Campagnolo to release new Super Record RS Groupset

I agree with letape, Chorus would be a great choice. It shares many of the internals of Record, and as with many Campag groupsets the ergolevers are rebuildable which is reassuring as they'd be expensive to replace if you had to.

I have a 9-speed Chorus groupset which is 14 years old and it is going strong. Admittedly I used it very little for several years at the start but I've used it consistently for the last 6 years or so and it has been on my winter bike for 5 of those years. I've replaced the (square taper) bottom bracket once and I rebuilt the ergolevers once too - I snapped a collar in the right lever by an over enthusiastic gear change on a climb, and although it continued to function very well, changing between two rear cogs was noticeably less crisp than usual, so I bought a replacement collar (the new one had reinforcement on the bit that broke on the older one so should hopefully last even longer) and springs and replaced them on both levers and the levers were as good as new once more. Other than that the groupset has been entirely and impressively reliable and problem-free. Being an older version of Chorus my groupset has no carbon parts, which I like for a winter bike as I hope that the alloy is more robust than carbon in the event of a fall, but I have no real reason (other than a bit of paranoia) to believe that the modern carbon equivalent is any less robust.

When buying a new bike a few years back I was planning to get it with an 11-speed Chorus groupset but ended up with Record instead. At the time I looked in detail at the differences between the two groupsets and the differences were far fewer than I expected. At the time Record had carbon and titanium in some places where Chorus had alloy, as letape mentions, and I think that the Record calipers had bearings while the Chorus ones didn't, but apart from that and some weight saving in places there wasn't a whole lot between them. I ended up with Record only because Chorus was not in stock.

In use the newer Record groupset is more crisp than my older Chorus, but this is probably a generational change more than anything and I suspect modern Chorus would be a little more crisp than my (fairly crisp) older Chorus too. If I were buying a new groupset today I'd find it hard to justify the extra cost of Record to myself, I think I'd go for Chorus and I don't think I'd have any regrets. I've not looked at groupsets below Chorus but I think I'd keep away from them for the fact that most/all of them use power-torque bottom brackets if for no other reason.

One thing to be aware of though, Campag are very fussy with their 11-speed chains. Being 11-speed it'll need a fairly modern chainsplitter to work safely with it and certainly for the Record chain Campag give dire warnings about splitting and re-joining the chain (which requires a new pin each time) more than 3 times as they say its strength will be seriously compromised. In practice I never split my 11-speed chain and if I thought I'd need to, to swap between very different cassettes for example, I'd get a re-usable split link but these are not as readily available for Campag 11-speed chains as for some other brands. You could use a different brand of chain too, of course. Basically though, if you typically carry a chaintool with you for emergencies on an audax, then you may need a new chaintool if you go to Campag 11-speed and want to be able to re-join the chain on the side of the road (Lezyne do one though I've not tried it).

Yeah, I heard it was just something for sponsored pro teams or something like that. Kind of reminds me of the Ritchey WCS stuff.