Spokes are the least glamorous part of a wheelset, and nobody ever talks about them, yet they are vital to the quality of your wheels. A poor set of spokes can ruin a great rim and hub combination. That is why at ICAN, we pay close attention to how we build our wheels.

Are You Spoken For?

Spokes have been around for a long time. If you think back to chariots and wagons, the wheels had big old wooden spokes on them. Spokes have been around for so long because they bring strength and lightweight to the wheel building process. The weight is what people competing in chariots would have wanted. As long as people have been competing, there has been someone there thinking can we make something lighter. Let’s face it you would not buy a heavy set of wheels, would you?

Bikes need spokes that are lighter than chariots; you need to be powering the bike, not having it pulled along by horses. 

When you pedal, you have to accelerate the weight of your wheel both forwards and around its center, so you need lightweight spokes. When you consider this, you realize how much abuse a bike wheel takes with its rotational and forward motion simultaneously.

We also need to make sure that as well as being lightweight, our spokes are strong. You don’t want a spoke that can’t support your body weight or a spoke where your wheel buckles the second you push down on your pedals. Spokes might seem like a simple and forgettable component, but it is a mistake not to think about them.

We sent our engineers out to find the best spokes possible. They came back to us with three choices, all of which will give your carbon fiber wheels not only strong and lightweight spokes but also an aero advantage. All these two types of spokes will help to lower your drag coefficient and increase the speed of your bike.

CN Mac 494 Aero Spokes

CN spokes might be a new name to you, but you might well already own a wheelset with CN spokes in them. CN has been supplying spokes to the bike industry since the 1970s, and this means they have a tremendous amount of expertise in the field of spoke making.

CN Mac 494 spokes are certainly not the catchiest name in the world, but most spokes have similarly styled names, they are CN’s aero spokes. This spoke helps you to slice through the wind.

CN’s pricing allows us to build high-quality wheels for an incredible price. Their weights are also excellent. They might not have dropped names as much as Sapim, but if they keep making spokes of Mac quality, then that will all change.

You will find CN spokes on our entry-level standard wheelsets.

PSR Aero 1432 Spokes

As you might have guessed, the PSR Aero 1432 are aero spokes. PSR, which stands for Pillar Racing Spoke, you may not have heard of as an alternative name like CN, but you have probably ridden a wheel with them in it.

PSR is a Taiwanese company with over 30 years of experience supplying spokes to bike companies around the world. They sell over a million spokes a month.

Pillar have made their own way in the bike industry and hold many patents for their products. You can see this in their high-quality cold-forged Aero 1432 spokes, the cold-forging process allows these spokes to be around 20% stronger than their competitors. They have also been wind tunnel tested to show their low resistance properties.

Sapim CX-Ray Aero Spokes

We have now arrived at the superstar of the world’s spokes, the Sapim CX-Ray. The CX-ray spoke can be found on all our flagship wheel ranges; you can buy these on our FL, Aero, and DT Swiss wheel ranges. These are the spokes that many other spokes aspire to be.

The reason Sapim leads the way is that they have been around for over 100 years. In that time, they have amassed a terrifying amount of knowledge on the humble bike spoke, and they have used that knowledge to help us at ICAN build super lightweight and strong wheelsets.

The CX-Ray are the pinnacle of aero spokes. They are as light as titanium but as stiff as a non-butted spoke. They are also incredibly durable, meaning your wheel will last longer than if you had used another company's spokes. They are very simply the best

Wheely The Best Spokes

As you can see, we have some fantastic spokes for your new wheels. We have gone to great lengths to make sure all our spokes are as competitively priced as possible, but more importantly, we have picked the world's best spokes for their respective price point.

Whichever ICAN carbon fiber wheelset you choose, you can be sure that there is not a better set of spokes available for that wheelset than the spokes we have chosen. Our engineers are very anal and do not like to feel a fantastic carbon fiber layup is being ruined by the spokes. That is why our wheels are among the strongest and lightest available on the market.

We hope you feel you can make a more informed choice when buying your new carbon fiber wheels.