My standard hub for short-travel bikes is Bitex at 54 POE. I'd choose more, but every high-engagement pawl-based hub sounds horrific to me. I cannot stand the angry bees thing. I'd rather listen to a flock of whining ebike motors than a single person on a stock i9 hub. (DT 240 at 54 POE isn't that much better or I'd be choosing it over Bitex. Tweaking freehub grease to quiet any of these hubs down is a temporary solution; I don't want to pull my hubs apart every twenty miles.)
Onyx is one of the only games in town for a quiet high-engagement hub, but for the price, I don't love the soft engagement (doubly so on the "light" model with more flex) or the weight penalty at the end of a suspension arm I'm trying to keep as light as possible. These downsides outweigh (so to speak) the modest benefits of tighter engagement to me.
May 15, 2023, 10:39 a.m. - Alex D
My standard hub for short-travel bikes is Bitex at 54 POE. I'd choose more, but every high-engagement pawl-based hub sounds horrific to me. I cannot stand the angry bees thing. I'd rather listen to a flock of whining ebike motors than a single person on a stock i9 hub. (DT 240 at 54 POE isn't that much better or I'd be choosing it over Bitex. Tweaking freehub grease to quiet any of these hubs down is a temporary solution; I don't want to pull my hubs apart every twenty miles.) Onyx is one of the only games in town for a quiet high-engagement hub, but for the price, I don't love the soft engagement (doubly so on the "light" model with more flex) or the weight penalty at the end of a suspension arm I'm trying to keep as light as possible. These downsides outweigh (so to speak) the modest benefits of tighter engagement to me.