I was wondering how your HED built wheels are doing and if you feel the advantage of the wider rims. I am in Seattle, and was thinking of getting custom wheels built with the HED rims and White Ind H2 hubs, CXRay spokes, for my road bike (Shimano cassette), and was just wondering: 1. what you think about the build 2. do you do custom builds for people and would this interest you? Thanks Twig in Seattle
Well, Byron has a ton of miles on various HED wheels, all with the new “C2” 23mm wide rim extrusion. All Hed clincher wheelsets use the same extrusion, though some have a carbon fibre fairing bonded on (ie the Jet series) and others don’t (eg Kermesse, Ardennes, etc). The rim without any fairing is sometimes called the Belgian rim and is available for custom builds, though HED doesn’t put any effort into letting you know you can buy them. The rims go for $125 msrp and are available in 24, 28, and 32H.
I myself have built up a few wheels with it. The rim has a welded seam, a fairly durable black anodized finish, and a machined brake track. Of the examples that I’ve built, all have been very consistent and built up well. The average weight was 465gr/rim. If I didn’t like the Mavic Open Pro Ceramic rims so much, I’d have nothing but this rim on my non-aero wheels.
As an aside, there are some rims that I just hate. I am ambivalent about older Weinmann rims, but I despise the newer ones.