Ask Corbin, who has extensive experience both on an off-road 36 and on an off-road geared 24. The 36 is definitely easier. Louise, another seasoned 36" off-road rider, hated her geared 24.
You can ride it in high gear on smooth trails, and you can use it to get to the trails, and you can also ride it in low gear on technical trails, which gives you a real MUni.
But frankly, if trail riding is your interest, the Schlumpf is a questionable investment. I got mine first for road racing, and then as a MUni/road hybrid. I would not build up a Schlumpf for purely off-road riding, and I certainly wouldn’t consider a geared-up uni of any wheel size to be desirable for general off-road riding.
What I’m telling you is that the actual experience of people who’ve ridden both is that a 24" geared up to 36" is less manageable than a 36".
Riding a 29" uni requires an inseam of something like 20". I don’t see big demand in the 10 year old demographic for a unicycle that’s heavier, more complicated, more prone to failure, and harder to handle than a 24" MUni.
And Martin Charrier won the XC races both at UNICON and U Games on a 24" MUni (racing against bigger wheels and geared unis).
I would want a fixed hub for road riding, not off-road. The Schlumpf shifting hub is more or less permanently out of my price range; I’ve got a kid to feed and clothe and shelter and I really can’t afford to spend more than two months’ rent on a single unicycle hub. If a crapload of money ever falls into my lap, I might consider it, but right now and for the foreseeable future, it’s just not an option.
I own a KH24 GUni and a ungeared 36er. I can tell you quite easily that riding the same benign, flatish XC trails is totally a different experience on the KH24 in high gear vs. the same trails on the 36er. It’s MUCH easier to ride these trails on the 36er! I know a lot of this has to do with my lack of regular riding and skill level, but only so much. You see the 36er naturally rolls over stuff that I have to be a bit more careful with when on the 24" wheel. In addition there is the added difficulty on the geared uni of “delayed reaction pedaling” (for lack of a good phrase), basically you don’t get immediate response in high-gear like you would on a fixed gear, this is something you’ll experience once you get your KH/Schlumpf Hub; hard to explain. These two factors make it more difficult to ride at 36er speeds on the same XC trails. However this isn’t to say it isn’t doable or isn’t fun; on the contrary it’s quite fun to zoom along the roads and easier XC trails in high gear. It’s an absolute blast! But it’s also fun to approach that next trail section that is highly technical and be able to down shift and continue on your merry way!!
In a nut shell, 36er riding is a totally different experience than geared 24er riding!
I’d be interested in the concept of a fixed geared hub too, if it was cheaper than a Schlumpf. I love my 36 and I expect it’s a nicer ride than a small uni geared up. However, there’s less choice in tyres (can’t go for a super lightweight 36er tyre without shaving an existing model) and everything else. And I can’t easily transport it, either in small cars, or on public transport.
For that matter, it might be quite cool to have a slight up-gearing on a 36er. Combined with 170mm cranks and maybe one of the frames allowing bicycle-like posture which various people here have been experimenting with, it could be quite a nice machine for eating up distance in a relaxed way.
Maybe what you’re trying to describe has to do with the fact that if you pedal forward on an upgeared unicycle like a Schlumpf in high gear, there is a reaction force from the gear system that tries to rotate the unicycle frame forward. So if you encounter, say, a bump and tend to fall forward, and your natural reaction is to push harder on the front pedal, then part of this force results in the uni initially rotating forward even more. Therefore you need even more force on the pedal, and if you’re not yet used to this effect, you will exert this additional force after a short while, i.e. once you notice that your initial reaction is not enough. This may indeed come across as a delay.
With experience you will learn to anticipate this and give the right amount of correction force right away, but it’s never as intuitive as it is on a fixed unicycle. Or at least that’s true in my case, and I’ve been riding Schlumpf since 2005.
I don’t think I would like a high fixed gear. I did not really like my Schlumpf until I could shift while riding. I have a hard time free mounting and starting in high gear (unless going downhill). I have a 26" GUni and it’s much harder to get going in high gear than on my ungeared 36". The “play” or “knockiness” with the hub doesn’t bother me at all. It’s just difficult to gain momentum from a dead stop. Maybe other Schlumpfers don’t share that difficulty.
