While the majority of the industry is obsessed with electronic shifting and hiding cables internally, there is another way for those of us with older framesets to shift gears. Microshift’s Sword offers a huge gear range, smart clutch rear mech and crisp shifting for a 10-speed analogue world. We fitted the Microshift Sword groupset to a test bike to establish if it's a worthwhile investment for gravel bikers.
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Microshift Sword Groupset - Technical details
Microshift has been making drivetrain products for both road and mountain bikes for over two decades, 24 years to be precise, and, historically these have been compatible with Shimano cassette spacing and have been found on lower-spec bike models. You might not have noticed it but it has quietly been sneaking onto spec sheets for some time and you may have ridden some of their components on your bike, if not a whole groupset.
Microshift components have been widely used in the non-racing touring market where there has been more acceptance for its products. The products favour durability and serviceability above silent, slick-shifting, and electronic boxes and charging. For those that still prefer bar end shifters or even thumb shifters, Microshift owns the market for 8, 9, 10, 11 and even 12-speed Shimano and SRAM-compatible shifters, perfect for that WorldTour bike build.
In 2023 Microshift launched Sword, its 10-speed groupset with freshly designed shifters, silent rear-clutch derailleur, wide range 11-48T Cassette, and 40T or 42T chainset for 1x setup. The 2x setup uses an 11-38T cassette with either a 48/31T or a 46/29T chainset and of course a left-hand shift lever (no bottom bracket, chain, brake calipers, or rotors are offered).
This groupset launch is important as it offers a wide range, low-cost transmission option for consumers looking to upgrade mechanical bikes to current gravel gear range spec and also to brands looking to offer high-performing models without the cost of fully hydraulic systems or electronic shifting.
Two things of importance here; firstly, Microshift has moved away from being compatible with Shimano and SRAM shifting standards. The company has gone for its own cable-pull ratio so it’s a big step and means you cannot use a Shimano rear mech with Sword shifters or vice versa, ditto with SRAM. If you're buying Sword you are buying into the whole transmission setup.
Secondly, the shifters are purely mechanical, meaning that they pull cables for their braking duties, so there are no hydraulic lines here although you can still mate them with hydraulic calipers if you so choose. The shifters are also designed specifically for use with the current flared bar trend commonly seen in gravel bars but also on some road bars now.
We requested a 1x setup consisting of a Sword Derailleur, Sword 40T Chainset, Advent G Series 11-48T cassette, Right-hand shift and brake lever, and left-hand brake lever.
Microshift Sword Groupset - Installation
To test the Sword groupset, we built it up on a Fearless Vulture Titanium frameset with some tried and tested personal kit and, of course, some mechanical disc calipers, rotors, and a chain. The former was easy, TRP Spyre C with non-compression cables from Jagwire and matching TRP rotors.
The chain caused a little bit of head-scratching as most 10-speed setups do not use a cassette with a range of 436% and a 42T chainring. Usually, on a mountain bike, the cassette might be bigger but without question, the chainring will only be somewhere between 30-36T max most likely a 32T. Why does this matter? Well, most 10-speed chains that you might think to buy will not be long enough. I bought a couple of different ones and even thought about joining two chains together to make one long enough until a colleague suggested I try an e-bike chain as they are designed to cope with Cargo frame designs with longer chainstays. (note, the Vulture Ti's Chainstays are long at 445mm which, is partly to blame here, although I still needed a longer chain on a Surly with 425mm). So third time lucky and a KMC E-bike chain with rust prevention and high torque capability later and we're up and spinning. Maybe Microshift missed a trick here and should have offered a chain with this Sword set up thus making the whole process a bit easier.
Shifter installation is pretty much the norm for this type of product with the bar clamp bolts where you would expect to find them, under the hoods and cable ports in obvious places leading to simple easy-to-feed cable installation with no need to remove or undo plastic covers. Everything connects easily and without swearing. The shifters have adjustable reach settings for both the brake lever inside the hood on the top and the long shifter lever underneath the hood under the little shifter.
Microshift's new Sword flared shifter design means that the lever does not drop directly down from the hood but is slightly angled to clear the flare of your bars and the levers gel nicely with the Lauf’s Smoothie 16-degree flare bar I’m using for the review.
The bottom bracket is not provided with the Sword groupset so you’ll need to source your own or potentially use the one you already have. The good news is that it’s compatible with the Shimano’s 24mm standard, so that gives you the widest choice of options to choose from both in quality and pricing. The chainset fits in the same way as any 24mm Shimano chainset using a preload adjuster and two cinch bolts.
Both brake and gear inner cables are provided with Swords’ Shifters but you will need to source your outer cable. We’ve used Jagwire outer but you could have used any brand as long as it is a non-compression outer to give optimal performance. There are other options such as flexible ferrule setups which might work depending on your frameset. They didn’t on mine.
The rear mech mounts as you would expect and the adjustment bolts are easy to reach and turn much easier than some I could mention. The barrel adjuster is clever and has a unique design from Microshift. It can wobble or angle up to 15 degrees off-centre to allow for better cable alignment. Clever and only on Sword.
