DT's foray into the hub market wasn't that long ago.
Before the current model lineup, they went by the brand name "Hugi".
(I used "u" instead of dealing with the umlaut input.)
So this Hugi hub—as a hub itself, there's nothing particularly noteworthy about it.
But there is one extraordinarily rare point:
This is an 18H rear hub.
18H means 9H per flange side.
↑I often think about hub flanges by laying them out like this.
I call it a Mercator projection-style diagram,
but "Admiral style" or "Mizkan style" works too.
Note: I corrected the cut line placement that I had wrong.
Thanks to the comment pointing that out.
So if you try to build with 2-cross lacing on a 9H flange side,
the odd number leaves you with one extra spoke. That's obviously going to create wheel balance problems,
so I think about lacing patterns that don't screw up the balance too badly.
↑That leaves only two options.
Either alternate 2-cross and radial lacing, or thread radial spokes through 2-cross sections.
The former gives you less runout variance across the whole rim,
so if I ever have to build an 18H rear wheel, I use XI-pattern lacing.
On one flange side, tangent and radial lacing mix together,
so naturally the spoke tension differs for each lacing method.
Wheel building is the work of centering the rim on the hub's overall width while minimizing runout and lateral deflection at the best compromise point possible.
I want to shape this radial runout—the blue line—
↑as much like a circle as possible,
but the spoke tension between tangent and radial lacing will be different at that point.
↑If you instead match the spoke tensions,
you end up with something extreme like this.
Fix the runout and tension gets scattered. Fix the tension and runout appears.
As far as actually using the wheel goes, the former is more manageable.
Spoke tension is the actual tension loaded on the spoke.
That's different from what I'm calling RK in the diagram above.
Spoke tension ≠ RK.
RK is what relates to rim breakage from nipples.
At the same RK, thicker spokes have lower spoke tension.
RK is practically impossible to measure in reality, so
rim makers specify spoke tension as the breakage threshold,
but RK changes with spoke diameter even at the same spoke tension.
Since thicker spokes create bigger RK at the same spoke tension,
for example if you have a rim with a 120 kgf upper limit
and you build it with 2.0mm plain spokes at 120 kgf,
that rim's breakage risk (= RK) might be about the same as
CX-RAY at 140 kgf.
But the rim says "120 kgf max!" so
that spoke tension threshold is all we can follow.
Since spoke tension can be estimated quite accurately unlike RK,
makers have no choice but to set the threshold there.
Getting back on track: spoke diameter and spoke tension have a relationship where
"thicker = lower, thinner = higher".
Now, if you built the XI-pattern all with spokes from the same model,
that's same-diameter, mixed-pattern lacing on one flange side.
It's actually possible to express same-diameter, mixed-pattern lacing in terms of spoke tension
using different-diameter, same-pattern lacing instead.
Imagine if you could arbitrarily change the ratio of the two spoke types in mixed-pattern lacing with infinitely fine control.
(Say you could decide plain spoke diameter yourself, including the nipple hole diameter.)
Then you could theoretically match the spoke tension ratio of
18H same-diameter mixed-pattern lacing
("tangent : radial")
to the spoke tension ratio of
18H mixed-diameter same-pattern lacing
("thin spoke : thick spoke").
In reality though, tangent and radial lacing behave differently under torsional input, so
if you did that,
the same-diameter mixed-pattern approach retaining two-thirds tangent lacing
would probably seem stronger against torsion.
With the DT Hugi 18H rear hub,
you're forced into mixed-pattern single-flange lacing.
Also, on rear wheels, both sides radial is absolutely forbidden,
so at minimum one side must use tangent lacing.
But what if this were an 18H front wheel instead?
Then normally it's just radial lacing, period.
Mixed-diameter single-flange lacing is, in terms of spoke tension, equivalent to
doing radial lacing with mismatched spoke thicknesses.
If I could argue there's an advantage to doing radial lacing with mismatched spoke thicknesses,
then I could probably argue there's an advantage to mixing tangent and radial on one flange side.
But I can't. Not theoretically, and not from experience either.
I've personally built a "dumb wheel" (※ a badly-designed wheel) with
32H split 16H per side, where one 1-cross laced unit and two radial spokes formed repeating units,
and I couldn't get the runout clean.
The radial spokes I drew in red have lower tension,
and lower tension means closer to zero.
In actual use, the radial lacing side felt like
it wasn't doing the job of power transfer and stiffness.
Exaggerate it—felt almost no different from a wheel of just the crossed spokes.
Also, those radial spokes on that side kept loosening up.
