>>1339424I'm thinking of the 8sp alloy Mirage shifters that were on my old Bianchi Eros. Pic related. Aside from the Mirage label and the plastic inner lever, they're visually indistinguishable from the C-Record 8sp levers, and function well. I can't say that the 9sp Record Ti setup on one of my bikes has much better shifting action aside from Record's fucking amazing inner levers. Reliability has been samey. Maybe I should put the 8sp stuff back on a bike and see if it's as good as I recall. Of course, neither measure up to newer generations of Record, but there's fuckall that does.
Anyway, I think it was that one particular year of Mirage that was any good, then they realized they'd dun goofed and deliberately made them shit. Same thing happened with the recent Athena groupset, which briefly had an Ultra version that was really fucking good, then they downgraded it to Power*.
I wouldn't run Chorus tho. Not because it's bad. It's bloody good. But it's like...just pony up for Record. For the most part, it's a fucking label, I know, but some labels are fucking worth it to me.
