Originally Posted by danimal123
I'll probably alienate a lot of my cycling brethren, but I am NOT a Brooks fan. Just didn't work for me. I bought a B-17N, rode it for 800 miles, proofided it...in short, everything one is supposed to do. After 800 miles, it was still as hard as granite and there was no visible sign of break-in. None. to this day it still looks brand-new.
Somebody report this guy to the moderators for posting in the LD forum.
Early last year I bought a B-17N. For a while, as in several hundred miles, it was quite a good saddle. As it broke in, however, I found out that it was not wide enough for my sit bones, and that I was sitting partitially on the rivets. Cutting out the gory details, the soft flesh around my sit bones got wrecked. Sorry, that was a gory detail. I had to switch to a gel saddle for a few months, which of course gave me chaffing problems.
Then I bought a regular B-17. That is much better, but I still barely fit within the arc of rivets. I only find this out as the saddle gets broken in. Still, it is very comfortable.
In short, there are several different models of Brooks. They all feel a bit different. If you do get one with thicker leather, and they say this is a variable, you could have problems.