Does anybody use this? I'm thinking of spraying painting the front (silver) plate matte black. Is this possible? Would it take the paint? And more importanly would it look good?

ritchey makes nice stuff. looks are subjective. spray paint paints stuff. FIGURE IT OUT.

Couldn't have said it better.

I like my Ritchey WCS stem on my Rush.

That said, I got it for next to nothing.

WCS is fairly high end stuff. I use Ritchey Pro stems on a few bikes and I have no complaints.

Yeah, I'll leave them alone, I got them for agood price on ebay too.