one of these newest-latest things must promise some improvement other than light weight to get my interest. So far all you hear or see (other than the weight claims) are claims of stiffness or rigidity, qualities I don’t find lacking in ANY of my steel machines, even the old, but brand new SLX TOMI I just built up. In many ways the peak of road bike development for me was around the early to mid-90’s…more resilient steel frames with slightly oversized tubes, Campagnolo Ergopower, automatic pedals….the only bad thing being the slab-sided, stiff wheels a lot of guys raced on…one can sort of blame Campagnolo for those….the “Shamal” wasn’t it? The original “wheelset” that soon spawned the creation of a whole new product category, wiping out a generation of skilled wheel builders in the process.

10. I’m glad that I went back to Campy in 2001. About four weeks ago, I managed to stack myself and break the right hand shifter. One phone call had the parts heading my way. I would have done this via the LBS but QBP was out of stock until Nov. The rebuilt lever is now in the process of wearing in.

    re: Electronic Shift – I was thinking this was pretty much a solution in search of a problem until I thought about CycloCross. That’s about the place I can see that it might be useful.

    I still would love to have a Campy T-Shirt paying homage the Spinal Tap line.

11. Saw the phrase a few times never knew what it meant or the reference until now. Thanks! Never saw “Spinal Tap” – will have to now. However – I did see “Downfall” as a theatrical release (German language, English sub-titles) and on RAI International (on a V-E Day Anniversary! dubbed in Italian, of course) – does this make up for my huge knowledge gap regarding “Spinal Tap”?

    P.S. I love the “Downfall” parodies – especially “Hitler learns he can’t take his bike on the train on Sundays” or some such thing. I think I’ll try to find it.

12. Libby: the best “Downfall” parody, for me anyway as a motorcycle nut, was one of the first ones that were done I think. It has to do with Hitler wanting a VFR Honda motorcycle and his aides getting him a BMW instead. I think I wet my pants laughing when I saw it – but, that’s just me…

13. Didn’T the evil S get a patent for some 14 speed hub/cassette? Or was that Campy? I forgot. And care even less.

    @Jeff, I doubt seriously that electric shifting would work in cross. Who wants to ride one gear in the muck ‘if’ the shifting goes wonkers? Esp. if you have 20 gears to choose from. I’ll stay with metal cables….and cantis, thank you very much.

14. Has anyone ever seen the script for Spinal Tap? It’s like four pages long. A couple of good ideas and then just improv at its best.

    (Same with the Bill Murray lines in Caddyshack. Not a single line was written down — he ad-libbed the entire thing.)

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