craftsmanship,design

none

No paralell push,no pivot to wear out.
When fitted with xt cartridges these are just what the doctor orderd. The pads they come with are worthless, so replace them with your old xt cartridge coupled with Cool Stop replacement pads and you are in buisiness. Deduct one pepper for non-cartridge replacement pads.

Similar Products Used:

xt,xtr,avid,magura...

Light weight, Stops incredibly well, fantastic modulation

Can't think of any

This is the first time I've written in this column, but these brakes really do make you ride faster because you can stop easier. Before, I always thought brakes were just stop or go but, these offer really good modulation.

Similar Products Used:

Shimano LX, XT, Diacomp 986

They are lighweight.. strong in all conditions and they look very sweet.

Adjustment is a little hard but once they are set... you dont even notice them.

These are great brakes for a person looking for lightweight without sacrificing function. If you can find a good deal on them, don't hesitate!

Similar Products Used:

Magura HS-22, XTR, and old school shimano DX

Well, I don't want to skew reviews or anything, but not having an e-mail address at the moment I can't directly e-mail reviewers here.

Supposedly (according to Cambria when I bought these things) these brakes practically need Avid teflon-coated brake cables to avoid lever-rebound problems that I noticed in a few other reviews (and to keep the modulation in good shape). I was splurging when I bought these anyway so I didn't think twice about it. With the Avid cables and through plenty of mud, rain, and hard-water washing I still haven't had any problems, so who knows. I guess needing expensive cables does make these brakes a bit finicky, don't it?
Oh well, still light, powerful, gorgeous, with no squeal. No, they're not magical, just awesome. Even compared to other brakes I have given five stars. I hope this helps other reviewers.

Light weight eye candy

Non-Cartrige pads

These brakes work well, but not significantly better than the old LX brake I had on the front. If I had put the new pads on the old LX the result would most likely be the same. With the XT levers with the adjustable leverage I had tons of stopping power with the old set up. The new brakes still rock on the posts, but they are much quieter than the XT linkage I had on the back. Bottom line, they work well, look nice and are light weight. Are they magic as stated in other reiviews? NO! Are they worth the list price? Definitey not, get them on sale.

Similar Products Used:

LX, XT

Sleek, simple parts, customer service.

Spring tension, poor weather seals, non cartridge pads

Nice front brake modulation and feel. The rear brake is another story. The springs are poorly tensioned and the moving parts easily soil. Last winter, Precision Billet very nicely and promptly replaced my original springs with what they reported would be more evenly and strongly tensioned springs since I did have a set of original run brakes, but I have not had any more luck keeping those tight. Slipping the spring loose from the boss and bending outward helps temporarily, but is not something I have even had to bother with on the Shimanos. I like the theory of a hand lever without a return spring to reduce hand fatigue, but it is not working this time around. I have very little lever rebound, which I think decreases my ability to modulate braking. The lever cannot overcome the cable housing resistance and poor rebound at the brake. If I take the whole brake apart, carefully clean, lightly grease the moving parts, and baby the cable housing, it works wonderfully, but it doesn't take more than one semi-dirty ride to junk the whole thing. There really are no seals. I don't mind completely disassembling once or twice a year, but more often and it becomes a chore. My three year old XT v's still work great on their 10th pair of brake pads. ...and this is coming from somebody who was trying to build a completely USA, non Shimano bike a few years ago. In fact, Precision levers mated with '98 XT v's rebound fine.

I long ago replaced the stock pads with cartridge pads. I'm surprised a moderately high end system like this would not have cartridge pads. The cartridges have paid for themselves with all the pads I've run through it.

Similar Products Used:

XT/XTR v's, Machine Tech v's, old avid tri-aligns, old cantis.

Look cool. Excellent modulation in dry conditions. Levers have a great "feel".

Extremely finicky. Once they came out of adjustment and the pads were changed they never worked right again. They Not durable. Pain in the ass to adjust. Need to be adjusted often.

These brakes have increadible stopping power in dry conditions. They look really cool and different and they are great if you want people to say that your brakes look cool. If you want brakes that "WORK", "ALWAYS", do not get these. The springs on mine are as tight as they will go and the pads will still catch the rim after the lever has been pulled and released. The two canti's are easily knocked out of adjustment. Once they are out of adjustment it is a major undertaking to get them to work again. Wish I would have put AVID's or something else on. Bought these due to recommendations from this site. Should have listened to the LBS. Oh well, live and learn. I'll give them three chilis b/c they work really well most of the time. Oh yeah, and the few times that I have used them in very wet conditions resulted in bruised knuckles from trying to squeeze the levers through them.

