Campagnolo Veloce 10 speed upgrade help- Maybe to Potenza!

I have 10 speed Record, 9 speed Mirage/Centaur mix and first generation Athena/Veloce. They all shift well, just slightly differently... I think of it as different characters.

Campagnolo 9 (2nd gen 1999 onwards) & 10 speed shifters are interchangeable with the rear mechs in either direction, so as long as you have the cassette matching the shifter, it works fine. This is due solely to the cable pull (per click) and rear mech geometry being unchanged between 9 & 10.

11 speed is a different animal completely. Sprocket pitch, cable pull, rear mech geometry are all different and should be considered incompatible.

Therefore, if you want to go to 11, you're looking at new shifters, cassette, chain and rear mech as a minimum...and ideally an 11 speed chainset. That's a new groupset. When I considered 11, that's what stopped me.

The good news is that Campag compatible hubs are fully interchangeable between 10 & 11 speed cassettes, so no need to worry about wheels.

My advice would be to definitely upgrade your wheels and then revisit the change to 11 speed in a few months.

However, if money is no object... do it now :p

I don't think Centaur would be much of an upgrade from Veloce as most of the parts are the same just with a different name on them unless you go for the carbon bits. Even then there's little to be saved weight-wise and functionally it's the same.

It also comes down to what you classify as an upgrade as well. Potenza gives you the new four arm chainset which is supposedly stiffer and would allow you greater flexibility with chainring sizes as both compact and standard rings fit on the same BCD. That's assuming you can find the chainrings separately - hopefully the likes of T.A. will release compatible ones if they haven't already. Going to 11s and being able to run a 32t largest sprocket might be a bonus as well.

I have Veloce on my best bike and to be honest it works so well I can't bring myself to change despite the constant itch to "get something a bit better".

I speak from experience here; 11 speed shifters DO work with 10 speeed cassettres.  But very badly! I would've thought that it'd be equally awful in reverse.

Mantel.com seems to be quite good in it's pricing for an entire Potenza gruppo.  Massive cassette ratios too!

I doubt many readers have practical experience of Potenza - although I did comment on one weakness in a review: www.cyclist.co.uk/campagnolo/987/first-look-campagnolo-potenza

FWIW, I tend to agree with the others that you might be as well staying with 10 speed and saving the hassle and cash.

Record 10 is also good. They're still out there and often bargains are available. Upgrading to 11 requires a more wholesale change of components.

Having run both, Record is slightly better, crisper, lighter, slightly different shifting capability (dumping multiple gears) but veloce isn't far off, TBH. It's a good groupset.

Duncann is right, your ten-speed shifters won't cooperate with an 11-speed cassette.  As its name suggests it can only "click" on ten speeds, leaving the swap pretty pointless.

But Potenza looks lovely.  My LBS pitches it somewhere between 105 and Ultegra and, once prices settle, it could be a bargain.

Another option is to stay 10-speed but upgrade to Centaur, which is officially obsolete but still available.  The "Red and Black" version is particularly fetching and every bit as good as 105 and probably better than Rival.

I wouldn't have thought 10 speed shifters would work properly on an 11 speed cassette.

Luckily, I believe that - unlike Shimano/SRAM - 11sp Campagnolo cassettes do fit 10 speed hubs.

http://velonews.competitor.com/2014/07/bikes-and-tech/technical-faq/tech...