Let me first say that I have never owned or ridden Stratics cranks. I have worked on them however, and I found them to be lacking. I installed a new set (never installed, still in box) on a customer's bike and they were wildly out of true, worse than the worst entry-level Taiwanese junk. I called Sampson to tell them of the problem and possibly get a return authorization. They spewed some nonsense about "tighter tolerances than all those other brands," blah, blah, blah, "must be the bottom bracket. You have it on a non-Sampson (read: Shimano) BB don't you." This irked me for several reasons. -If Shimano (or Campy) cranks run true on Shimano (or Campy) BB's then Stratics cranks should too, assuming they're made right. -Shimano makes quality products that are widely know for ease of set-up. It would seem, based on this crank problem, that such is not the case with Sampson. Rather than spin it as "well, the additional work during set-up is due to the high-performance nature of the product, blah, blah, blah," they just indirectly badmouthed reputable competitors. -The crank was mounted on one of their cheezy bottom brackets anyway.
That's the end of my rant against Sampson. Which American component maker should we talk about next?
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