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What about a 9-speed medium cage Ultegra?
It will work with the lever, but you'll be over the limit of both total capacity and largest sprocket.
11-34 with the 34 taken off
If you're thinking of thinking of cutting the 34 off a 10-speed, you'll be disappointed again, the spacing is different and 9-speed lever/RD combo won't index properly.
gbj_tester-
It’s 8 gears off a 9-speed cassette on a 7-speed Hyperglide freehub switched onto my 6-speed Uniglide hub. It's all a direct swap, gives me 8 gears in the same space as the original 6 and fits in the 126mm rear spacing. Indexing is still 9-speed spacing, so I’ll set the derailleur limit screws so it can only shift across the 8 gears. Hence using the 9-speed shifter and using dt because I want to keep the classic look. The Ultegra 6600 is polished alloy and has the look I wanted, so it’s a shame it won’t work.
Reading around I can see now what the problem is with the older 6600 - it’s the clearance over the first jockey wheel rather than the cage size.
Jonny69
@frankenbike @mdcc_tester bums, that’s annoying. Thought I’d check in case I’d done something wrong. What about a 9-speed medium cage Ultegra? I guess my next question is whether a medium cage derailleur can take a 40-tooth total difference from top to bottom [edit: sorry, it needs ~30 tooth total capacity], with an 11-30 cassette on the back (11-34 with the 34 taken off)