DT Swiss PRC 1100 Dicut Mon Chasseral wheelset review

The DT Swiss PRC 1100 Dicut Mon Chasseral is an ultra-light tubeless carbon road wheelset with low-profile rims and disc hubs.

Named after a peak in the Jura mountains, the Mon Chasserals are understated and built from top-notch components, but their conservative spec and high price mean they have relatively niche appeal for all but the most committed climbing specialists.

DT Swiss PRC 1100 Dicut Mon Chasseral spec and details

The Mon Chasserals are based on 24mm-deep carbon rims with a relatively modest (by current standards) internal width of 18mm, which DT Swiss says is optimised for 25mm tyres.

DT Swiss doesn’t make any aero claims about them, the focus is entirely on weight.

Like all of DT’s road range, the Mon Chasserals are tubeless-ready, and they ship with tubeless tape and valves.

Where some manufacturers have moved to a hookless rim design, DT Swiss is sticking with hooks, meaning you can still run standard clinchers if you want to – going tubeless is optional.

The Mon Chasserals are built on a dedicated variant of DT Swiss’s flagship 180 hubs, the lightest in the brand’s range, and they’re fitted here with ceramic bearings for rolling resistance bragging rights.

The hubs are slender and minimalist, and feature centerlock disc rotor mounts. It’s worth noting that some Shimano centerlock lockrings don’t work on these, as I discovered when I pulled a set of random Shimano rotors out of my spares box for testing.

Although the thread is the same, the lockrings that came with my test wheels bottomed-out before the rotor was cinched down. DT Swiss distributor Madison tells me that the latest Shimano road lockrings do work however, so this may not be an issue with newly-bought components. In my case, I fitted a pair of DT Swiss lockrings instead.

The rear hub gets Ratchet EXP internals, the latest iteration of DT’s well-established star ratchet design that also features in the new mainstay 240 hub.

Ratchet EXP claims some advantages (lower weight, greater durability, increased stiffness due to wider bearing stance) over previous designs.

Basic maintenance of these hubs – i.e. cleaning out filth that’s worked its way past the outer seals – is straightforward. You simply pull the end caps off.

Full servicing is somewhat more involved and requires a dedicated spline tool to remove the ring nut, wherein the driveside rear axle bearing resides. Full instructions can be found on the DT Swiss website (opens .pdf).

DT Swiss laces the wheels with a T-head variant of its Aero Comp Spokes, secured with hidden Pro Lock aluminium nipples.

T-heads have the advantage that they can’t rotate when you’re truing the wheel, a bonus for long-term maintenance. On the other hand, as a proprietary part, they’re less likely to be available at short notice for emergency repairs.

I weighed two sets of Mon Chasserals and they averaged to near enough bang-on their claimed weight of 1,266g (one was just under, one just over) including rim tape, with the valves adding about 8g.

Setup and tyre thoughts

Other than the rotor lockring compatibility issue noted above, there were no setup issues to speak of.

The Mon Chasserals were true (a given) and evenly tensioned (not a given) out of the box, and stayed this way throughout testing.

I tested the Mon Chasserals with two different sets of tubeless road tyres: the 28mm Schwalbe Pro One TLE and Continental’s 32mm Grand Prix 5000 TL.

Both seated and inflated with ease. When I reviewed the Schwalbe tyres, I noted that they measured up slightly large on the Roval C 38 rims I was using, which have an internal width of 21mm. The Mon Chasserals are substantially narrower at 18mm internal, and the same tyres come up around 1mm smaller on them, at approximately 27.4mm wide.

The 28s had a slight ‘light bulb’ profile on these wheels, while the effect was pronounced with the 32mm Continentals.

This isn’t surprising when you consider the rims are optimised for 25s, but it’s worth mentioning in an era when road rims are getting wider and wider.

We’re fans of slightly larger tyres – they’re comfier and there’s little to no performance penalty – and some other rims will get more out of your 28mm-plus tyres.

Riding the Mon Chasserals

On the road all these details have a way of melting away. The Mon Chasserals ride as you’d hope a super-light wheelset would.

The performance benefits of dropping a few hundred grams of wheel weight are debatable, but there’s no question that they feel light and lively when you’re stamping on the pedals up a climb.

Despite their ultra-low weight, the Mon Chasserals don’t want for stiffness either – there’s no sense of unwanted flex under hard efforts.

These wheels compensate for their understated appearance with a distinctive cicada-like freehub note, a DT Swiss trademark.

I exclusively ran the wheels tubeless, taking advantage of the option to run ultra-low pressures. Although the rims’ middling width doesn’t maximise tyre volume, I had no issues running my 28mm tyres at around 52psi front / 58psi rear with my 53kg weight.

DT Swiss PRC 1100 Dicut Mon Chasseral review

These are very nice wheels, but I question who’s actually going to buy them. It’s very hard to make a case for them as a rational purchase because they occupy such a small niche.

If you’re absolutely weight-fixated but want the advantages of a modern tubeless wheelset, I guess they kind of make sense. The thing is, while they are very light, we’re only talking around 200 to 300g less than a decent carbon aero wheelset or a (much, much more affordable) low-profile aluminium one.

Take the recently-launched Zipp 303 Firecrest, for example. It’s significantly wider (25mm internal), deeper sectioned (and doubtless more aero), less than 100g heavier, and over £1,000 cheaper.

DT Swiss can point to its history of making industry-leading hubs as a key difference, but at face value it’s a stark contrast all the same.

Taken in isolation, however, the Mon Chasserals are beautifully made wheels that perform brilliantly and will knock a small chunk of weight off all but the lightest bikes.

If you’re running narrower tyres, have bottomless pockets and don’t care at all about aerodynamics, they could be for you.