I ordered some new 46 cm Ritchie bars last week and they arrived today. It's amazing what 4 cm will do to make the tingling/pain in the hands go away. I rode them for about 15 miles today and felt nothing but my hands on the bars. Didn't put new tape on them yet as I want to fine tune the brake placement.

Which model did you get?

The Logic Pro Road.

You must be a big lad. I run 42's on my bike and when I rode a bike with 44's on they felt enormous. Can't imagine what 46's would feel like.

But on the MTB I used to ride with 24" straight bars. I went to risers that were 27" wide and just thought I would cut them down once I had got used to the rise. Took two rides and I had adjusted to the width and 9 years later I am not getting rid of those bars or cutting them down.

It's funny how the aesthetics of proporions change. I used 42cm bars (c-c) for most of my racing career. Then I bought a new Trek as a complete bike in 2000 (previously I had only bought new frames and transferred the components over). The bike came with 44cm bars, which I immediately liked, so I switched all my other bikes over to 44cm. Now when I look at bikes, the length-to-width proportion with 42 cm bars looks "funny," and 44 cm bars look "normal." Check out some of the photos of the pro's from the 50's, and the bike proportions look even stranger. The bars are too narrow, the saddle is not high enough, the frame is too big, etc. etc. But at the time the aesthetics were dead on. Back in the 50's, you wanted really narrow bars if you rode pursuits in order to cut down wind resistance, and in mass starts you wanted to be able to maneuver in the pack. Today you want to impose yourself in your space and have more out-of-saddle pulling leverage with the wider bars.

Luis