Originally Posted by bellweatherman
OK, you asked for it. You want a badazz black stem. Well, here you go. It's made by a company in Italy. Check them out (
www.Extralite.com). Expect to pay some big bucks for shipping. At least it is light, so maybe shipping won't be so bad. It's 82 grams. Yep, 82g! How do you like the inverted steerer tube clamping bolts?! So cool.
Indeed nice stuff, but flexxy. I had the first series of their stem (130 grams) and even I could notice it flex under power. Also very delicate stuff to handle, you really need to look after torque specs with these kind of stems. For normal road rides yes, for sprinting/track no.
I actually put the old type stem back on my MTB, bought a new one. Bit skeptic at first, have run Thomson in the mean time, took really good care when installing. Still flexxy, but it is a nice minimal looking stem.
In the US you can get extralite stuff through light-bikes.com, this will make things a bit easier for you guys to get. Extralite can be a bit of a pain to deal with. No personal experience but I did know the guy that was a distributor for them.
Salsa or Thomson would be my advice.