Microshift Sword groupset - Performance
For those of us with a long back catalogue of drop-bar shifter experience, the ergonomics of these Sword shifters will be somewhat of a surprise – a very good surprise. Microshift has spent a lot of time in this area designing the Sword shifters to gel ergonomically with gravel bike’s flared bars and it shows in the comfortable hand position and prolonged long-distance comfort delivered by the shaping of the hood rubber, the body of the shifter underneath and the hood’s actual rubber material.
I’ve been swapping between new SRAM Apex AXS and Sword-equipped bikes over the last few weeks and I prefer the shape of Sword. It is much more comfortable than feeling that square edge section of the AXS shifter. Yes I know one is hydraulic and one isn’t, but there’s no excuse for hard edges to the shifter body.
This is a big score for Microshift, especially after the fanfare that heralded its arrival on the market and it’s just the start, the Sword Shifters shift the rear derailleur very smoothly without harsh clunks of loud noises. They also feature a new design to pull more cable to help deliver extra braking power and whilst I cannot attest to the feel of any of their previous drop bar shifters these certainly pull enough cable for the TRP Spyre C Calipers to haul me to a stop without drama.
Shifting around the block whether under pressure or flowing along easy trails is very easy from hoods which is where most of us ride most of the time. Both shifters are easily accessible and their position and shift motion make sense to your hands. The large shift lever is adjustable (like the brake lever) for reach so you should be able to find a good position for your finger length. The small shifter doesn’t move and can clash with the large shifter if the latter is wound back too far.
While the large shift lever is easily manageable from down in the drops the length of the short shifter is a little too short to easily knuckle an upshift shift from down in the drops. It’s spot-on for riding in the hoods but doesn’t quite reach down far enough for spirited shifting while sprinting. You can still use your index finger from the drops but you might have to twist your wrist up to do this.
This might be due to the mounting position of the shifter on the drops, the depth of your drops, and your hand size, so it might be okay for you, but I found that I had to slide my hand up the curve a little from its favoured position if I wanted to shift like this. Note, this is an unfair comparison as I’m comparing it again to Di2 GRX and SRAM AXS shifters where a nudge with your knuckle does the job.
The Sword rear derailleur works beautifully and precisely up and down the 11-48T cassette. Throughout my test period, I’ve been super impressed by the shift on the cassette especially up the block. One advantage of using a wider-spaced 10-speed cassette and chain is that they are less affected by crud getting into the system and can squeeze it out more easily compared to finer 11, 12, or even 13-speed systems which are more finicky in the filth. Should you crash and damage the rear cage in your rear wheel or via a stump or rock then the cage is also easily replaceable.
Sword's Orbital barrel adjuster with its ability to wobble off-center in any direction by 15 degrees delivering the cable in the best possible line to pull the rear mech may also have a hand in how well the rear mech has shifted up and down the cassette. It’s very smooth and feels somewhere between the slippery finesse of Shimano and the harder clunk of SRAM.
Bouncing around on the rutted corrugated tracks on Salisbury Plain is a sure-fire way of telling if your headset is loose your front axle needs a tweak or you’ve forgotten to switch the stabiliser/clutch on your Shimano rear mech (SRAM is always on). Still, since fitting the Sword derailleur and turning it on, I’ve not noticed the rear mech making any undue noise, rattle, or clatter at any time. The redesigned clutch mechanism has been a success.
The local 20%+ hills have given me the chance to give the cassette a full workout whether that’s climbing in that 48T cog or descending in the 11T and everything in between. Compared to either of my other two gravel bikes with their 40T and 42T chainsets paired with 11-42 or 46T cassettes, Sword’s 48T option has made them more approachable and even enjoyable. For those looking for numbers, the cassette range is 436% and the lowest gear ratio is 0.76 for the 2x setup or 0.83 for the 1x setup on test here.
The crankset is a solid affair and smart enough with a subtle Sword logo on the arms. It features ‘stuck-on’ washers for pedal axles and there are unused studs on the back of the spider for the inner ring set up on the 2x option. The Chainring is aluminium and with the greatest of respect to Microshift it is otherwise quite forgettable working as expected without shipping a chain.
The Sword chainset features a well-known asymmetric spider design so aftermarket rings should be easy to source and swap between when the initial one wears out. If you have a crankset already fitted with a 50mm chainline for 1x or 47mm for 2x then you’ll be fine to use your own.
Brake lever feel is always going to be a big discussion with any cable-pull disc caliper and it’s a tricky thing to analyse given the number of variables in the braking system. There’s the Sword lever, the inner and outer cable, ferrules, the caliper mechanism, the pads, and the rotor. With this setup being brand new there should be no issues with contamination in the pads and rotor or dirt ingress in the cable so that leaves the caliper mechanism and the Sword lever.
