Take a Seat please
 

Hello,
I am getting ready to order my Surly Ogre bike. I can't find any threads on seats for Touring, This will be my first time touring. I am 5'9" 200 lb. Everyone raves about Brooks Saddles but would that be a good comfortable seat? Thanks for the Suggestions. I have always just used the seats that come with the bike.

As for the Brooks the B17 is the most popular. Velo Orange makes some very nice leather touring saddles, the leather is a bit stiffer and I never cover mine even in the rain. Selle Anatomica also makes a waterproof saddle.

I have rode all three and prefer the selle for my go fast bike and the VO for my LHT. YMMV.

what saddles have you tried? Its your butt on the thing..

on my daily ride,I have an 80s race saddle, SI Turbo, SM Rolls in similar type, on my road bike
have a couple Brooks Pros on other bikes, did use them on prior tours of month + duration.

Fizik Vitesse, another good saddle.. I got one that was a Brompton ordered batch,
Length, high clearance rail's bend allow for more set back.

living where it's wet, the fully leather Brooks saddle, stays on the shelf , for now

SI having bought Brooks raised the prices (return on investment loans) and made it fashionable ,
Now, selling in so many more colors , than Before.

17 is wider and flatter across the back., Pro is arched. 67 is wide, Colt is a different shape.
dozens of models , just in Brooks range.

the Selle Anatomica is made to act like 2 strip saddles, each, to move with your thighs,
aims at the Pro's niche. also made without the hole punched out of the middle .

so go forth and sit on a bunch of Saddles , its not my backside to satisfy, but yours.

I, literally, wouldn't ride a Brooks saddle if you paid me to! Everybody's butt is different. You need to find what works for you.

well I guess I will just stick with what comes with the bike I ain't going to go buy another seat ($$$) to find out I don't like it . I have never rode a bike for 8 hours strait so the factory seat will get me by.

Good plan. Reading about what saddles work for other people isn`t TOTALLY worthless, but pretty close to it.

I'd suggest finding a LBS that can measure how wide your sit bones are.
That will give you an idea of the saddle shape you need.
I've been riding on a $10 cheapie that's worked well because of its
shape. But, now that my ride times are getting around the three hour mark, my
sit bones are starting to hurt. That's why I'm looking at the Brooks B17 imperial is for
added support. YMMV

Wallingford offers: " * 6 Month UNCONDITIONAL SATISFACTION GUARANTEE - new BROOKS and BERTHOUD saddles. Return your new saddle at any time within six-months of the ship date for a full refund of the price of the saddle. Shipping will not be refunded unless there is a manufacturing defect that would make the return a factory warranty issue."

http://www.wallbike.com/warranty-and-other-information

That takes some of the worry out of spending money on a saddle that may not work for you.

If you do get a Brooks,give it some time to break in.Ive got the B17 Special.It took about 400 miles to break in.I wanted to throw it in the ocean,but I resisted.Now I can ride it without padded shorts.

Not really.

The only company I know which makes a measuring device is Specialized. Their Ass-o-meter is calibrated to their saddles. Unless you can find another saddle company that measures and sizes saddles exactly the same as Specialized, knowing what the Ass-o-meter recommends isn't going to help much. Even with Specialized saddles, it's hit-and-miss in my experience. I got measured, tried a bunch of saddles in the recommended size and none of them were comfortable. The only Specialized saddle that came close was a size smaller than the Ass-o-meter recommended!

In addition, knowing the width of your sit bones won't tell you a thing about what shape saddle you need. Does your saddle need a long nose, short nose, or no nose? Sit bone width doesn't help with that. Do you need a dead flat saddle, slightly curved, or radically curved? Again, sit bone width has no correlation as far as I can tell. Do you need a cut-out or not? Again, sit bone width doesn't help predict your preference.

The best way to buy a new saddle is to decide what you don't like about your current saddle, then look for something that's eliminates or minimizes that problem.

