Kronos wrote:Duck! wrote:Kronos wrote:
Or if you want to avoid ugly cabling you can't tuck under shifters that come out the side which is a that era Shimano thing you can just upgrade to 6700 shifters straight away.
That's not an upgrade.
Nor is downgrading to the type of shifters on the older 10 speed groupset. In fact they're decidedly crap and ugly themselves, they're also not ergonomic in any sense. In fact I'm not quite sure why so many Shimano riders have done this that it actually has become a "thing" in the industry. They're just crap, there's no real way that you can mount them comfortably, and they use cable routing that makes your bike look like an old mans bike.
I prefer function over aesthetics by a big margin, and the old-school side entry cabling has a shedload less system friction than the 7900/6700/5700 shifters, so functionaly they are hugely superior; lighter, crisper shift action, and easier to tune. Shimano themselves admit that those second generation 10-sp. shifters were a backward step in function, and not up to par for their intended performance level. The old-style shifters would perform very well even with low-grade cables; with high-quality teflon-coated cables the shift action is sublime. 2nd-gen action ranges from ordinary with high-quality cables, down to dreadful with bad cables.The current generation, which now covers the full spectrum of Shimano's groupset hierarchy, thanks to greatly improved cable routing is the upgrade that 2nd-gen 10-sp shifters should have been but weren't, but still needs good cables to work at its best.
Ergonomically, I don't think Shimano have ever truly nailed it, but different generations have the edge in different aspects; the old 9-sp (7700/6500/5500/4400) had really nice angled lever faces - later aped by SRAM - which are super comfy under the fingers when on the hoods, but are a bit deep & square through the bracket body. 1st-gen 10-sp, 7800, 6600 & 5600 and by recycled extension 4600, trickling down to 9-sp. 4500, 3400 & 3500 and 8-sp. 2300/2400 are narrower & rounder - therefore nicer - through the bracket body, and the shifter peak gives a nice meaty grip area, but the levers are square across the front face. Plus you can hook your thumbs under the cables for a bit more security. 2nd-gen 10-sp -7900, 6700, 5700 keeps the good bracket cross-section, but the smaller shifter peak makes it easier to get ejeclted off the hoods if you hit a big bump; an issue common with SRAM and to a lesser extent older Campag. Then there's the comparitively ordinary shift feel. The current generation is the best balanced of all the aspects covered, but still a bit square across the front of the levers. Longer cable pull for each shift (10 & 11-sp.) along with improved cable run vastly improves shift action and tuning, but still needs coated cables to get the best from it.
Which all comes back to my repeated point throughout this thread - from a purely functional perspective, 4600-series Tiagra shifters, being only lightly modified 7800 Dura-Ace are still among the best ever produced, punching well above what their groupset ranking would suggest. Present me with 7900 Dura-Ace, 6700 Ultegra , 5700 105 or 4600 Tiagra shifters & ask me to pick one, I'd take the 4600s every time, without a second thought.
I had a thought, but it got run over as it crossed my mind.