The best: power, modulation, relatively little fade when pressed hard, great in the wet, light and the most manly-looking brakes I've seen to date (does justice to my Z2 Atom80 fork)

Hard to find

I've been even more stoked than before lately so I'm writing another review. There's one long and steep technical downhill I love, which I recently went down in heavy rain. This isn't usually a good idea without discs, and to compare, when I did this with my Arch Rival 50s they lost a lot of power and then proceeded to fade more. The downhill became enormously sketchy, faster than I wanted with all the wet logs and large boulders, and through the second half of the descent my levers were glued against the handlebars and there was no way of stopping the bike other than jumping off. This is to be expected with most rim brakes under the conditions I was in, I'm not picking on the AR50's in the least.
This same descent in the rain with the Precision Billet, however, was easy and confidence-inspiring. I was going faster not because my brakes were fading but because I was always able to slow as I needed to in short distances (butt on tire, as it were). I'm not exaggerating--there was very little loss in stopping power and no fade to speak of! No levers-against-the-handlebars, no need to even contemplate bailing off the bike. I felt almost as safe as if I were going in the dry (save the wet logs, of course). Stoked!
In my last review I said these were easily as safe a decision as a King headset or a Marzocchi fork. Well, I've changed my mind. I would get them BEFORE I would get a Z2 fork, BEFORE I would get a King headset, before I would get just about anything. As I just told a friend thinking about getting a Santa Cruz Superlight, if you can get only one expensive thing on your bike, get these. I feel better about these things than anything else on my bike except the frame itself (almost all of which I feel very good about, almost all of which happens to be very expensive). A couple other reviews say you probably don't need to get disc brakes with these things, and I agree. Hikers and innocent wildlife will agree. Noise-ordinance will agree. Even your mom will agree. They even look awesome and of all things weigh quite a bit less than most of the other popular brakes out there, so even weight-weenies will agree. Now go out there and buy them before I strangle you!

Similar Products Used:

Avid (my second choice), SRAM (not bad), Shimano (squeal city), assorted others (most don't squeal)

Strong, with fine modulation

The stock pads look/feel scary

Get the complete kit (levers, V's and cables). Throw away the stock pads, replace with cartridges and coolstop pads.
My level of confidence has gone up greatly. The feeling that the brakes will do just what you want/need is terrific.
The trail likes them too. Much less unexpected wheel lock-up.
Who needs disc's with these things!
I like 'em!!

Similar Products Used:

Big-S XT's

* Great modulation, especially in rear. (This is the pads mostly, not so much the brake arms or levers).
* Machined from aluminum, so they look great if you like machine tool marks (I do).
* Red anodizing.
* Stiff.
* Reasonable clearance for 2.1" tires, but 2.25" Panaracer Pyro's are a struggle in rear for reference on the K2 4000.
* Good mud clearance (Arch Rivals are available with wider arches, but not as part of a lever/brake kit as far as I know, so that is extra $$).
* Not everyone has these on their "ride" already.
* Levers are longer than XT's, which I wanted, so this is a minor strength for
* Levers are hinged, so easy to install without pulling grips and grip shifters, and are VERY light in weight.
* No squealing once torqued down good.

* Sharp, machined edges at rear of levers (they need to reprogram their CNC machine center to spend another 30 seconds radiusing these edges, for sure!).
* No spring return in levers ... this might be viewed a weakness by many (gotta bend brake springs a bit to get enough oomph to get good return).
* A bit fiddly to install and get everything lined up (but most brakes are I guess)
* Levers have no leverage adjustment (which the Avids and Shimano's do).
* post type pads (not cartridge)

Machined arms and levers look great. Brakes definitely modulate much better than my XT levers/LX brakes, and that was primarily what I was after. However, in hindsight, I believe this is primarily a trait of the relatively but not overly squishy pads, and only seconarily related to levers, and fairly unrelated to the stiff brake arms.

Levers have no spring return... to some degree this helps modulation, to some degree people will view it a negative if they are used to spring returns in Avids or Shimano's. I'm neutral on this after getting brake springs to do the work (less an issue with smooth GoreTex cables).

Levers also have no leverage adjustment, which I would have appreciated as a feature myself, but they indeed kept levers very light. And they need to radius the sharp rear edge of levers, a detail they could program into their CNC routine, but it is easy enough to file and sandpaper them down so a very minor complaint for me personally.

I like the pads... they have enough squish to offer modulation, and that was what I was after personally. I mean, why have on/off type Shimano brakes? You want three volume settings on your stereo? On/off on your car's air conditioner?

They are plenty strong in stopping power for me, but so was my XT/LX setup... they are fine here, no better or worse.

A bit fiddly to set up, most brakes are I guess. They use post pads and the convex 3M washers for pad placement.

Buy these brakes for:
1. Modulation
2. Mud clearance
3. Looks, anodized and machined
4. Uniqueness
5. Longer and very light levers

Don't buy these if:
1. you want spring return levers
2. you want leverage adjustments in levers
3. You like on/off brakes (sans modulation)

These are plenty good brakes with plenty of power and very good modulation, and the levers are longer and pretty nice and very light.

I think the other reviews here over-rated them somewhat, so I'm balancing things out with 4 combusting mexican turd burritos (otherwise, probably 4.5).

Similar Products Used:

XT levers on LX brakes.