I’m not a beginner when it comes to cable-pull disc brake calipers having built scores of bikes over the years with BB7s or Spyres and I know a trick or two of how to get the best results from these style calipers. For this Sword groupset review, I’ve fitted Jagwire KEB-SL compressionless outer with both the Microshift supplied inner cables and also Jagwire’s inner cable to make sure they’re as good as possible, TRP Spyre C calipers, which supposedly have a stiffer feel than the standard version and floating TRP rotors to match.
Out on the trail, they felt a little mushy initially as I waited for both the pads and rotors to bed in and the cables to settle. With a few hard rides in filthy conditions, I went back over the cables and pad adjustment on the calipers and got everything noticeably sharper. A dozen or so more rides and I decided to try Uberbike’s white disc pads on the front brake which produced a noticeably sharper bite feel at the lever allowing me to fling the bike around and stop when required and at the same time as other riders using hydraulic brakes. A win for Sword.
I’d class the Sword lever feel as pretty good. They bite nicely and without squealing like the Avids on my other bike but it’s worth mentioning that if you are coming from a hydraulic system, you will notice the extra amount of lever effort you need to use to apply the brakes.
As Microshift doesn’t supply the calipers, the resulting bite point is out of its total control. So if you are using your existing calipers it might be worth a complete overhaul of pads cables and rotors to get the best results. You could also pair Sword's levers with the industry’s famed cable pull calipers from Pauls or Growtac but then the price would shoot up considerably.
There’s a small amount of softness before it hauls you to a stop. It’s not like a hydraulic lever that stops you without bicep development (well most of the time). However, if you are updating your bike from an existing cable pull setup then I’d wager these are at least as good as your existing shifters, if not a lot better.
Microshift Sword 1x Groupset - Verdict
Comparing the Sword groupset against Shimano's GRX 10-speed is a little bit tricky as the GRX400 10-speed version was never available as a 1x set-up. Of course, you could mix and match with other GRX components to create your groupset. The GRX 600 1x11 groupset was officially £885 when it was launched with hydraulic calipers. But even though it has 1 more cog than Sword, the rear mech can only handle a 42T cassette (officially – we know there are hacks for larger cassettes but we’re comparing standard here) so Sword will comfortably outclimb it on the same size chainring.
SRAM Apex 1x11 HRD groupset had a retail price of over £950 and was again ‘officially’ limited to an 11-42T cassette and as with Shimano above it came with hydraulic brakes but has now been retired.
SRAM Apex Eagle is now the keenest-priced SRAM gravel mechanical groupset set with a 40T chainset and up to a 10-52T Eagle cassette although it does have hydraulic brakes. You will need to update your rear hub driver to accommodate said cassette because it requires an XD driver, not an HG one which is more common. But it is priced at £986.
There are some crazy deals out there right now so it's really hard to compare like for like. What I can say is that Sword is designed to work with a 48T cassette rather than using an aftermarket adaptor or a bodge. It also shifts super smoothly in the filth due to the extra space between the cogs and the chain. It does require mechanical, cable-pull brake calipers.
I think this will look like an excellent option for performance on offer for many people looking to get a wider range on their mechanical disc gravel adventure bike and start winding up forgotten trails. If you are looking for 'round-the-world' durability and serviceability then look no further. With only cables to adjust and replace and a repairable rear mech, Sword is extremely recommendable.
No, it’s not GRX slick shift performance but it feels competitive against Sram’s Apex shift feel. Brake feel will be up to you to experiment with the calipers, but it is possible to get a sharp bite on a disc and stop when you want. If you own a decent crank with a fresh chainring that’s compatible, then you can knock £100 off straight away which makes it enticing, even more so if your existing bike has good calipers and rotors on it. Sword’s shifters hoods are so comfortable to hold that your hands with thank you as will your legs on every climb you take on. A well-engineered groupset that is more than cable for gravel adventure riding.
Microshift Sword 1x Groupset - Tech spec
Prices for Sword components are as follows:
Chainset (1x or 2x) £99.99
Rear derailleur £74.99
Shifter (right) £89.99
Brake lever (left) £64.99
Cassette £41.99-£64.99 (Full Steel or Alloy 40 and 48T cogs)
Total as tested = £394.95
2x options:
Shifter (left, double) £89.99
Front derailleur (clamp or braze-on £24.99
Brake lever, dropper remote £84.99
Actual weights of components in bold versus claimed weights:
Shifter (right) 277g; C -276g
Shifter (left) 195g; C -190g
Rear derailleur,1x 307g; C- 308g
Cassette, Advent X G-Series, 11-48t 414g; C - 424g
Chainset, 1x 40t, 172.5mm 795g; C - 790g
For fair comparison's sake you also need to account for the extras that you’ll need if you do not already own them:
TRP Spyre Caliper £90 (each)
TRP rotors £40 (each)
Jagwire compressionless cable costs £33.
KMC E10 Chain cost £28 which adds up to another £333
Shimano MT501 Bottom Bracket £33.
Total working Sword groupset price £760.95. All prices are at listed at RRP.
1 comments
Great. All we needed was another cable pull ratio.