Rivendell’s Long-Awaited Silver OM-1 Derailleur Came and Went

3 weeks ago 15

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Rivendell’s Silver OM-1 rear derailleurs sold out in just minutes after they were announced on Friday, but with more on the way next month, we wanted to share an introduction to the brand’s in-house shifter after nearly a decade of development. Take a closer look here…

Rivendell’s highly anticipated Silver OM-1 rear derailleur was out of stock even before I had a chance to open the email announcing its arrival on Friday. I wasn’t hugely surprised to see “Sold Out” on the product page given that only 90 were available in the first batch and loyal fans of the brand (and founder Grant Petersen’s designs, specifically) have been eagerly anticipating it for years. Priced at $150, the OM-1, which stands for Opposite-Movement, effectively works the same as Shimano’s defunct (1999-2005) RapidRise system, in which a relaxed spring pulls them to the low/easy gear, rather than the more conventional opposite.

The OM-1 will shift into a 36-tooth cog (or a 42-tooth with an extension tab). It weighs just 7.85 ounces, which Rivendell claims is lighter than 98 percent of the derailleurs on the market today. As for what exactly it will and won’t shift, Rivendell seems to be encouraging users to choose their own adventure, though you can always ring them up to chat through your ideas.

From Rivendell: “Not that it matters, and not a reason to get one, but we’ve been working on this Opposite-Movement (OM) action for more than eight years. That’s how it goes when you’re a company of bicycle riders and not an industry big shot with a staff of specialists for each component. We had one big dead-end, and to make a long story short, instead of giving up, we got Microshift to make it. They looked at our prototypes and listened to the result we wanted, and said, essentially, ‘We can make it work if we do it our way,’ and that was proverbial music to our proverbial ears, and to use another cliché, we couldn’t be happier. It came out 99 percent perfect. The missing one percent is entirely theoretical/philosophical, but if we’d insisted on that they might have said, ‘You know what? Upon further reflection, do it yourselves.'”

You can find more photos and details over at RivBike.com, where you can also sign up to be notified when the next batch arrives and add your email to their weekly email list.