I came across this geared hub kit…
http://www.ebikestop.com/sturmey_archer_s3x_3_speed_fixie_hub_kit_36h_120mm_silver-HU2229.php
It’s a little over $100, the cost of a good unicycle hub. Why can’t unicyclists have a geared hub for this price too?
We can, but it takes lots of manufacturing work:
One word.
Torque.
Look into that, how one can design a hub that withstands massive amounts of it, then how to mass-produce such a design… then get back to us on your thoughts of offering such a product for $100.
I understand the machining and time involved in such a project. Also, I don’t mind spending the money for a well-built uni. Especially when you start looking at the munis with brakes.
It just seems really odd and confusing to me that a geared hub for a bike is less than 1/10 the price of a geared hub for a uni.
The bike hub is likely mass-produced.
Schlumpf’s hubs are mostly hand-built.
Compare market prices between mass-produced and hand-made for any type of goods: from clothing to automobiles. That 1/10th price differential won’t seem so large.
Geared hubs for bikes have a number of things which make them simpler, most notably that they are driven by an outboard chain, and thus can have a shift cable inserted through the outside (where we have a Schlumpf button). Justin’s 3-speed build takes advantage of a jackshaft design to be able to use the hub you posted, but you can’t just drop it into a unicycle.
It also has a lot more slop than the Schlumpf and has a tendency to shift into neutral, both of which are much more undesirable on a unicycle than on a bike.
If you think this is an easy engineering problem, let’s see your design.
I never said it was easy, I just found it odd the price was such a huge difference.
But what’s odd about a large price tag on something that is:
- Swiss-engineered
- hand-built in small batches in Switzerland
- built with high-quality materials
- machined with a high precision
- used, abused and lauded by many of unicycling’s “super stars”
- supported directly by the manufacturer himself
???
Edit: do you find it odd that a Ferrari costs much more than a Toyota?
Wow, I didn’t expect to get so attacked over something I thought was interesting. The forum users here didn’t seem so juvenile before I joined.
The price for a top-of-the-line, Schlumpf-equipped MUni is about $2,000. The price for a very good but not top-of-the-line mountain bike is about $5,000. It’s odd there’s such a huge difference.
They weren’t.
Welcome to the world of online forums. Keep asking the same question each time someone offers an answer, and the answerers are likely to get snippy. That wasn’t an attack.
What part of:
Hand made + in Switzerland + with high quality materials + with constant improvements
isn’t clicking? Is $1500 US a lot for a 2-speed unicycle hub? Yes. Is it overpriced for what it is? No.
Their level of juvenile-ness hasn’t changed. No comment on that. 
Juvenility? I honestly don’t know. It definitely hasn’t changed though. If anything, I got more snippy over the winter! I’m certainly not as mean though 
Eventually, I believe that geared hubs will be produced in greater numbers, but currently it’s just not in the cards. The kind of planning and investment that type of production would take is unbelievable.
“Interesting” wasn’t the word you used before.
“Odd” and “confusing” were the words you used.
When you apply those words to THE MOST VALUABLE piece of unicycle hardware ever produced… what do you expect us to do, make a statue in your honor?
That’s only partially true, which I witnessed myself, when the 1st sketch was drawed on a napkin in a restaurant in Amsterdam, at the end of the day after a bike trade show. Schlumpf only finished this idea that was presented to him there (after he claimed that whole day it was impossible).
I dreamed up some crazy shit in (The Grasshopper) an Amsterdam coffee shop. When I got back to reality (JackHerer is frowned upon over here) I could not recall any of it.
As a Schlumpf owner, I would like to thank whoever spent that day convincing Florian it could and should be done. Now if you could just convince him to trim down the repair time by authorizing someone like Bronson to handle repairs stateside. Honestly, the initial cost (especially the amount I told my wife) is not that big a deal. The possibility of being without it for extended period of time should it ever malfunction (perish the thought) is.
So Florian lost his Swiss citizenship while travelling in Amsterdam?
I think if Schlumpf would had stayed in dialog with the originator, then maybe there wasn’t a problem to fix. I stopped following developments there. And after that I saw Mr. Schlumpf only once again in Switserland.
Still I can understand his current policy as much as the frustration of end-users and resellers, but I probably would prefer the same if I was in his shoes.
I have no idea.
Well your claim that they weren’t engineered by a Swiss citizen is contingent on this fact. If you’ve no idea, then why did you correct me earlier?