Shimano CASSETTE HG400 9 speed 11-32

Product Information

Although it might seem straightforward, there’s a lot of engineering that goes into a bike cassette. SRAM’s eTap AXS XPLR groupsets are designed specifically for gravel riding. SRAM XPLR cassettes have a range of 10-44 and require their own compatible rear derailleur. It is also possible to mix and match drop bar shifters with mountain bike Eagle eTap AXS components if you want an especially wide-range 1x build. SRAM dubs this a ‘mullet’ setup. These days, it is increasingly common to see higher-spec road bikes with 12-speed gearing, Shimano having joined SRAM and Campagnolo with 12-speed groupsets in 2021 with the release of its Dura-Ace Di2 R9200 groupset. Shimano, for example, uses a system it calls Hyperglide, which is engineered to provide smooth shifting. Its latest cassettes have a newer system called Hyperglide+, which Shimano says reduces shifting time by up to a third relative to Hyperglide, and improves shifting performance under power, up and down the cassette.

The cage of a rear derailleur is designed for a certain range of gears. For example, Shimano’s outgoing Dura-Ace R9100-SS rear derailleur is designed for use up to an 11-30 cassette. For mountain bikes, 12-speed cassettes are largely the default for higher-spec groupsets, paired with a single-ring chainset. Now that 12-speed road bike groupsets exist, cassettes can have a larger range and the jumps between each gear can be relatively small. Where an 11-28 would have been considered an ‘easy’ training cassette a few short years ago, the smallest cassette available for a Shimano Dura-Ace R9200 is an 11-28. That might not sound like much but, when you consider pro riders would typically ride on 11-23 or 11-25 cassettes, it’s a sizeable difference.SRAM XDR road cassettes are 1.85mm wider than SRAM XD MTB cassettes. With a spacer, you can run an XD cassette on a road wheel with an XDR body, but you can’t use an XDR cassette on an XD freehub. Mountain bike versus road cassettes This saves weight and, since it isn’t subject to wear from the chain, the carrier is often made of a lighter material – carbon fibre in the case of Dura-Ace cassettes The most common system is the Shimano 11-speed HG-style freehub, which has 9 splines. Most Shimano groupsets up to the 11-speed era used this style of freehub. SRAM groupsets prior to the current generation of 12-speed groupsets also used the same freehub design, although there are a handful of exceptions with the larger cassette ratios on their 1×11 groupsets.

SRAM introduced its XD freehub standard when it started rolling out cassettes with a 10-tooth smallest cog. It recently ported this design over to the road with XDR, which also allows the use of 10-tooth cogs, but is slightly wider than the road bike standard.

Mountain bike versus road cassettes

If you wanted to use an 11-34 cassette, as well as buying the relevant cassette, you would need to buy a compatible rear derailleur. In this example, it would be an Ultegra R8050-GS or 105 R7000-GS rear derailleur. The GS denotes that these are ‘medium cage’ derailleurs. The same rule applies to Shimano Di2 derailleurs. However, as groupset manufacturers have jumped onto the gravel bandwagon, there are now gravel-specific gearing options available on the market.

If you are still using a triple crankset, you may have sufficient overall range with a road cassette, but this is a fairly specialist application these days. On the mountain bike side, Shimano uses its Microspline freehub standard for its 12-speed Deore, SLX, XT and XTR groupsets. Shimano’s HG freehub design was the most common option for many years. Felix Smith / Immediate MediaFor example, at the lower end of the cassette, you can have as little as a one-tooth jump between the early cogs, and still have the range at the easier end. If you were running a 7- or 8-speed system, for example, in the same range, the jumps would be bigger. If you are specifically using a Shimano HG freehub, you need to consider how wide the cassette you are buying is. Road wheels have slightly wider freehubs than MTB ones – by 1.85mm – and 11-speed Shimano HG road cassettes are slightly wider than 8- or 9-speed ones, again by 1.85mm. Where an 11-28 cassette would have once been considered a large training cassette, it now sits at the lower end of the typical range for road. Simon Bromley / Immediate Media It’s important to note that this figure is only indicative of the range of gears you have on your cassette, and is not the same as working out how far you will travel with your chosen gear ratio.