Ahhh, the search for the holy rail……it can make or break the sport of bicycle riding and I firmly believe that, aside from fear of riding with cars, it is a prime reason why the sport is not more popular than it is.
When I got my wife into riding two years ago, I was apprehensive only because I never really found the perfect seat for my first wife. And while there may be Freudian or Jungian implications to that, far beyond the sport, it was nevertheless a continuing sore point for her. (Pun intended.) We had tried everything out there, including two Brooks models. We learned to stay away from all the hopped up gel seats because they got “hot” and the gel hardens with time. It was extremely frustrating for me because I’ve always used seeming rock hard wedgies that “disappear” after a couple hundred miles every spring.
When my new wife found that she hated the seat that came with her new road bike, I thought, great, here we go again. Then we stumbled into a Specialized dealer owned by a woman, and she had my wife on a little foam pad to see the impressions where her sit bones were. She measured the distance between the impressions and then found a (BG) seat with pressure relieving points that matched. It happened to be an inexpensive ($35) women’s mountain bike seat. She loved that seat and it now adorns all three of her rides. I will be buying a spare this year before it inevitably becomes obsolete.
So…..FWIW. Was it the BG stuff, or the attention from a very competent woman cyclist? Don’t know, but it worked. Good luck in your important search.