Whilst we’re on this, a down gearing system would also be nice. Cool if it’s shiftable but even if not, it’d be quite interesting doing muni on a geared down 36, for instance…
That’s interesting, I hadn’t thought about that particular issue with the Schlumpf, but it certainly accounts for some of the reason why the only way to recover from being off-balance in high gear is to pedal faster.
The other thing which I think is a significant factor in MUni is the slop. Slop doesn’t wind up being a huge factor on the road, as once you’re solid you can spend most of your time “pegged” on the front of the slop envelope, but when you’re doing MUni you’re constantly having to adjust, and every adjustment back and forward has to go through the slop twice.
Of course something 1/4-1/3 the price would be more affordable. So would something that is free. But how about something that is reasonably priced? I don’t think you have a grasp of that for perhaps the same reason that you won’t be submitting plans for one: it’s not your area of expertise.
You’re right, there is a market out there. It just happens to be a very small market that supports the current price of the existing product. I’ve had a lot of people approach me with “really great ideas” in the past thinking that their “really great idea” can not only be realized, but realized for next to no cost, with no effort on my part, and will be supplying a huge market with limitless funds.
I have a couple of designs for hubs that you are welcome to that are two-speed shiftable by simply moving a bolt and a spacer. One of the designs has been posted on my website for several years. For you to take that design, which is simpler than the Schlumpf, and have one manufactured would certainly cost you more than the Schlumpf itself and the Schlumpf is the superior and more flexible product. I’m not convinced that Florian is making Euros hand over fist with this item even at the current price.
Finally, to go into production with a less flexible, inferior product would be risky to say the least. You could try to convince UDC to undertake this for you but UDC is accustomed to taking other kinds of business risks. I seriously doubt that this would be the horse they would bet on.
It was more of an over reaction than totally freaked. I was out of line.
The title more than what was posted caused me to think Schlumpf product was being singled out, rather than the benefits of a fixed geared uni being emphasized. I paraphrased it in my head as “let’s dump that in favor of this” and It’s like someone that picks on another to further their own agenda. I know the OP wasn’t intending to do that, but that’s how I read it. What I can only aspire to emulate (Schlumpf) seemed to be challenged, and it struck me personally. I shouldn’t have let it.
I just don’t think Schlumpf needs dumping on, in favor of something that doesn’t exist in production. Such a production hub may have it’s own failings, and the reality is we’re putting an ideal against a real product and my sense of fairness was incensed. Also, it seemed the merit of a fixed gear uni is greater than the need to simply overcome Schlumpf issues.
Lots of folks have ideas, some cause those ideas to exist, and few produce them for the rest of us… each step is a major undertaking especially the envelope that Schlumpf has defined in manufacturing such intricate machines. The one off fixed geared systems are generally more exposed, delicate, are stressed by heavy torsional loads, and are likely inferior to a Schlumpf in real world MUni. So the stuff that doesn’t yet exist in practice shouldn’t be postulated as superior. I felt it was falsely discrediting the product and discouraging the manufacturer.
The reaction force is trying to rotate the frame backwards isn’t it?
In general, I think a cheap single-speed (not “fixed” - Schlumpfs are fixed gear) geared unicycle would be nice for some situations (easier to transport than a big wheel), but not terribly practical in most cases, as tholub said.
In my limited guni experience, I’ve ridden a Schlumpf 29er and a KH/Schlumpf 24. The 24 in high gear certainly did not feel just like a 36er - not extremely hard to ride but took more concentration, and that was just around a smooth gym floor. I find a G29 very hard to ride, but I’ve only tried a few times.
All the people I know (and know of) with Schlumpf hubs do use both gears.
No it isn’t, in the situation I described. Try the following with a Schlumpf uni in high gear: put the wheel on the ground, vertically, and the frame lying to the rear. (Position of seat drag but stationary.) Now hold the wheel still (maybe against a wall), while pushing the front pedal down hard. The whole frame will rotate upwards, because of the reaction force.
If you’re good, you can mount the uni like an ultimate wheel in said “seat drag” position, and then bring the seat under your butt by pushing hard. I know Irene Genelin did this successfully in her first ever session with a geared unicycle.
