Deore vs LX vs XT V-brakes

Lou Holtman wrote:
Peter Cole wrote:

My XT-V's are 5-6 years old, never had any problems -- perfect (1
finger) braking.


Lucky you. In what condition do you use them?

Exclusively off-road, much more trail/singletrack than fire road, I
rarely ride them in wet conditions.

My XTR font brake became
so sloppy after 3 years that it became dangerous (pads almost hitting
the tire).

No experience with XTR, never could afford it.

One finger braking has more to do with conditions, levers and cables.

I have XT levers (would think that was typical), nothing special for
cables. Brakes seem to work the same in all the "conditions" I ride in.

In article ,
Jasper Janssen wrote:

Quick check: Is there any reason to want LX or XT brakes rather than
Deore, when buying new? Price difference is fairly minimal, but present.

I read something about XT brakes being the only one of the set to have
parallelogram linkage which makes them need less readjustment over the
wear life of the pads. Given that I probably won't be getting any mud on
this bike, so the extra parts to wear out aren't so much an issue, and I
think it might be *nice* to have that, but it seems that opinions are
divided on the usefulness of the feature.

I couldn't get rid of very loud, polyphonous (high-pitched squeal plus
lower organ-like tone) brake squeal with XT brakes--greasing pivots,
using Kool Stop salmon colored pads, etc., nothing helped. Assuming that
play had developed in the parallel linkage, I changed the front brakes
to Deore, without the parallel linkage. The dealer mentioned that he had
made the same change for a customer that day (and offered a set of Deore
brakes cheap...). This cured the problem.

--
Ned Mantei
Zurich, Switzerland