bradtx

Hi All, Because of my rainy day(s) tinkering and the T700 build I've wrapped four handlebars in semi rapid succession. While I wrapped one with my favorite Cinelli cork I moved out of my comfort zone with a couple of other brands. We've all seen black handlebar tape so I didn't take pictures.

For the '80 RRA I tried some Origin8 PROpulsion. Nice, but has a "finger groove" pattern and isn't as smooth as the Cinelli tape.

For the T700 I used Salsa Gel Cork. This is non adhesive, has an appearance similar to Cinelli, but again not quite as smooth. It isn't as padded as some gel tapes, which I like and I tried it hoping that it'll be tolerant of wet riding.

The final brand I bought is Fizik Microtex tape. I haven't installed it yet (waiting on some 600 levers) and would like comments from those that've used it.

Brad

randyjawa 

I tried installing the Fizik for a friend, on his bike and, quite frankly, blew it. Part of the problem was that I had never used that tape before, so my negative appraisal is not all the tape's fault.

I found the tape to be very hard to conform to tight curves. Wrapping the brake lever/bar transition points did not look good, in my opinion. Again, perhaps if I knew how to wrap handlebars properly.

I have, however, wrapped about four hundred sets of bars, in the last few years, and all successfully, with the cheapo/looks/vintage/stuff, I use.

I should add that one other, lack of successful wrapping, occurred a few years ago, when I tried to wrap cotton tape on my Peugeot PX10(well, it was mine, up until last Thursday). That installation did not go as well as I was expecting and I went back to the stuff I know best...

Puget Pounder

I like Fizik. As randy said, it takes some care to get around the bends, but when you get it right, it looks goooood. One thing though, Fizik doesn;t have much padding. A lot of people will use gloves with it to compensate for the lack of padding. Fizik is my preferred bar tape.

auchencrow

I still use cloth on my older bikes, but for after trying everything else on my newer bikes, I have settled on Bike Ribbon Pro padded tape:

It's cheap-
Its durable-
It's easy to wrap.

- and it has a good tactile feel - not to hard and not mushy, like many other padded/cork tapes.

yuyax

Well.. I am still a fan of Benotto, double wrapped of course, and I find them on Ebay. Different sellers have different prices. The padding or lack padding is/was never an issue for me.