Shimano CASSETTE HG400 9 speed 11-32

Product Information

Well, the smallest cog is a 10-tooth, and the largest cog is 52-tooth, which is 520 per cent larger than the 10-tooth cog, thus giving a 520 per cent range. It’s important to note that this figure is only indicative of the range of gears you have on your cassette, and is not the same as working out how far you will travel with your chosen gear ratio. Gravel bikes are best viewed as a crossover between a road and mountain bike. As such, it’s normal to see them specced with either a road or mountain bike cassette. SRAM eTap AXS rear derailleurs can take up to a 33t for road, and this is denoted by the ‘Max 33t’ written on the inside of the derailleur cage. There is also a ‘Max 36t’ option to pair with the 10-36 cassette, as well as an XPLR rear derailleur, which can take up to a 44t.

SRAM introduced its XD freehub standard when it started rolling out cassettes with a 10-tooth smallest cog. It recently ported this design over to the road with XDR, which also allows the use of 10-tooth cogs, but is slightly wider than the road bike standard. You will need a long-cage derailleur if you want to use an 11-34t cassette on a road bike. Simon Bromley / Immediate Media If you wanted to use an 11-34 cassette, as well as buying the relevant cassette, you would need to buy a compatible rear derailleur. In this example, it would be an Ultegra R8050-GS or 105 R7000-GS rear derailleur. The GS denotes that these are ‘medium cage’ derailleurs. The same rule applies to Shimano Di2 derailleurs.

Bike Cassette

It would have been uncommon to find a cassette as large as SRAM’s Eagle 10-50 a few years ago. Alex Evans

If you are still using a triple crankset, you may have sufficient overall range with a road cassette, but this is a fairly specialist application these days. Beyond weight, there’s not much difference in performance between a Dura-Ace 11-28 cassette and one from a Shimano Ultegra or a Shimano 105 groupset, so you can save yourself considerable expense by down-speccing. Now that 12-speed road bike groupsets exist, cassettes can have a larger range and the jumps between each gear can be relatively small. On the mountain bike side, Shimano uses its Microspline freehub standard for its 12-speed Deore, SLX, XT and XTR groupsets. Unless you’re running a triple crankset, it’s unlikely you’ll want to use a road bike cassette on a mountain bike. Dave Caudery / Immediate MediaThere are new rear derailleurs on the market that are identifiable as being compatible because they have a ‘520% range’ graphic printed on the derailleur cage. SRAM Eagle AXS rear derailleurs are compatible with the new 10-52 cassettes. For example, at the lower end of the cassette, you can have as little as a one-tooth jump between the early cogs, and still have the range at the easier end. If you were running a 7- or 8-speed system, for example, in the same range, the jumps would be bigger. Where an 11-28 cassette would have once been considered a large training cassette, it now sits at the lower end of the typical range for road. Simon Bromley / Immediate Media Campagnolo 12-speed rear derailleurs can accept up to an 11-32. The only exception is Campagnolo Chorus, which can take up to an 11-34. Although it might seem straightforward, there’s a lot of engineering that goes into a bike cassette.