Yes.

But you'd want to get one several months before your tour so that it can start the break-in process.

Are you comfortable on the seat that comes with your bicycle? Can you do the distance you intend to do on your tour 2 or 3 days in a row with no issues?

I like the Terry Men's Liberator. (The saddle that came with my Surly LHT is o.k. but not great.) You can get the Liberator from REI, which means you can return it for a full refund if it doesn't work for you.

I too have a Terry saddle that has served me well for almost 50,000 miles. It is showing some wear and I think that when it comes time to replace it I might try a Brooks B-17. The Terry is fairly heavy.

So is a Brooks. :)

kardar2, Run the saddle that comes with the bike, this will allow you to make an assesment for what may be needed. Jf you still have any saddles that you've removed in the past, try them also as they may perform better with a touring posture.

I don't have a 'Brooks butt', but for those that do there is no substitute.

Brad

yup, I no longer fit the Concor I had, too much perineal pressure as I got older and heavier and after raising bars from racing drop to 1" below seat height. Tried out the aptly named Ass-O-Meter and it measured me narrow, tried it for two weeks then got the wider size. Perfect fit.

+ 1 on the lack of love for the Brooks line.

For me whatever came on each of my bikes has worked out OK. I'd take any of them on a multi-month tour. The one Brooks I tried was just OK when new and went downhill from there for me. By the time it was "fully broken in" I hated it.

When I did buy a saddle for a used bike that came without a saddle I bought a Prologo racing saddle. I forget the model, Kappa maybe? Anyway I really like that saddle pretty well, but I like the o.e.m. saddles on my other bikes well enough too.

Anyway my suggestion is to use the saddle that came with the bike, adding miles slowly as you break in to the saddle. Replace it only if you find it unacceptable after a break in period of at least several hundred miles spaced out over a few weeks. I have logged many thousands of miles on a saddle that seemed awful when I first tried it. After a few weeks I started to like it and soon after took it on the Trans America for 73 consecutive days of touring. Since then I have happily done a bunch of other longish tours on it. FWIW that was the saddle that came with my Windsor Touring (same as the Fuji Touring).

Buy a saddle from a shop or company that allows returns or exchanges. The only way you can tell if a saddle fits you is to ride it, and everyone's different. A saddle that is comfortable for one person could be torture for someone else. If you find a saddle that fits, buy an extra one.

That said, lots of cyclists who have had trouble fining a comfortable saddle end up settling on Brooks, and the B17 model is often cited as their most comfortable. I rode B17s for several years until I tried a Fizik Vitesse. The Vitesse was just as comfortable as the B17 but weighed half a much, so I have put them on nearly all of my bikes now. I still have a B17 on my touring bike, however, because it looks so nice and I am less concerned about weight on that bike.

my LBS lets me try a saddle out for a few days to see if it will be the one for me.

There was a shop near me that had saddles you could rent while you were trying to figure out what worked for you. Unfortunately the owner moved to Hokkaido or something.

+2 for the Terry Liberator. Works great for me - the B17's would always make me numb if I had the saddle tilted enough to keep from sliding off the front.

Saddle comfort depends on your body position to some degree. A minimalist saddle is more comfortable on my road bike (Specialized Toupe) with a flatter back position, whereas a softer, wider saddle is better on my touring bike, for a more upright position (WTB Rocket V). Lots of trial and error is required to find what work best for you.

you can do that .. cheap .. cut out a few pieces of corrugated cardboard,
stack them up on a hard chair at the table, you eat from. and sit down.

then see how far apart the dents from yout sit bones are..

I was reading a thread on the brooks saddle and a person wrote about the Adamo typhoon. I had a brooks saddle about 30-40 years ago never really liked it. I had terry liberator saddles which I thought were pretty good up until a year ago. I got the Adamo and its more comfortable for me. Takes time to get it adjusted but then not much more than any saddle.