When a front derailleur is present, it’s hard to argue against picking a crank from the same company that makes your derailleurs and shifters. After all, they’re designed to work together.
However, the new age of 1x gearing has helped to make off-road-going bikes simpler to use, easier to service, and arguably more reliable. That simplicity has also helped to reduce the walled gardens of the biggest component manufacturers ruling the roost. Today, there’s an overwhelming amount of choice in cranksets for anyone with a bit of cash to splurge and a desire to add some individuality – and perhaps a talking point – to the most centrally located component of their bicycle.
Beyond the biggest drivetrain manufacturers offering brand-matched cranks across multiple price points, you have mainstream brands such as FSA, Rotor, RaceFace, Easton, Praxis, Hope, and more, all vying for your interest.
Meanwhile, for those seeking something obviously different to place in the centre of their bike, there are niche and certainly premium brands such as CaneCreek, Ingrid, 5Dev, Raketa, ActoFive, and, as you’ve just read in the title, Garbaruk.
While the focal point of this review is Garbaruk’s Road/Gravel crankset, I also hope to provide some insight into other cranksets to consider and why you may (or may not) want to take such a path.
Bad stuff: Limited crank length options, a big 12 mm hex key is needed for the crank bolt, the chainring lockring is delicate and nerve-wracking, there have been reports of increased chain noise with SRAM Flat Top chains, wider Q-Factor limits appeal to road bike use.
Price: US$420 for the crankset, US$85 for matching 1x ring, US$65 for the 2x spider.
Garbaruk and the borrowing of a familiar design
Formerly from Ukraine and now based in Poland, Garbaruk is a boutique CNC-specialist manufacturer that made its name in high-end 1x chainrings nearly a decade ago and has since become a common choice for wide-range cassettes and matching derailleur cages. Garbaruk’s entry into cranks came in 2022 with a cross-country mountain bike crank, which more recently grew into a narrower and marginally lighter option for dropbar bikes.
Garbaruk's cranks have a clamshell design, with each crank arm made up of two CNC-machined 7075 aluminium pieces hollowed out into a boat-like shape and then bonded together. Garbaruk intentionally gives the cranks an obviously machined aesthetic, with tool paths seen throughout. While such a two-piece design is not a cheap way to make a crank, the concept has been well-proven through the widely-regarded Cannondale Hollowgram SiSL cranks (which followed the original Magic Motorcycle cranks in design intent) and, more recently, by FSA.
Garbaruk is hardly hiding that its cranks were inspired by Cannondale’s creation by adopting both Cannondale’s axle spline and direct-mount chainring interfaces. However, while the interfaces may be the same, the execution of the chainring lockring and crank bolts are different enough to limit cross-compatibility.
To start, the crankset was marketed as a product designed to fit elegantly with the company’s own 1x chainrings. And while that remains true, Garbaruk has now just added a 2x spider option (US$65) for use with aftermarket 110BCD x 5 bolt chainrings. However, that spider size means a 33T chainring is the smallest option.
Garbaruk themselves produce matching direct-mount 1x narrow-wide chainrings in sizes from 38T to 46T (growing in 2T increments), in both round and oval shapes. Where it’s common for competing brands to offer different tooth profiles for matching with the fussy profiles of Shimano 12-speed or SRAM AXS Flat Top chains, Garbaruk instead has a single-tooth profile that is claimed to work with almost everything under the sun. The company seemingly achieves this by relying on a narrower but taller tooth profile for secure chain retention rather than a profile that achieves such retention through increased tooth width. I’ll return to this.
The choices continue with anodised colours. There are eight colour options for the crank arms, the self-extracting crank lockrings, the chainrings, or the 2x spider. You can either match all the colours (or blacks) as I did, or you can go wild with the multitude of possible mixed configurations. Purple crank and silver chainring? Indeed. Black crank and chainring but gold lockrings? Oh yes. Orange, green, and gold in one crank? Yes, but also eww.
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