Andre Jute wrote:

Less pleasing is the agricultural quality of the Rohloff gearchange,
which I expect to be able to adjust a little and then to have to live
with, the reference being the well-used Rohloff box and controls I had
on loan, which after a few thousand miles were still pretty resistant.
Apparently one can send the Rohloff hub away to get a softer spring
fitted to give a smoother gearchange.

In my limited observation, the shift feel of Rohloff hubs is pretty
variable. The ones I own and the others I have seen firsthand are
relatively early production-- mine is #5XXX and my wife's is #6XXX.
Mine is _very_ stiff to shift; I have twisted the shifter cuff loose
from its tube twice. After the second time I tore it loose, it was
not in suitable shape to reuse, so I glued on a section of a BMX grip
instead.

My wife's hub, on the other hand, is quite easy to shift. She tends
to shift three or four steps at a time, and she would complain
bitterly if her hub took as resolute a twist as mine.

For a time, I thought the difference between my shifter and my wife's
was all in the installation. So I kept making changes to the cable
housings and routing in the attempt to make my shifting feel like
hers. Three or four recabling jobs may not sound like much, but
stringing the Rohloff is an odious chore. It got a little better for
my efforts, especially after I switched to full housing, but it never
freed up like I had fixed something wrong with it.

The rotary control for the gearchange is beautifully finished but the
entire, sturdy design is a ton less pleasing or ergonomic than
Shimano's Nexus (manual) rotary control

Pleasing is of course subjective. I'm not pleased with the trigger
and twist grip shifters on my Nexus 7 equipped bikes, because they
have both broken in annoying ways. They work with a lighter touch
than the Rohloff, but they are not robust.

The nicest bike shifter of any kind I have ever experienced is the one
that comes with the Fallbrook NuVinci CVT hub. It's solid-feeling,
smooth and easy to twist, and very nicely shaped and finished.
Because there are no discrete gear ratios in the NuVinci hub, the
"gear indicator" is a bright orange rubber strip that forms a little
hill of varying steepness as you turn the grip.

http://www.cyclingnews.com/tech.php?...shifter_uphill
http://fallbrooktech.com/images/controller_1000px.jpg

For a start, the
Rohloff rotary handle is triangular, so that at one point or another
it will be higher than the edge of the handlebar grip. This
discontinuity will be enough to bruise the pad on your palm below your
forefinger, and the pad below your thumb as well.

That didn't really bother me. But now it's gone, replaced with a
round segment of an ATI "Pistol Pete" grip. The larger diameter of
the shifter tube compared to the handlebar means there is still a step
where the shifter cuff meets the fixed portion of the grip, but it is
the same contour regardless of which gear the bike is in.

I shall probably change to
standard length, long grips on both sides to give me somewhere to rest
my hands where they won't be blistered or worse.

Blistered? Them's some soft paws you got there. Makes me wonder what
would become of your hands if, God forbid, you had to put a shovel or
an axe to productive use. They might just harden up, but I guess
you'll never know unless you try.

There is more wrong with the control before one even operates it. The
gear indicators, all fourteen of them, are raised numbers, black on
black rubber, invisible at a glance even in good light.

After a few initial attempts to discern what the gear indicator said,
I gave up. Now I don't have a gear indicator, so I don't worry about
it.

Gears 11 and
7, at least, should be distinguishable at a quick glance.

That would be nice, but I don't miss having that feature. You could
sort yourself out with a light-colored paint marker or a bit of nail
polish. One dot on the metal grip housing, and two dots on the
shifter cuff at the relevant gear positions.

I'll probably make dabs of
white luminous paint on the rubber numbers.

I see you already thought of that. I suppose since you live in the
UK, you can get tritium paint if you want it. Yes?

I expect the
Rohloff control will settle in a little with wear.

That's a nice thought, but don't count on it. Like most German
mechanisms, this one breaks in over a period that Shimano would
consider in excess of their products' service life. Mine doesn't have
astronomical mileage, but it has been working for me a long time, and
it shows little sign of easing up at the shifter.

Just as well I didn't get the 38x17 combination I first wanted; though
he had a 17t sprocket in stock, the dealer refused to fit it with a
38t chainwheel on the grounds that Rohloff had declared it "illegal".

I used a 44/16 combination to spare my gearbox unnecessary torment. I
still find the top gear pretty modest and the low gear almost silly.

Chalo