As drivetrains get more and more speeds, and shifting tolerances become more exact, the quality of shift cable is more important than ever. Many cables rely on a polymer or PTFE coating to offer silky smooth shifting, but coatings usually suffer the same fate – they wear long before the steel cable inside.
For Jagwire’s new Elite cables the answer is simple. Just eliminate the coating completely. Instead of coating the cable Jagwire has revisited the construction itself which achieves an impressively smooth finish thanks to stainless steel strands that are tightly wound and then highly polished. The polishing process removes any of the burrs on a microscopic level that make the cable less slick and creates a cable that supposedly functions just as well as coated cables but is more durable.
Directly beneath the Elite uncoated cables are the Jagwire Pro cables, which will still use a Teflon coating simply because it is less expensive to manufacture than the new polishing procedure. While shift cables will benefit most from the lack of friction, brake cables will also be available for SRAM, Shimano and Campagnolo. To differentiate the cables from the standard slick stainless, the new Elite cables will have a black cable head instead of the silver for the standard cable, above left.
To be available this May, the shift cables will be sold individually starting at $25 a piece or in file boxes for shops with brake cables sold individually.