Yes you’re right now I think about it more (pedals drive the planet assembly, sun is attached to frame, ring gear held still by the wheel). Sounds wrong but is actually true :o
Well that’s the first time anyone has suggested an off road guni is not desireable. I sincerely hope you are mistaken, otherwise I just spent a whole bunch of money on something that I’ll have to resell
So if it’s the slop and/or too tall gearing, why wouldn’t it make more sense to have a fixed gear ratio at 1:1.25 or similar, esp for a 24" which is the most manageable wheel size for muni, but suffers from being way to slow for XC? Yeah, yeah, that’s why folks buld up a guni, but then didn’t I just read a couple posts suggesting that an off road guni is not that viable. It seems like some folks on this forum disagree
I agree that a 36" equivallent on technical trails could be a challenge, but at the same time a smaller wheel is more easilly maneuvered both on the ground and when hopping. I do not find a 36" wheel, with it’s weight, high center of mass, and centrifugal momentum to be all that great for off roading. It’s a chore to manage and it’s a long way to the ground when it become unmageable.
I didn’t say I was uneducated, my undergraduate major was engineering for a couple years, and I already do a fair amount of monkeying around with tele gear, so I know welding and machining. I just don’t have time to be the guy who builds stuff, maybe someday…
In terms of UDC taking on a project, I’m pretty sure they’d need a protype before they’d consider being the producer, more likely they’d sell it for the producer. It woud be a major undertaking for sure, likely not that profitable, probably a lot like what Florian is doing; which explains why he takes so long
The whole purpose of the offroad KH/Schlumpf Hub was to be used as a sort of road/trail hybrid mechanism. I for one live near trail systems that have easier paved/gravel roads that widely separate various single track sections. Before I owned my KH/Schlumpf Hub my range of trails that I could cover in a certain fixed amount of time was extremely limited. With the geared hub it is now practical to link these various trail sections that I couldn’t before on my single speed unicycle. For that reason alone I know it was $$$ well spent. While riding in high-gear on single track isn’t as “viable” as say riding a geared up fixed gear bicycle, it is still doable if you are very apt at up/down shifting and know your trail system very well. While I’m not quite at that level of skill yet, I’ve gotten better at recognizing what sections of trail I can upshift to and when I need to downshift. It’s quite fun! Going with the shorter cranks for my small feet really helped my shifting proficiency. Anyhow, it’s the ability to have TWO gears that make the KH/Schlumpf a worth while investment, a fixed, geared up mountain unicycle would have very little value IMHO.
This is a quote from the write-up on my website after the uni.5 was built and tested so about 9 or 10 years ago.
“The tab that you see is screwed to the sun gear assembly and attaches to the fork. One of the technical problems that concerned me was the torque applied to the frame by the sun gear assembly which must remain stationary around the axle. I thought this would tend to push the seat in the direction pedaled making it essential for the rider to keep his or her weight on the seat. Since it is attached to only one side of the fork it should also have applied a slight torque around the seatpost axis tending to make the seat rotate as the rider pedals. As it turned out, these effects were insignificant enough to be unnoticeable.”
Now that there is a substantial amount of distributed experience with geared unicycles do you think that this effect is in general quite noticeable? At one time, JC even told me that he was able to sense the rotation about the seatpost which I never felt.
Staging the seat drag mount with Irene was really fun. It was done in the Northbend gym where the Panther Pride team practices. Connie and Andy Cotter were there with Irene to give a performance-related seminar for the Panther Pride riders. I think Irene was 16 years old at the time. I explained to her what was expected to happen and the idea was alien to her. Why should the unicycle rotate? She was pretty surprised when the seat popped up off of the floor but with practice she was able to time it correctly and mount from the seat drag position. “With a little practice” usually means two tries for Irene.
The other astonishing thing was my first real comprehension of how good really young riders can be or, conversely, how totally inadequate I was as a rider. The kids there immediately picked up a geared unicycle and were riding it backwards, one-footed, idling, doing pirouettes, riding seat out, seat dragging, all things that I thought would be at least very difficult if not impossible. Of course I was the chief proponent of the impossibility of a shift on the fly unicycle so Bob’s your uncle.
