Warning: rant.
I started off in the mid-70's with a pair of wool shorts and a real chamois. I was just rinsing them with warm water and line drying for a few months, then my mom got a hold of 'em, and in they went in the washing machine and dryer, thinking I was just a filthy teenager. They got downsized, the chamois turned into sheet metal, so I bought a pair of burgundy synthetic shorts with an early synthetic chamois. And it was the 70's. I caught a lot of grief, but I kept riding with them. Later I got into standard black, then black bibs, and the synthetic chamois improved. I stopped riding regularly after the kids were born, so there was no need to purchase shorts for a good 10 years.
When I started riding regularly again, my couple of pairs of shorts still had life in them until about a year ago, so off to the LBS I went. To my shock, every single pair of shorts had a thick foam pad in them. The synthetic chamois of yesterday had morphed into "systems" with all kinds of buzzwords written out on cards attached to them. I tried several other shops, one gave me the Monty Python line: "these have less padding in them than the others"... I broke down and found online, get this, some NOS wool shorts in my size. Two pair, different makers, one
made in Mexico, the other
Spanish. With REAL chamois. But, I think I like the "old" synthetic chamois better, but with no padding. Or if they did, it was almost nothing. And, truth be told, the wool is a bit itchy, just as I remembered them from my youth. I wear wool socks and wool t-shirts as my base layer, but it's the soft, merino wool kind. These shorts aren't.
I don't want or need padding in my shorts. I break in my leather saddles and they fit my behind just right. The padding in the shorts gets squished down anyways quite easily, so it doesn't really do anything, as far as I can tell. 4 decades of riding, some of it long, hard slogging in extreme heat and fairly cold conditions, I don't want to wear a diaper. I did buy a pair just to try them out, rode in them a few times, and hated them.
All I want is a pair of shorts, the kind I purchased a decade or so ago, 6 or 8 panel, with a synthetic chamois. I don't need grippers at the bottom, but I can live with 'em. I need them to fit snug around my junk and hold them away from the rest of my lower personal area. I use Bag Balm-I'm the son of a dairyman, been using it since I started cycling before I knew that others did.
Last, I commute to work, typically with some of those baggy shorts with pockets made for cycling, and used to wear shorts under them. I gave in to Mr. Petersen's siren song of the wonders of woolen underwear, and bought a pair, then, ignoring his fitting guidelines, bought them "snug" sized, since I knew I needed to "keep 'em separated" (as the song goes). So far, so good. I've gone up to 45 miles in them. I have an 8 day tour coming up in a few weeks. I DO have one pair of barely hanging in there lycra shorts with no padding that are still wearable, although they're almost see through at this point. I plan on doing an A-B test between the shorts and the wool undies. The baggy shorts will be worn over both. I'll keep switching off daily if I don't see an immediate difference. I'll stop using one if there is a clear winner.
Iin the meantime, if anyone knows a source of a non-padded, lycra, synthetic chamois short, let me know!