Anyone managed to find and pair a lighter cassette with 11sp linkglide?
Im hating 12speed in general and thinking about converting my mtb from 12sp xt to linkglide. But dont need the heavy steel cassette for the non e.
Would like a lightish 11spd set up for the mtb.
As others have mentioned, the whole purpose of Linkglide is greater durability, which is achieved by using thicker sprockets in the cassette. The thicker width means that they needed to space each sprocket further apart from its neighbors, in order to keep the chain from fouling on the next one up. The difference between 11spd Linkglide and 11spd regular Hyperglide or SRAM is about 0.3mm at each sprocket, so while you might be able to get a standard spacing 11spd cassette to work with a LG derailleur/shifter on a few cogs, when shifting across the whole spread, from smallest to largest, the total difference in width will stack up to close to 4mm, which is too big a discrepancy to consistently run smoothly. Even if you could get it to work, you wouldn't get any of the Linkglide benefits from it since you'd be using normal width sprockets. Similarly, 12spd Hyperglide/SRAM is about 0.3mm narrower spacing than the 11spd stuff, so it's incompatible in the opposite direction as Linkglide.
When Linkglide came out, I had thought it would be cool if Shimano did an XTR level of it, with Ti upper sprockets and lighter carriers, as you would still get better durability out of it than the equivalent material Hyperglide+ version, but I'm not sure what the cost/benefit would be compared to other options, or if there is any real demand for it. Maybe if enough of us send them requests, Garbaruk will pick up the idea, and they use a cool 1-piece machined design similar to the higher end SRAM cassettes, so they should deliver better durability than the XTR style ones that use Ti for the middle size sprockets.
Given you already have a derailleur and shifter for 12-speed, and a wheel that presumably has a 12 speed Microspline freehub body, your options for cutting weight while keeping your desired gear range (and maybe dropping from 12-11 speeds) are:
1. Search out one of the very rare XTR CS-M9110-11 cassettes. These are 11-speed with 10-45 teeth so wider range than the 11 speed SRAM stuff, but it still wouldn't get you all the way to 50t. However, if combined with a 2-tooth smaller chainring, you'd be pretty darn close to the gear you want. These cassettes use 12-speed spacing and are microspline freehub body compatible, so they'd be totally compatible with your wheel and shifter/derailleur, as they were specifically made for weight conscious riders who found the 12speed stuff to be too heavy. They are basically the 367g 12-speed (10-50) XTR cassette with the largest cog removed, so they're around 310 grams.
2. Get a 12-speed Garbaruk cassette. You can get them for any freehub body, but apples to apples their Microspline 10-52 and only weighs 355g, vs your XT 10-51 at 470g. I'm unclear if you had any other beefs with 12-speed besides weight but, if weight was the main thing, this is a good option and again, would be fully compatible with your wheel, derailleur, and shifter.
3. Get an 11-speed Garbaruk cassette. These come in SRAM XD versions for 10-50 at 322g, or Hyperglide versions for 11-50 at 328g. This doesn't save much weight vs. the 12 speed Garbaruk versions, and would require a different freehub body, derailleur, and shifter, but would still provide a 50t while getting you out of the 12-speed game, so could be a good option if you have other reasons to prefer 11spd, like less finicky shifting or whatnot.
4. E13 Cassettes could work but again would require a freehub body switch, and are substantially heavier than Garbaruk in both 11 and 12 speed versions. Plus the 12 speed ones use aluminum for the larger 2 sprockets, rather than just the largest one, so I'd expect durability to be worse. They do seem to be on closeout though, if price is a factor and you want to give one a try.