So I modified the pattern, changing the radial to 1-cross.
Now the only difference is whether it's twisted or not,
but in about two months a spoke nipple pulled through, so I scrapped it.
Wasn't planning to sell it anyway, but it confirmed the obvious answer: unsaleable.
Mixed-diameter single-flange lacing is basically a no-go.
DT makes wheels with a "Triconduct" concept,
but I think they avoid the spoke-nipple-pull problem because
the hub's flange height is different for spoke relief
and the orientation of the non-radial spokes is very carefully worked out.
Plus they use straight-gauge spokes. That's big too.
↑Found it while searching.
A photo from when I was building these.
This is "free-side inpoke XI-pattern / non-free-side outpoke radial".
After this I changed the non-free side to all-inpoke XI-pattern too,
but I don't have photos of that.
I'm using neologisms like "XI-pattern", but I'm not claiming to have invented them.
Hand anyone an 18H rear hub and they'd end up building it this way out of sheer necessity.
The matching front wheel was a Tni carbon 18H XI-pattern,
but I didn't have the idea of mixed-diameter spokes back then, and
since it was a prototype I was nervous about thin spokes, so
I built the whole thing with 2.0mm plain spokes.
Terms like "inpoke", "Yonroku lacing", "XI-pattern"—if you coin terminology like this,
you can fit pretty much any lacing into a category, which is convenient.
↑If you're hung up only on spoke tension,
making the 3 radial spokes thin
(though I don't know what the actual ratio should be)
should get you close to the 6 tangent spokes.
The idea is mixed-diameter mixed-pattern to cancel things out toward zero.
But that only equalizes spoke tension—it doesn't equalize spoke deflection or
RK on the nipple side.
However, there is a groundbreaking lacing method that equalizes all three (tension, deflection, RK).
You can copy it if you want!
It's same-diameter same-pattern lacing! On 18H, tangent lacing can't give you all same-pattern spokes, so just make it radial lacing!
Use all the same spoke model in radial lacing and
on a front wheel, spoke tension, deflection, and RK all match!
18H XI-pattern lacing is something you resort to only when you find yourself stuck building a rear wheel with an 18H rear hub, and it has almost no merit!
The biggest drawback is spoke tension variance.
Though honestly you won't notice without using a tension meter.
Before the current model lineup, they went by the brand name "Hugi".
(I used "u" instead of dealing with the umlaut input.)
So this Hugi hub—as a hub itself, there's nothing particularly noteworthy about it.
But there is one extraordinarily rare point:
This is an 18H rear hub.
18H means 9H per flange side.
↑I often think about hub flanges by laying them out like this.
I call it a Mercator projection-style diagram,
but "Admiral style" or "Mizkan style" works too.
Note: I corrected the cut line placement that I had wrong.
Thanks to the comment pointing that out.
So if you try to build with 2-cross lacing on a 9H flange side,
the odd number leaves you with one extra spoke. That's obviously going to create wheel balance problems,
so I think about lacing patterns that don't screw up the balance too badly.
↑That leaves only two options.
Either alternate 2-cross and radial lacing, or thread radial spokes through 2-cross sections.
The former gives you less runout variance across the whole rim,
so if I ever have to build an 18H rear wheel, I use XI-pattern lacing.
On one flange side, tangent and radial lacing mix together,
so naturally the spoke tension differs for each lacing method.
Wheel building is the work of centering the rim on the hub's overall width while minimizing runout and lateral deflection at the best compromise point possible.
I want to shape this radial runout—the blue line—
↑as much like a circle as possible,
but the spoke tension between tangent and radial lacing will be different at that point.
↑If you instead match the spoke tensions,
you end up with something extreme like this.
Fix the runout and tension gets scattered. Fix the tension and runout appears.
As far as actually using the wheel goes, the former is more manageable.
Spoke tension is the actual tension loaded on the spoke.
That's different from what I'm calling RK in the diagram above.
Spoke tension ≠ RK.
RK is what relates to rim breakage from nipples.
At the same RK, thicker spokes have lower spoke tension.
RK is practically impossible to measure in reality, so
rim makers specify spoke tension as the breakage threshold,
but RK changes with spoke diameter even at the same spoke tension.
Since thicker spokes create bigger RK at the same spoke tension,
for example if you have a rim with a 120 kgf upper limit
and you build it with 2.0mm plain spokes at 120 kgf,
that rim's breakage risk (= RK) might be about the same as
CX-RAY at 140 kgf.
