anyone use one of these? all the bikeshop by my house has is either those or chris king. which is weird. its either $25 or $125. i just wanna know, do the aheads stickup alot above the stem? ive looked at some pictures but thought id ask here.

Ive got a 1" ahead headset on my commuter. It works pretty well.

Yes, I have one. It works great. I have ridden for about two years in the rain and bad weather, and have never had any problems with it. Spins smooth and evenly.

I'm in the market for a new headset myself, so I've been seeing the same variance. Thing is, for your $125 you get sealed cartridge bearings. Neat-o.

theres actually a aheadsets with sealed bearings for $66 at bikeworks also

You can get sealed cartirige bearings for $40 too. If you LBS says you need a king to get a decent sealed bearing headset they are trying to screw you over, run away.

Aheadsets work but they kind of suck There are plenty of headsets in the $40-60 range that will work about as well as a CK. That is where you should be looking unless the bike is a junker.

No threadless headset will stick up above the stem unless you don't cut the fork and have to put headset spacers up there.

While I'm no huge fan of CK headsets, they are more hype than anything, they do work well and what I love about them is the ability to buy parts for them direct from Chris King. People at Chris King are super easy to deal with and have fast shipping if you need a new bearing or a top cap or whatever random part. As far as how a CK headest works...I can tell no different from a cheape $20 FSA or Cane Creak OEM one. But the people at CK are total stand-up people...right there it's worth buy s CK headest.