SRAM Maven Silver B1 brake

Ripe with a pair of updates, SRAM has aimed to bring more modulation and control to its latest Maven B1 brake. With a new SwingLink and revised pistons, the brand has managed just that, making its most powerful brake much easier to master, without the learning curve of the old model. But with such usable power, still comes a weight penalty.

SRAM Maven Silver B1 – Technical details

From first glance, you’ll be forgiven for mistaking the Maven B1 for the outgoing Maven A1 brakes, because, really, it doesn’t look all that different. However, along with a new lever design, there are a couple of neat things going on under the hood.

Buy the SRAM Maven Silver B1 from Tredz for £260

But let’s start with that lever, for the Maven Silver B1, it features a weight-saving cutout which makes it look a little cooler, while shedding some unneeded grams. There is more here, however, as there’s a new gold-coloured SwingLink that makes the lever’s power delivery more progressive, so it provides more power the harder you pull it. It also reduces the amount of dead band (the space in the lever’s throw before the brake pads bite), says SRAM.

With the new SwingLink, SRAM has refined the Maven’s hydraulic ratio by tweaking the caliper’s piston arrangement. On Maven A1 units, there are two 19.5mm pistons paired with two 18mm pistons. On the B1, there are now 18mm pistons across the board, just to play better with the updated SwingLink design. The combination then works to reduce fatigue without compromising the Maven’s famed power.

Elsewhere, it’s all standard Maven stuff. The reservoir is chunky, as is the caliper that’s held together with four bolts to reduce flex under braking loads. As before, the calipers are mostly closed off to hold in heat and keep the brake running in its optimum temperature window, avoiding quick fluctuations in heat. That comes with help from the Maven’s seals that are built to tolerate such warmth.

As before, the Maven B1 runs on mineral oil, and the brake pads load from the bottom of the caliper. There are three models on offer, with the Ultimate brake getting carbon levers, and the Bronze, which gets its own lever setup again. Each new lever and SwingLink is then available as an upgrade kit for existing Maven A1 brakes, but expect a small increase in deadband if you make the upgrade.

I’ve weighed the front Maven B1 at 354g with an uncut hose and without mounting hardware. Compared to the previous Maven Ultimate A1, it’s three grams heavier.

SRAM Maven Silver B1 – Performance

I’ve been spending a lot of time with the Maven A1, and moved from that brake directly to the B1, which posed an excellent opportunity for real back-to-back testing. But to start with the bleed process (which I moaned about with the old brake), I had a much more pleasant time. Now, the process isn’t different at all. I just managed to get a perfect bleed the first time after swatting up on SRAM’s instructions. Then, learning from my experience with the A1, I paired the brakes with a 200mm HS2 rotor up front, and a 180mm disc at the rear.

In my review of the first Maven, I praised it for the greater level of control it provided to my bike in general. However, with the A1, there were odd occasions where I’d go all ‘whiskey brake’, and nearly fling myself over the bar. That’s because it delivered an awful lot of power very early in the lever’s stroke. With that came a very apparent learning curve, where the brake preferred lighter feathering of the lever to maintain traction and achieve predictable weight distribution.

With the Maven B1, the delivery of its power is noticeably more subtle. It doesn’t dump all of its power as soon as the pads hit the rotor; there’s less power at the start of the stroke, which takes a lot of the brain power out of braking, compared to the older model. While that might sound bad, the brake’s newfound progression still means that there’s classic Maven power in the tank.

As a result, the brake is much easier to control as it feels as if there’s a larger bandwidth of power. The new SwingLink and piston arrangement brings a serious boost in modulation, which in turn makes navigating steep sections a simpler, faster, and safer affair where you’re not overbraking, nor battling to maintain front wheel traction, but rather scrubbing off speed in a superbly controlled manner.

That’s not to say that the B1 is any less powerful, far from it in fact. If anything, the brake’s ability to stop can be just as abrupt, but only if you seriously pull on the lever. That helps it perform a lot more naturally and predictably, and when there’s such a volume of power at its disposal, that’s the real benefit.

SRAM has also published quiet mumblings of the lever being lighter or easier to pull. I didn’t find the lever’s pull especially difficult on the old brake, but the new lever arrangement brings an improvement. When combined with the brake’s new level of modulation, it helps keep fatigue at bay, further improving overall control over the bike, especially when you need to drop the anchor.

Where SRAM has brought some key improvements to the Maven, while leaving much of it relatively unchanged, much of the performance is just the same. The Maven B1 still resists fade incredibly well during lengthier, more brake-intensive tracks, and when up to temperature, it’s remarkably consistent.

That said, there are still a couple of setbacks. Aligning the rotor is a little trickier due to the caliper’s closed design, and the brake still requires a bit of time before reaching its proper operating temperature, though I do mean just a hard-braking effort into a corner or two. It’s still a weightier option, too, but if you’re after tonnes of power in a brake that provides more control, the Maven B1 is the place to go.

With all of that in mind, I wouldn’t go rushing out to pick up a fresh set of B1s if I were already running A1s and had become accustomed to their more binary performance. Some may prefer to have more power earlier in the lever stroke, but if that binary feel is a serious hang-up, the upgrade kit would be very attractive.

SRAM Maven Silver B1 – Verdict

Not too long after the Maven A1’s release came other brakes that focused more on outright power. The GR4 is Hope’s downhill and gravity brake that comes in at a friendlier £240 and features a similar design that reduces the lever’s free stroke (or deadband) while producing plenty of modulation.

Magura’s Gustav Pro doesn’t exactly focus on power, but rather consistency. It’s another large-caliper brake that’ll set you back £600 a pair, so SRAM has it beat with the Maven B1 Silver’s price.

The SRAM Maven B1 Silver solves what may be the Maven A1’s main issue – the slightly-too-eager power delivery. Now, it’s better refined, more usable, and it doesn’t come with its learning curve. Where the old model opened up opportunities for speed, the B1 builds upon that, as it packs more modulation, thus more control, but without sacrificing the outrageous power it’s become known for. It does still come with one main compromise, however – its weight.