tagaproject6

Define "good" and please quantify "good", just so everyone is clear. Are your standards pretty much what we should all aspire to achieve?

surgeonstone

For me...
Fizik Arione was an ass hatchet.
Fizik Aliente, a slightly duller ass hatchet
Specialized Romin- OK but began to really hurt on long rides.
Brooks Professional- pure cycling bliss that keeps getting better year by year.

LesterOfPuppets

Once upon a time I scored a couple of SDG Belairs for $10 apiece and fell in love. They're not too bad @ regular price, maybe $40. The covers tore kinda easily compared to my one kevlar sided saddle, but I recovered them for their 11th birthday.

I'm loving the Charge Spoon also. $26. A hair narrower and a hair firmer than SDG Belair.

I tried Ideale (French Brooks-like saddle) for a couple years but wasn't into it. Would get sticky when wet, yuck. I ride year round and it rains all the time here, so not for me.

Carbon Unit

I coun't sit on a Arione for two minutes. I think the shape of the saddle caused my sit bones to spread like a wishbone. The pain was intense. Saddles tend to cause me numbness so saddles with really wide cut outs.

ddeadserious

My standards are just so high, there's no way you could achieve the level that I'm at.

jhan1414

Ha

(Yes,I know I'm five years late)

DGlenday

GCN just did an interview with the product manager from Fizik.

Among other things, one of the questions he was asked was ... what's the difference between an expensive saddle and a cheap one.

Look it up on YouTube.

79pmooney

To get right to the point (and no, I didn't read most of the posts) - your butt does not care how much you spent. A saddle that fits and works is good, one that doesn't isn't. It's really that simple. An expensive saddle may last longer doe to better construction. A cheap saddle has the plus that if it isn't great, you have many fewer reasons not to replace it with a seat that works better.

My body changed in my 40s. The leather covered plastic Selle Italia's that worked very well for me for most of two decades stopped working. I spent a lot more money on Selle Italia's best seat, the ti railed Turbomatic. Better, but ... My cycling went on a decline. Then I had a surgery and knew I neede to go on the trainer routine as part of my recovery. Went to a bike shop open to the idea that one of the new seats (this was 2000) might be what I needed. Bought the cheapest, last year's model of a seat with a full length groove. Heavily padded with a plastic cover. Eeeewww!!! And it worked! Comfort I hadn't seen for a decade.

I quickly bought the expensive top model to put on my good bike and relegated the cheap one to my all-weather bike. But that cheap one served so well I rode it 10 years and into the ground. (The cheap one was actually, for me, a significantly better seat at 1/3 the price. The "good" one got retired with low miles, the cheap one died with many thousands.)

So, my advice - take all the advice you here from others with a grain of salt. You butt has neither ears nor a brain that can be swayed by convincing arguments and it is the only party in your conversation that matters. Listen to it.

Ask your local shop if they will sell seats with a return policy. Many now do. A shop here in Portland takes it a step further. It has a library, literally, of seats. Buy a library card for $25 and you can take any seat out for a week. You can do this as many different seats as you like. (They have roughly two dozen.) Like one and a new, boxed one is yours with your library card money going toward it.

Oh, I just saw the 8/24/12 and noticed the "12'. 8/24? I missed this by a just a week and a half. Oops!
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Ben

noodle soup

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