The leather hammock saddles are not padded with urethane foam. I don't use padded bike shorts or a chamois for short rides of an hour or under 30 miles. If I were anticipating riding for many hours or all day, even if I were only covering 30 miles but sitting in the saddle for 5 hours or more, then cycling shorts are an asset with any saddle. It's not just the padding, but also the protection from bunched trousers chaffing. Now I suppose if a person were just wearing lycra shorts or bibs then chaffing wouldn't be a concern, but then why not padded ones? Personally, I don't wear lycra cycling outfits. I wear canvas dungarees or twill chinos when I ride. If I were to plan to ride 90 miles on a given day, I'm going to wear padded/chamois cycling shorts underneath because no saddle by itself would make it advisable to wear only chinos for that kind of riding. But I've ridden many 30-mile routes in only chinos on a Brooks and never had an issue.

My sons have done some touring with me and they rode urethane foam padded saddles with no padded bike shorts. They wore tricot track pants. I've ridden the bikes they were on but not for more than a few miles, so I can only tell you what they reported after riding hundreds of miles. They both disliked the narrow saddle. It was a Selle Royale, but what they disliked was only that it was narrow, like a typical road bike saddle. They preferred the Sunlite Cloud-9 saddle -- a super wide, thick padded suspension saddle (it was on my wife's Cannondale). They alternated bikes during the tour, so they each rode both. My wife also prefers the big wide suspension saddle with thick padding. That Cloud-9 didn't hold up, as I suspect none of the foam saddles will be very durable -- certainly not the 45+ years one of my Brooks has been going. The Cloud-9 has been replaced with a similar foam item. That bike doesn't typically get ridden more than a few miles at a time.