A rider planning a dream build doesn’t want the wheel brand choosing the hub for them. They’ve usually already decided — because one hub brand has earned their trust over years of riding, because it’s lighter or spins smoother than anything else on the market, or because it’s rare enough that building around it is part of the point. The wheelset should be built around that choice, not the other way round. For a surprising number of high-end carbon wheel brands, that’s not how it works: the wheelset is sold as one fixed package, hub included, no substitutions. A custom wheel build starts with the opposite idea.
At 9th Wave, it is. Every rim in the range — the Avalon SL3, the SandStone, and the rest of the lineup — is also sold on its own, exactly as it comes out of the mold. None of the rim’s technology is held back for the complete-wheelset version. The same ART asymmetric rim design that goes into a factory-built 9th Wave wheelset is sitting on the shelf for any wheel builder who wants it.
Why Most Carbon Wheelsets Don’t Let You Choose the Hub
Selling rim and hub as one inseparable unit makes sense for a manufacturer: it’s simpler to build, simpler to warranty, and simpler to sell. But it also means the brand decides the hub for the rider. For most buyers that’s not a problem — our own Onda and DT Swiss hub options cover the overwhelming majority of use cases. For a smaller group of riders, it is: the ones chasing the lightest hub on the market, a specific feel or engagement they trust more than any other, a finish no two brands share, or a name that’s simply more exclusive than what ships standard. No manufacturer can stock every hub a rider might want — there are too many brands worth considering, each with their own reasons to be chosen.
That rider is normally left with two bad options: buy a wheelset with a hub that isn’t the one they actually wanted, or give up on the rim they wanted instead. Neither is necessary once the rim itself is available separately.
Selling the Rim for a Custom Wheel Build
Independent wheel builders are the ones who take us up on this most often. They order 9th Wave rims and spokes to match whatever hub their customer has chosen, lace the wheel to that hub’s flange dimensions and spoke count, and hand back a wheelset that carries 9th Wave’s rim technology into a build that was never going to come off a factory line looking like anything else on the market. The rim itself stays identical to what ships inside a complete 9th Wave wheelset — same depth, same width, same asymmetric offset, same tubeless-ready layup. Only the hub, the spoke choice and the build are decided by the rider and their builder, not by us.
That matters because the rim is doing most of the work a rider actually feels. The asymmetric offset is what keeps spoke tension even between the drive and non-drive side regardless of which hub it’s laced to, and that’s what keeps the wheel round and true under load over years of riding — the hub can change how a build looks, sounds and feels, but it doesn’t change how the rim handles a loaded gravel climb or a hard sprint out of a corner.
TRUST Cycles is one of the shops that builds this way. A recent build of theirs below pairs a 9th Wave rim with hubs the rider chose specifically for that bike, in a combination you won’t find listed on any wheelset page — which is exactly the point of selling the rim on its own.
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Hope, Chris King — or Any Hub You Prefer
The hub brands that come up most often in these builds are Hope and Chris King — both outside 9th Wave’s standard hub program, and both chosen by riders for reasons that have little to do with the rim: Hope’s range of anodized colours for a build that matches down to the smallest part, Chris King’s reputation for a hub that keeps spinning smoothly for a decade or more between services. Neither is a stock option on a complete 9th Wave wheelset, and neither needs to be — the rim doesn’t care which hub it’s laced to, as long as the spoke count and flange dimensions line up with the build. The same goes for any other hub brand a rider trusts more, finds lighter, better finished, or simply more exclusive than what we carry — there’s no shortage of them, and we can’t reasonably stock them all.
On top of our own range, 9th Wave also builds wheels around SON hub dynamos on request, for riders who want that specific capability built in rather than added separately.
Starting a Custom Wheel Build
If you’re planning a custom build around a specific hub, the starting point is the rim rather than a finished wheelset. The ERD you’ll need to calculate spoke length for that hub is listed in the specifications on each rim’s product page. From there it’s a conversation with your wheel builder about spoke count and lacing pattern for the hub you’ve chosen.
Browse the rims available on their own in our Rims category, and build around the hub you trust most.
