Triple or Compact ?? Help

No amount of 'asking' will help you resolve this common dilemma easily. If 1943 is your birth year, then age may be a determining factor, but not necessarily. Do you want this bike to last for the rest of your riding days? [I mean years of cause 😄] Weight wise most triples add less than 200 grams compared to the same manufactures equivalent double/compact [a full bidon weighs about 800 grams]. Do you intend to 'ride hard' & competitively, or 'cruise & enjoy' with the ability to ride many routes without having to worry if the grade is to steep.
I think if you keep asking yourself these types of questions it may help you pick which way to go.

My experience with dealing with bike sales people is that they often considered what they would ride, & not what someone 20 years older than them would need 🙂

f1943r said:

Just moved to the Asheville NC area and I’m in the market for a new bike. Some shops want to sell me a bike with a compact 50/34, saying the bike will be a little lighter than one with a triple but still have about the same gearing when climbing in the 34 front 27 rear. Others direct me toward a triple stating I would have a better gear range than a compact, and on the very big mountains be able to get down to a 30 front 27 rear. Both bikes are in the same price range. I’m 6ft 2in, 190 pounds, I’m lost. What is you vote?

I've just gone from a 53/39 double to a 50/34 compact. Am running a 9-spd rear derailleur, which allows me to swap in a 30-tooth flat "bail-out" cog on the back when needed, giving me a 34-30 low-end ratio for hilly rides. This works well despite the fact that standard Shimano cogsets max out at 27-t. 34-30 is just slightly larger than the 30-27 ratio you'd get on a triple. Cost for a 30-t cog is less than $10; no need to buy a spacer; use the one from whatever small cog (e.g., 13-t) you drop out of the cogset to make room for the 30-t.

It is useful to consider that many of the gear combinations on a triple overlap one another, and that chainline issues--which are greater with triples then with doubles or compacts--make it impractical to use a number of chainring-cog combinations (the big-big and small-small ones). You can verify this for yourself using Sheldon Brown's gear calculator:

sheldonbrown.comgearsOpen ↗

Typical triple: 53/42/30
Typical compact: 50/34
Typical wide-range 9-speed cassette: 12-13-14-15-17-19-21-24-27
Custom wide-range 9-spd cassette for compact: 12-14-15-17-19-21-24-27-30

For higher compact gearing, swap 11-t for 12-t small cog;
50-11 is bigger than 53-12.

f1943r said:

Just moved to the Asheville NC area and I’m in the market for a new bike. Some shops want to sell me a bike with a compact 50/34, saying the bike will be a little lighter than one with a triple but still have about the same gearing when climbing in the 34 front 27 rear. Others direct me toward a triple stating I would have a better gear range than a compact, and on the very big mountains be able to get down to a 30 front 27 rear.

Before you buy a new bike, you may want to try a triple (if feasible) on your current bike and ride that for a month-or-season-or-forever.

Even if you were to buy a new set of shifters, crankset & derailleurs, the cost of those components would be less expensive than a new bike (if cost is a consideration).

If you hate the triple, you can swap the crankset for a "compact" double, later, OR you will know that you will want to spec a compact double on your "new" from the LBS bike.

Excess parts can be resold (or, bought!) on eBay.

Bike shops (amongst other retailers) will often try to sell you what they have on hand before selling you something which they don't have in inventory.

FWIW. MY immediate recommendation is to follow OldGoat's recommendaton of stacking a 30t cog (presuming you have a Shimano cassette) on your current rear wheel ... see if THAT is sufficient with the 39t inner ring -- a 38t is commonly available size for 130BCD, and Warhawk Industries briefly had a 37t 130BCD chainring which could certainly be used as the inner ring (they may still have some in stock, but they were not listed the last time I looked ... fairly expensive at about $50, as I recall).

Another alternative is to buy a MTB cassette (e.g., 11-34) and a Shimano MTB rear derailleur + a new chain (you'll probably need the extra links) ... cost should be under $100US. The 39t chainring & 34t cog should give you low enough gearing for most (if not all) situations other than heavy loaded touring.

This is the opinion of someone born in 1959. I have gone compact and love it. My new Cervelo has a FSA 50/34 compact crankset and DuraAce components with an Ultegra 11-23 10speed cassette. For the rolling and hilly terrain where I ride in Maine and Nova Scotia it is great. I have rented a number of triples while travelling (California, Girona, Burgundy) and I would sooner choose the compact. In fact, in Girona I rented both a triple bike and a compact-equipped bicycle. I found I rarely needed the small ring and that many of the gears were too low and I was shifting a lot more times to keep a constant cadence. As well, I thought you could feel added friction when you rode the small chainring and upper cogs on the rear cassette, compared to a double. The Q-factor may also be an issue for some, as is the small weight price for us weight wennies. The compact gearing has much less redundancy, less issues with cross-chain riding (although you may lose the two lower gears when riding the big chain ring with a compact), and its great for someone who wants to aim for high cadence riding in the hills. I believe it has made me a much better and stronger climber. If it is more mountainous, one might choose the 12-25 or 12-27 cassettes for those rides, which still will give moutain bike like gearing for the those big climbs (although you will lose your upper end gear). With the 11 or 12, I don't miss my old 53 big chainring that much, except on big descents or with killer tailwinds. I think they are the greatest invention and really can help your cycling. Definitely worth a test ride. I'm not surprised that you are being steered towards the compact IMO.

