Calnago wrote:I suppose as the gears got closer and closer together, it has gotten more important to set up perfectly for sure. And the newest 2015 stuff takes a bit of mindset change to get the front derailleur totally dialed. But I like it. Taking as much care as you can to get all the friction out of the cables is the biggest thing you can do to ensure good performance, and making sure your frame meets their specs for derailleur hangers.
Like @XCProMD said, the first interation (2009) of 11sp had a few running changes... a spacer change in the cassette, a bushing change in the right shifter, and finally a stiffer return spring in the rear derailleur, oh and a new part to enable the rear derailleur to better handle the 29 tooth cassette introduced a year or two later. Changes beyond those have been incremental but nice, like improved chainring stiffness to accommodate the force of EPS derailleurs, new tooth profiles, etc. All good stuff.
As Calnago says above - add an extra sprocket into the same place and of course it makes it all the more critical that every aspect of workshop practice is done right and that manufacturer's specs are adhered to ... looking back through the prism of modern practice, I know we used to "get away with" horrendous things, on a serial basis, back in the days of 5 speed ... but good, methodical and accurate workshop practice will always win out and it doesn't matter whether you are dealing with 5, 6 ... 11 speed, if your basic practice is good and you pay attention, all of those systems will work the better for it. I suspect 1 x 12 SRAM will just take that to the next degree.
Expectations have also changed. When I get onto my 1980s Gazelle AB with Campag Super Record of the period, I'm reminded of that ... I had the pleasure and privelige of riding with an ex-TdF winner a couple of years ago into Paris. He was on his fully-restored TdF-winning bike and he said to me afterwards "I have no idea how I won the TdF on that bike" ... it wasn't that it was a bad bike ... by the standards of the day it was the pinnacle of available technology ... it's just that he's been conditioned over the intervening years to expect a level of performance that modern, fully integrated systems can and will deliver when properly put together. But the emphasis, now, more than ever is on "fully integrated" and "properly" ...