With word of premium, light DT Swiss 180 EXP MTB hubs with a unique new Star Ratchet, Tune ups the ante again in the lightweight department. Their superlight Prince & Princess Skyline hubs were updated last year with a move to Centerlock, but look to shed even more grams this summer. We got a sneak peek at the actual lower weight of the new Princess front hub, with some interesting details in side for her and her Prince…
Tune Princess Skyline ultralight mountain bike hubs
In reality Tune is staying mostly quiet on the details for their next generation Prince & Princess Skyline lightweight mountain bike hubs, but they did let us put this new Princess on their scale. Moving to centerlock already dropped the Princess to 84g, but now this one looks to drop another 7% or 6g off the hub to 78g. It’s incremental gains when you get to this level, but remember that even the DT 180 EXP is still 92g.
So how did Tune keep shedding weight off their already light Princess Skyline? They say it comes down to further optimization of a “reworked” machined 7075 alloy hubshell, “more carbon bits”, new bearings & more. It looks like at least a new carbon weave in the driveside spoke ring, but where are those extra “more carbon bits”? Could those new endcaps be carbon? They aren’t shiny anodized like the alloy caps we’ve seen from Tune in the past. Update: Yeah, confirmed that they are carbon! The bearing option is probably a return to ceramics, since the 6-bolt hubs are also available in a CeramicSpeed hopped up version.
Tune hasn’t mentioned dropping the weight of their Prince Skyline rear hub, but at 180g for centerlock (even machining out the middle of the rotor mounting teeth!), it already has the same claimed weight as DT’s new 180 EXT. And add in those new carbon endcaps, and surely it drops a few more grams.
Interestingly, those carbon axle endcaps also do look like they get a similar, easier-to-remove design with a flange you can grab ahold of like those new DT hubs. Plus, they feature a chamfered internal edge that should make aligning your thru-axle a little easier, an issue on some bikes.
No official word back from Tune yet confirming that the next gen straight-pull, centerlock Prince & Princess Skyline hubs do add a Boost option (as is already available with the 6-bolt interface Prince/Princess). But word from one Tune retailer says that Boost versions of the latest centerlock hubs are already available, adding just 15/30€ to the price of front/rear hubs, and making them well suited for weight weenie MTB, not just road disc, gravel & cross like when they first debuted.
Pricing & availability of the entirely made-in-Germany Tune Prince & Princess Skyline hubset won’t be set until later this summer it seems. But expect the hubs to be at least the same ~350€/555€ of the current Princess/Prince, plus several hundred euros more (~350-555€) for a complete CeramicSpeed hubset upgrade.