f1943r said:

Just moved to the Asheville NC area and I’m in the market for a new bike. Some shops want to sell me a bike with a compact 50/34, saying the bike will be a little lighter than one with a triple but still have about the same gearing when climbing in the 34 front 27 rear. Others direct me toward a triple stating I would have a better gear range than a compact, and on the very big mountains be able to get down to a 30 front 27 rear. Both bikes are in the same price range. I’m 6ft 2in, 190 pounds, I’m lost. What is you vote?

I have a little different way of looking at it than most folks:

1. Figure out what gears you need. What's the lowest hill climb gear you think that you'll use? What's your favorite flat road gear?

2. Take the time to calculate all of the gear inch numbers for every gearing combination that you are considering.

3. Your high and low gear needs are obvious but look at where your favorite flat road gear combination hits on the cassette. You'd like for it to be right in the middle so that you can adjust for wind and slight grade variations without having to change front chainrings.

If you do that I suspect that one or the other (triple or compact double crankset) will stand out as right for you.

OldGoat said:

It is useful to consider that many of the gear combinations on a triple overlap one another, and that chainline issues--which are greater with triples then with doubles or compacts--make it impractical to use a number of chainring-cog combinations (the big-big and small-small ones).

Overlap of gears is a futile argument, being in any ring & going through the appropriate cogs of the cassette is what is important whether a D or a T, chainline issues are LESS with Ts when ridden as intended & it is also impractical [not advisable] to use big-big, small-small on a D either, your quoted eg below is on the money [from another thread]
Please please, again I’m not trying to fuel a D v T argument, but trying to correct IMO miss information

OldGoat said:

Why insist on using 42-12 in lieu of more sensible 52-15 gearing, which is almost exactly equivalent? Cross-chaining (big front/big rear or small front/small rear) is in general not a good thing, look at the stress it puts on the chain.......

Albert 50 said:

chainline issues are LESS with Ts when ridden as intended & it is also impractical [not advisable] to use big-big, small-small on a D either,

btw crosschaining issues are ment there......thought I ought to correct that b4 I get a lecture on what chainline is 🙂

I am from Western PA and there are abundant hills here. I had a triple on my previous road bike, a cannondale r800, with an 11-21 cassette. After riding with this setup for about 5 years I can say that I don't like triples very much. They are prone to drop the chain in the front when downshifting from middle to small. Over time that becomes a pain in the [censored], especially when you are already on an uphill grade and you go to drop to the small ring and the chain drops off onto the frame. On my current bike, a trek 5200, I have a Shimano compact double with a 12-27 cassette. I have to say i LOVE this setup. I haven't dropped the chain yet and have ridden about a 1000 miles on this setup. As far as climbing, I don't seem to have lost very much, if anything in gearing when going from the triple to the compact double. In the end I would say to go to your LBS and take a few bikes for a test ride, both triples and doubles, before you lay out cash. That is what I did before I bought....

I went from riding a triple to riding a compact double (though the bikes were so radically different that it's not really an apples-to-apples comparison).

I'll agree with most folks who have said that a compact double offers most of the climbing benefit of a triple; while I can't spin quite as cavalierly in my 34-27 now as I did in my 22-28 (!!!! yes, it was an MTB drivetrain-- see, I told you it wasn't apples-to-apples), I pretty much have yet to meet a hill I couldn't conquer on the current 34/50 compact double.

But it's at the other end, when riding fast on the flats, that I suspect a triple might have an advantage. The problem is, it's nearly impossible to exceed 19 or 20 mph in the 34 chainring, and shifting up to the 50 chainring drops my cadence significantly, which doesn't lend itself to aerobic endurance or smooth paceline cruising. And there have been a few hammerfests where I got dangerously close to maxing out the 50-12 combination. I suspect that, based on the way I'm riding this year, a 30/39/53 or 30/42/53 would give me more comfortable top end gearing...though I admit this is just conjecture. Definitely going to investigate this more empirically before I spec my next bike. (I'm way too happy with my current ride to change anything, but wouldn't mind a second bike just to switch things up a bit.)

If you don't need the 27, you may want to switch to an 11-23 or 11-25 (I don't know if you can interchange an SRAM cassette, but they have an 11-26) to get a bit higher gear. My 50-11 is usually adequate other than trying to pedal on big, straight descents or with a killer tailwind (esp with a bit of a downhill grade). Yet, I am happy never to go back to a standard crankset, as long as I don't live in Florida or the praries.