How can you tell the group (ultegra, 105, etc.) of an older hyperglide cassette?
 

I'm trying to purchase a replacement 8-speed shimano HG cassette for a
bike on ebay but it seems like most people don't know what group the
cassette they're selling is from. Is there any easy way to tell? Are
they all the same material? Thanks.

Jordan

How can you tell the group (ultegra, 105, etc.) of an older hyperglide cassette?
 

FujiRider wrote:
I'm trying to purchase a replacement 8-speed shimano HG cassette for a
bike on ebay but it seems like most people don't know what group the
cassette they're selling is from. Is there any easy way to tell? Are
they all the same material? Thanks.

Jordan

They're all interchangeable, but the lower "grades" would have
brown-colored cogs while the upper grades would have silver cogs. On
mountain groups, better cassettes will have the larger cogs on an
aluminum carrier, with the best having a couple titanium cogs.

Jeff

How can you tell the group (ultegra, 105, etc.) of an older hyperglide cassette?
 

FujiRider wrote:
I'm trying to purchase a replacement 8-speed shimano HG cassette for a
bike on ebay but it seems like most people don't know what group the
cassette they're selling is from. Is there any easy way to tell? Are
they all the same material? Thanks.

Jordan

Shimano has fewer quality levels of cassette than they do groups, and
most levels of cassette can be seen in some places branded as "going
along" with multiple groups at different-but-close-ish quality levels,
but it's not made obvious in these cases. So for example HG-50
cassettes have been associated with Tiagra, Deore, I think RX100, etc.
The higher end groups (DA, XTR, 6800 Ultegra, etc) usually but not
always get a model number to themselves. If you look through Shimano's
pages you should be able to get the info you need, and sellers should
always be able to find the HG-whatever model name. There's a number of
things that differ between cassettes of different price levels but it
mostly involves weight (materials, cutouts, whether the cogs are
spidered or not, etc). Durability varies as well, but not very much in
my experience. All but quite high end cassette cogs are steel. Some
high end cassettes have some Ti cogs, and some others have some
aluminum, and some race-day-ish cassettes are full aluminum.

Shimano-compatible SRAM cassettes are generally priced to edge out
Shimano's own cassettes at similar quality/weight levels, and are
favored by many.