My favorite saddles have been the Avocet Touring II and the San Marco "Touring" saddle. The big drag about the San Marco is that it doesn't have bag loops. (who designs a touring saddle without bag loops?)

In terms of comfort- they seem about equal, and they seemed to be the fine examples of the plastic saddle with padding and a leather cover. They seem very well supportive- and just right for my sit bones. Judging from the ubiquity of the Avocet saddles, they appear to work well for a lot of different people.

Last summer I got a Brooks B17 (actually a birthday present). IMMEDIATELY I noticed a huge difference in "support" with the B17- and it made sense why so many people are so happy with their B17 saddles. I started getting kind of angry at myself for not checking out a B17 sooner. Although there was some aspect of "I don't need to spend the money for a Brooks and I don't want the hassle of a leather saddle and I don't want to wreck an expensive Brooks leather saddle," the majority of my decision making process was that the Avocet and the San Marco worked well for me.

After "discovering" the B17, I went nutty and bought a Brooks Cambium C17 based mostly on [MENTION=201510]AZORCH[/MENTION]'s blog and his posts here. That saddle is gloriously dominant. I'm still not sold on the look, and it doesn't play well with one pair of shorts I have (the cloth cover acts like Velcro). It's even more comfortable than the B17 and just knowing it's weatherproof made it really worth it for me. Of course, the Avocet Touring II and the San Marco can be found for around $25- and the Brooks saddles are not found near that price.

I'm glad there's a thread here that's devoted to dispelling the saddle ignorance that's spread by stupid people parroting garbage they read on the internetz.