Black spokes, Sapim race or ACI F1.????

building a set of wheels,
record hubs and h plus son archetype rims. All new
Which spokes are best for a heavy rider, 105kg
I am told silver are stronger but all the components are black so want to use black spokes to suit

Which are the best spokes to use so I have the least trouble on the road. The bike will be used each week on my best bike and I'm good at dodging potholes

What do you guys think ?? Or is there a better alternative spoke I should be looking at. I want to run DB spokes

Cheers

I would use DT Swiss Alpine 3 for the rear wheel and DT Swiss competition for the front. They are available at Rose in Germany and quite cheap.
For 32 x 3 cross you need 290-291 front and 288 rear drive side 290 rear non drive side

That's good advice Ugo, thanks a lot, just placed the order, Doesn't the price start to add up as you buy All the components..

Yes, but you will have a nicely built set of wheels, much better than a machine built piece of junk :-)

I'm rocking Record X Open Pro handbuilds with DT Competition spokes and I f'ing love them.

Alpine spokes are triple butted. Sapim make the force spoke if you can find them. Triple butted spokes (2.3mm elblow) are more fatigue resistant.

Record hubs are perfect and I really mean that. The perfect design shame it is the model T of hubs just one version now. I roll around on Chorus 32H or Record 28H hubs and given they will last a lifetime I will be rolling around on the for some time to come. Enjoy.

Cheers everyone really pleased I have bought all the right components
I was a little worried about the alpine triple gutted spokes being a bit over the top, but the weight difference isn't really that much but the strength will be great and should last a long long time. I bought spares just in case though. I've been rolling on Zonda's for the last 2000 miles with no issues at all so I'm sure these are gonna be ace wheels. Thanks for the advice

2000 miles is nothing. They will be great wheels.

Well spokes have arrived from Rose, front wheel is built but not tensioned and I'm Very pleased. Can anyone advice on what tensions I should looking to get on my park tools spoke tension gauge???? Don't want to over tighten them... Cheers

What spokes? DT Comp?

You want 21-22 on the front wheel and a bit more on the rear drive side if it is a dished wheel... say 24 to 25. The Non drive side will come out somewhere around 17 or so depending on the hub geometry. If you have Alpine 3 at the rear, you should aim for the same numbers, provided you measure them well away from the spoke taper, which is quite long in those

Yep that's correct Ugo. Comp on front and alpine 3 on rear. With record hubs and the wheel is dished. Thanks for the numbers, something to aim for now
Thank you very much

Spokes arrived and wheels all built now, nice Xmas pressie for me, You were spot on with the spoke tensions as well as I got them to the exact figures you quoted. Very pleased

Just out of interest is there a place I can find these tensions for next time ?? I used the EDD calculator to get the lengths, hoping for the same for spoke tensions on future builds. !!!!

Your Park tool should come with a calibration chart, no?

It does come with a chart, it seems to show spoke diameters, and then give you a conversion to what the meter will be reading,, But I guess I don't understand the numbers really.

So is it the spoke diameter which determins the tension??
I thought it was the rim which had a max tension not to go over.

The chart is very vague, it shows around 8 meter reading per spoke diameter, so there is a lot of different tensions per spoke, not really much use to a novice builder to decipher

It's very clear... the number you read on the gauge is the spoke deflection, which depending on the spoke diameter in the section you are squeezing corresponds to a certain spoke tension (in your case it's 1.8 mm).
As a rule of thumb you should aim for 100 Kg F (1000 N) for a front wheel and 120 KgF for a rear drive side. Most rims will be happy with that tension, some will take a bit more, some will take a bit less... The "tension until it bends and then back up" method no longer works, it belongs to the dark ages of rims made of cheese, ignore it. Modern rims will not bend until you reach crazy numbers (I have seen Archetype built at 170 KgF and being perfectly straight) and at those numbers the rim hole will crack very quickly.

That's great info Ugo, So the main thing I get is the 1.8mm so no matter if I'm on double or triple butted I just measure the thinnest part of the spoke and use that, I wasn't sure you see

The Park tool is not a precision instrument, but it does the job and yes, you ignore what type of spoke and only focus on the diameter of the section you are squeezing.