Gevenalle GC Shifters

The rubber hoods of my Gevenalle CX brifters had become worn and ugly. Replacing them would require unwrapping my tape and removing the levers from the bars. I asked myself if there was anything else I may want to do to the cockpit, as long as I was going through that trouble. And then I happened to look at Gevenalle’s website to see what they were up to, and I saw the GC Edition, which were shiny and chrome. I bought them.

I bought them nekkid from Gevenalle, and ordered a pair of Rivendell Silver1 Shifters to pair with them. As a man of taste and culture, I of course also bought the brass dome washers. At the time Gevenalle only offered the Gran Compe with brown hoods, which isn’t my jam, but I was able to find the appropriate black hoods on eBay.

That was close to two years ago. My old hoods were getting progressively nastier, but I still hadn’t gotten around to installing the new brifters. A couple months ago I found a dent in my rear rim. I’ll replace a spoke or true a wheel, but I prefer someone else to do a full wheel rebuild. So since I had to take the bike into the shop for that anyway, I brought the new brifters along with my spare rim and said “Make it so.”

I’ve been riding the new setup for a little over a month now, and so far I love it. The brake levers feel great. The ratcheting shifters are crisp and smooth. And it looks sexy.

The Rivendell shifters are all-friction-all-the-time. The shifters on the old Gevenalle CX setup were able to be switched between index and friction modes, but I had kept them in friction mode pretty much all the time. Indexed shifting doesn’t do anything for me anymore. What does do something for me is the smooth ratcheting, easy adjustment, and classy looks of this new pair.

The Dia-Compe Gran Compe hoods have a different shape than the Tektro R200 from the CX system. Specifically, these are narrower, have a stepper swell, and a bit of a pointier top. It took me a few days of riding before I adjusted to these new ergonomics. I don’t think either pair is necesarilly better or worse than the other. Just different. What is better with the Gran Compe are the levers themselves. Since it is summer here, I’ve been riding with fingerless gloves, and I get to enjoy the feel of these levers on my fingers whenever I brake.

The bottom line here is that these are probably the pinnacle of derailluer-shifting technology. Between the Gevenalle Gran Compe setup on this bike, and the Rohloff Speedhub on my other bike, I have removed myself completely from the marketing cycles of the bike market and whatever nonsense Shimano and SRAM and their ilk are up to with drivetrains these days. Component compatibility? Batteries? Who needs them.