Bing. Unless you want your stem to be a centerpiece (Cinelli Alter, 3T Mutant), the Thomson is the way to go. I've seen them on everything from track bikes to freeride machines. They look great and work flawlessly on all.

They are beautiful pieces of engineering too. Thomson seat posts are ovalized on the inside in the fore/aft direction. It intuitively makes sense, but if you do the actual math with moment of inertias about the centroid of the beam, it proves to be the optimal case. It makes it stronger in the direction when it bends from your weight, and lighter by removing material from where you don't need it, on the sides (because you don't need to worry as much about flexing side to side). I actually brought in my seatpost to show some of the students in the Mechanics of Materials class I'm TA'ing right now.

If an aluminum seatpost is NOT ovalized then it isn't optimized. There are a bunch of qualifying statements to that, but just let me say that the ovalization is smart hahhahah.

http://www.montevistaphotography.com...534982-M-1.jpghttp://www.montevistaphotography.com...52523640-M.jpg before the outside of the [edit] posts are shaved down...you can see the inner ovalization. good stuff... http://www.montevistaphotography.com...52525079-M.jpg
stems to be...
http://www.montevistaphotography.com...52531504-M.jpg

I have a Nitto that's going on my next bike.

This makes me hot.

hahaha...i hear ya, man. i hear ya...

personally I like the look of the elite a lot more than the X2. the X2 is too space-age for me. the elite is no nonsense. and the wedge steerer clampy thingy rules.

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.

http://www.extralite.com/imagesbike/RoadStem%20UL2.jpg

Look at the Ahearn site for some beautiful custom stems, if you want to spend a ton of money. Rivendell has a 1/2 lugged Nitto stem also that's pretty nice, and unique.

polished

Oh yeah.

My favorites:

My Gunnar


My StumpJumper

Yay Mechanics o Materials! I loved that class, looking forward to some finite element analysis in a term or two.

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.

Purple might be a bit much...

http://www.llewellynbikes.com/thegallery/album47/aaa

^^

I want a carbon fiber chain.

http://xoomgear.com/i/p/l/STEM-1006.jpg


ass ugly but interesting

I am not so sure - this creates way more stress points and less contact area than traditional bolts on the outside. I know how bad this wedge thing worked for a bar clamp for an old Dura Ace design. It looks nice, though.

Anyone know where this can be purchased in 1 & 1/8?

It can't. It was only ever made in 1".

It's out of production now, too, so they're hard to find.

that would explain why I have never been able to find one then :)

I have a black one, 120mm, along with one of the pinup girl stickers. If anyone in the thread is interested, I'll sell it cheap. :)