If you understand this picture, congratulations - you're cool. If you don't, well, you might still be cool but your musical awareness could use some help.
Select: adjective, meaning premium, excellent, lust-worthy.
Select: verb, meaning to choose.
The best selling collection of wheels we've ever done was the Select situation that we ran for a few years a while back. There was a curated but meaningfully broad selection of rims, paired with a set of disc hubs and a set of road hubs, with two spoke type options. The idea was to get rid of some of the analysis paralysis that people suffer when trying to consider the several thousand different wheel builds available on our site, while still getting to the heart of an ideal bang for the buck wheel set. Just like some of the best ska bands in history, we're putting it back together with an updated lineup.
The heart of the group is Aivee's MP2 center lock disc hubs for the disc builds, and DT's 350 hubs for the rim brake builds. Every time we build a set of Aivee-based wheels, we marvel at the level of craftsmanship and performance you get for the money. They are simply outstanding, boutique level hubs that are made in France by a company that spends its spare time doing aerospace work.
Similarly, DT350 hubs give a ton of performance for the price. Some of the other hubs we use have a slightly lower weight or are a bit fancier or have some specific nicety, but for a basic no-nonsense "this hub set will outlast your knees and do a great job every time out" set of hubs, they're hard to beat. Really hard.
For rims, we've chosen three of the rims that complement each other best by having a definable personality. The Boyd Altamont Lite is the lightest alloy rim we sell, and yet it's stiff and strong and durable and fast. The Boyd Altamont is at the other end of the spectrum of our alloy rim lineup, deeper, more muscular, and built for speed. In the middle sits the HED Belgium+ - not as light as the Altamont Lite, not as deep as the full strength Altamont, but what most people (ourselves very much included) would be the finest aluminum rim made. And it's not too shabby in the old speed department either (if you consider being a sparse handful of seconds slower than a 303 in the mythical wind tunnel 40k TT to be fast, which we do).
All three of these are available in rim and disc brake variants, which helps us keep the collection clean and symmetrical, plus if a rim makes sense in a certain way for rim brakes it probably makes sense in the same way for disc brakes.
For spokes, two choices: Sapim Race and Sapim CX Ray. Race spokes are sort of the gold standard double butted spoke. They're still light, yet strong enough to keep a wheel round, straight, and true for a lifetime, and they do this all at a very reasonable cost. CX Rays, on the other hand, are the standard for weight and aerodynamic performance, yet because of their construction they also do fabulously well in the "keep the wheel doing what it should for its lifetime" department. They add a bit more cost compared to Race spokes, but we see this as the big choice for most people, so we leave that decision of which to select up to you.
In addition to helping you select a great set of wheels without driving yourself nuts in the process, the Select collections will help us deliver them to you a bit more quickly. Even our standard wheels take us about 2 weeks to get out the door, but the modularity of this program lets us cut about a week off of that. We like instant gratification too, you know?
And since the most burning question throughout the entire first run of the Select program was "can I get them in black?" we'll just go ahead and answer that one right away - you can ONLY get them in black.
2 comments
Nothing goes away, so AForce is absolutely still in the mix. Were there a disc version we may we’ll have used it instead of Altamont. There are still several hundred versions of an AForce build we’ll be happy to do, including ones that replicate what’s in Select.
No more AL Force?