But the rim says "120 kgf max!" so
that spoke tension threshold is all we can follow.
Since spoke tension can be estimated quite accurately unlike RK,
makers have no choice but to set the threshold there.
Getting back on track: spoke diameter and spoke tension have a relationship where
"thicker = lower, thinner = higher".
Now, if you built the XI-pattern all with spokes from the same model,
that's same-diameter, mixed-pattern lacing on one flange side.
It's actually possible to express same-diameter, mixed-pattern lacing in terms of spoke tension
using different-diameter, same-pattern lacing instead.
Imagine if you could arbitrarily change the ratio of the two spoke types in mixed-pattern lacing with infinitely fine control.
(Say you could decide plain spoke diameter yourself, including the nipple hole diameter.)
Then you could theoretically match the spoke tension ratio of
18H same-diameter mixed-pattern lacing
("tangent : radial")
to the spoke tension ratio of
18H mixed-diameter same-pattern lacing
("thin spoke : thick spoke").
In reality though, tangent and radial lacing behave differently under torsional input, so
if you did that,
the same-diameter mixed-pattern approach retaining two-thirds tangent lacing
would probably seem stronger against torsion.
With the DT Hugi 18H rear hub,
you're forced into mixed-pattern single-flange lacing.
Also, on rear wheels, both sides radial is absolutely forbidden,
so at minimum one side must use tangent lacing.
But what if this were an 18H front wheel instead?
Then normally it's just radial lacing, period.
Mixed-diameter single-flange lacing is, in terms of spoke tension, equivalent to
doing radial lacing with mismatched spoke thicknesses.
If I could argue there's an advantage to doing radial lacing with mismatched spoke thicknesses,
then I could probably argue there's an advantage to mixing tangent and radial on one flange side.
But I can't. Not theoretically, and not from experience either.
I've personally built a "dumb wheel" (※ a badly-designed wheel) with
32H split 16H per side, where one 1-cross laced unit and two radial spokes formed repeating units,
and I couldn't get the runout clean.
The radial spokes I drew in red have lower tension,
and lower tension means closer to zero.
In actual use, the radial lacing side felt like
it wasn't doing the job of power transfer and stiffness.
Exaggerate it—felt almost no different from a wheel of just the crossed spokes.
Also, those radial spokes on that side kept loosening up.
So I modified the pattern, changing the radial to 1-cross.
Now the only difference is whether it's twisted or not,
but in about two months a spoke nipple pulled through, so I scrapped it.
Wasn't planning to sell it anyway, but it confirmed the obvious answer: unsaleable.
Mixed-diameter single-flange lacing is basically a no-go.
DT makes wheels with a "Triconduct" concept,
but I think they avoid the spoke-nipple-pull problem because
the hub's flange height is different for spoke relief
and the orientation of the non-radial spokes is very carefully worked out.
Plus they use straight-gauge spokes. That's big too.
↑Found it while searching.
A photo from when I was building these.
This is "free-side inpoke XI-pattern / non-free-side outpoke radial".
After this I changed the non-free side to all-inpoke XI-pattern too,
but I don't have photos of that.
I'm using neologisms like "XI-pattern", but I'm not claiming to have invented them.
Hand anyone an 18H rear hub and they'd end up building it this way out of sheer necessity.
The matching front wheel was a Tni carbon 18H XI-pattern,
but I didn't have the idea of mixed-diameter spokes back then, and
since it was a prototype I was nervous about thin spokes, so
I built the whole thing with 2.0mm plain spokes.
Terms like "inpoke", "Yonroku lacing", "XI-pattern"—if you coin terminology like this,
you can fit pretty much any lacing into a category, which is convenient.
↑If you're hung up only on spoke tension,
making the 3 radial spokes thin
(though I don't know what the actual ratio should be)
should get you close to the 6 tangent spokes.
The idea is mixed-diameter mixed-pattern to cancel things out toward zero.
But that only equalizes spoke tension—it doesn't equalize spoke deflection or
RK on the nipple side.
However, there is a groundbreaking lacing method that equalizes all three (tension, deflection, RK).
You can copy it if you want!
It's same-diameter same-pattern lacing! On 18H, tangent lacing can't give you all same-pattern spokes, so just make it radial lacing!
Use all the same spoke model in radial lacing and
on a front wheel, spoke tension, deflection, and RK all match!
18H XI-pattern lacing is something you resort to only when you find yourself stuck building a rear wheel with an 18H rear hub, and it has almost no merit!
The biggest drawback is spoke tension variance.
Though honestly you won't notice without using a tension meter.