Schmidt or Shimano?

[beef]

Hi Guy's and girls,

I'm considering a hub dynamo for the forthcoming dark and gloomy english winter and I've been looking at the 2 only choices.  The quality of the schmidt hubs appears to be obvious, SJS are selling a pre-built wheel with a css rim for £229.00 which as a one off purchase seems pretty good although of course it doesnt include the light and the cost of swisstop replacement pads.  

I was wandering if anyone has ever used the Shimano versions, and how well they perform?  At this stage I will only be using it for a few months of the year so I'm thinking that for non world tour/expedition use, the shimano will be up to the job. Any thoughts would be much appreciated,

Kind Regards, Beef.

[Blacksail]

The efficiency of Shimano hubs is almost as good, near as makes no difference, as the Schmidt and considerably cheaper. Having said that I went for the Schmidt 20r which  I really like and will presumably outlast the Shimano equivalent.

I would consider the blue swisstops to be a saving rather than an expense they last forever as do the CSS rims mine are 10,000km old and look untouched.

I too bought my hub and edelux light for the winter months but have left them on all summer as I found it so useful to have a light whenever it was a bit grey or raining, I've never noticed any drop in efficiency between riding with them or without so figured why not leave them on all year.

[Andre Jute]

I have SON and two kinds of Shimano hub dynamos. There are differences but they're too small for someone new to dynamo hubs to notice or, more important, to care about. Unless you're going on a world tour or commuting 10K> miles per year, every year, I don't quite see how the SON price is justified. In days of old, a Shimano hub dynamo was said to be good for 40K, but the more recent Shimanos include a version with Ultegra-level bearings and waterproofing, which must bring it much closer to the SON, which in turn is said to do 60K easily (the 100K you will see thrown about for the SON is kilometres).

However, having said that about the SON price, when you look at the prices of a complete SON wheel and a wheel with one of the better Shimano hub dynamo, the differential narrows, so you might make your evaluation not on the bare dynamo price but on the combo.

Both are rebuildable but the SON only at the factory while Shimano publishes instruction sheets which, in theory at least, permit you to do the job yourself. In practice the Shimano are so cheap that they are not rebuild but replaced. While hub dynamo wheels are rarish on our islands, in Germany they are so common as standard equipment that SON and Shimano hub dynamo wheels are often on manufacturers' surplus sales on German Ebay, and the number of German manufacturers fitting Shimano hub dynamo is definitely on the increase, so it looks like they too think the Shimano is good enough.

Of course, the SON has more street cred down at Le Pub Poseur, but you don't go there, do you...

HTH.

Andre Jute
 The rest is magic hidden in the hub.
For rare hub gear bikes, visit Jute on Bicycles at
 http://www.audio-talk.co.uk/fiultra/BICYCLE%20%26%20CYCLING.html
 

[Danneaux]

As an aside to the dynohub discussion...

Andre,

I have now spent considerable time checking out your site; outstanding.  Thanks very much for including the link.

Best,

Dan.

[Andre Jute]

As an aside to the dynohub discussion...

Andre,

I have now spent considerable time checking out your site; outstanding.  Thanks very much for including the link.

Best,

Dan.

I've been enjoying your saga of importing a Thorn; I recognized many of your difficulties and concerns, as I live in Ireland and have now three times bought a rare and wonderful bike sight unseen on the Continent.

Glad to be able to put something back. My bicycle page has now moved to http://coolmainpress.com/andrejute.html

I'll put up my experiments with bike electrification there when I get around to writing them up.

Andre Jute

[il padrone]

Hi Guy's and girls,

I'm considering a hub dynamo for the forthcoming dark and gloomy english winter and I've been looking at the 2 only choices.  The quality of the schmidt hubs appears to be obvious, SJS are selling a pre-built wheel with a css rim for £229.00 which as a one off purchase seems pretty good although of course it doesnt include the light and the cost of swisstop replacement pads.
 

There is actually at least one other choice (or two even). Supernova now have their own dynohub - in fact two different models.

The Infinity 8, and the Infinity S

[Paulson]

My experiences, links in order to save me re typing them:

http://paulmor.wordpress.com/2010/12/27/notes-on-fitting-dynamo-lighting/

http://paulmor.wordpress.com/2010/12/18/lighting-and-how-to-remove-the-ever-present-need-to-consume-batteries/

Shimano is easily up to the job, in conclusion

[freddered]

I've used both Shimano & Schmidt and they have both been flawless (about 12,000 miles on each).

[Pavel]

I have had experience with the sondelux and shimano back to back and have never noticed any difference except one detail.  At first I liked the connector on the shimano better than the Son, which was good because I'd love to save money in the future, but then after a while I had it pop off.  After it did that, I noticed that the plastic male side had deformed the female in a way that the fit seems fidly now.  Now that could be that I had done something wrong but at the same time it started me valuing that simple little detail, that the Son is simple and rugged as can be.

I found that by the time I have a wheel built by thorn that the price is so good as to actually be the same as having a shimano put in, so that part was easy.  In the future, now that I have sold the shimano hub along with my Fuji I hope to have the discipline to buy only the schmidt and just ignore the pain of the price.  But I will be spending a lot extra (unless I keep buying whole bikes! ) for one little obsessive/compulsive details - that desire to have uniformity and a bit extra reassurance.

I don't know if that is a very sensible outlook (its not like a have a lot of money to spend) but I tell myself that these things will last longer than I.