Dura Ace 7700 vs 7800 shifters?

It's a very long time since I used 7700 (which I never had issues with), but the 7800s were really nice, great ergonomics. I had them on my turbo bike until quite recently, having used them for about 15 years on the road. The external cables made for a nice light action and somewhere to hook your thumbs, and I always liked the 'fishing float' type indicator.

The tiagra 4500 shifters are tge same shape as the 7800s, just with added ugly useless gearindicators. Function and feel vnice how everything

7700 shifters are great but 7800 is basically the pinnacle of mechanical shifting. The entire groupset is perfect in terms of function.
But, 7700 is prettier, so it depends on your priorities.

I was fortunate enough to run both for many years and still have a 7700 setup waiting to go onto a frameset of suitable vintage. Sold all 7800 and most of it runs on the bikes of my friends, still going strong as daily users.

Just bear in mind that RH 7800 shifters can pack up and they are now hard to get hold of or are pretty pricey if they do turn up. I've got a 7800 groupset on my Sabbath September, complete aprt from (you've guessed it) RH shifter. I managed to get hold of a 10 speed 106 shifter that looks pretty similar so isn't too glaring. The quality of the rest of it is just *chef's kiss.

I've got 7800 on my old S-Works. It looks stunning, the quality is spot on. That was the last iteration of STI where the cable came out the side, after that it went to full internal (under the bar tape) routing for brake and gear.

The shifters are begining to show occasional quirkiness, it will sometimes miss a shift or you need to throw the lever forwards a fraction to get it to engage but apart from that it's still pretty much perfect.

Alost as goo as 7400 with downtube shifters. Mine is flawless and beautiful.

My fear is that 7700 shifters will be less durable, but guess I can wait and see if a good deal comes up (always a bit iffy to buy used however)

So I made the switch, and for now I regret it, the DA 7700 is a lot smaller in the hand, maybe good for small hands? 0.5 cm shorter reach. Harder to get on the brakes in "aero" mode.

But they will do until I find a good deal on the 7800s :))

I have not used 7700 but adding to the comments above, 7800 are fantastic shifters. Mine are from 2007 with almost 90,000km on them and still look great and function perfectly! My friend who rides DA9100 was positively shocked at how good they are.

7700 feels like a toy in comparison, but may get used to them.. Look good though and weigh 100g less than the tiagras they replaced :p

7700 are smaller but I have huuuuge hands and get on with them just fine. Bars were a different shape back then and so they were mounted at a different angle, generally further round the bar than now. There were very few flat transitions from bar to hood, by 7800 it was more common to use compact bars and so they were designed as such.

Yeah they're not unusable, just a lot less nice to hold, hoods are more flimsy also and there aren't replacements made. I can suffer a little for fashion however it's not a racebike 😉

Yeah they’re not unusable, just a lot less nice to hold, hoods are more flimsy also and there aren’t replacements made.

There were a lot of ergonomics changes going on between the iterations at that time - as @LS says, a lot was to do with how bar shape was changing - and then finally the next groupset in the chain went to fully internal (under the bar tape) cable routing.

You're not going to find replacement 7700 hoods now! Even 7800 is getting hard to find, especially since most people believe it to be the best shifting mech DA around and hoard it.

Took me a while (and a fair chunk of money) to find replacement chainrings for my 7800 DA chainset. Put it on the right generation of frameset though and it still looks class. It really is timeless kit.

I guess if you can pay a bit you can still get nos 7700 and 7800 hoods, but they're getting pricy. There are however a lot of offbrand 7800 hods still for sale.

I'm going to keep my eyes out for a nice pair of ST 7800 (they sell within seconds on ebay kleinanzeigen or olx in poland!), only need a new cassette and chain to upgrade to 10 speed 🙂

I've had luck liberally spraying WD40 into the internals of 7800 shifters to revive them, but the front shifter eventually did pack up completely so I sold mine. There may be a way of reviving them properly, but I didn't get that far.

Since it's an Italian bike, perhaps sell the Shimano stuff and go for some 10 speed silver Caampagnolo?

I'm going full Dura Ace 7700, better, cheaper and more avail than Campag. Plus I'm fitting it with 46 mm satin carbon lightbicycle DA 7700 hub silver spoke wheels, so it wouldn't be a "pure" italian build in any case. It'll be a sweet vintage / modern hybrid, smooth, fast and light-ish for not a ton of money buying all the components used (in poland).

Sounds like an interesting build.
DA7800 shifters on my commuter/tourer/rough stuff bike. Shifting a Sram red FD and Deore xt 9sp RD 😄
https://flic.kr/p/2mQijwM