Interbike 2012: SDG Saddles

SDG is on a mission to shed their pure-play gravity saddle image. To manage this, they’re making sure the masses know they have a wide array of saddles for all types of riding—from road to cross country to urban.

SDG is offering a demo program for shops to display, and demo, the complete line.

The SDG menu of saddles is rather deep.

SDG feels strongly that the current trend of people sitting on “ass-o-meters” to get their sit bones measured is a bit off the mark. It reckons that too many people take that measurement as an immutable reading and never stray from it. When the reality is that people are always moving in their saddle. Thus, SDG feels you should buy a saddle where you fit in an Optimal Rideable Area (ORA) of a saddle. So get your sit bone measurement, and then pick a saddle that incorporates a large enough area where you sit bones will move around.

SDG's I-beam system. Simple and rigid. Too rigid?

SDG has the line on the I-Beam saddle/post mount. One common comment about the platform is that it’s super-rigid. While that might mean efficiency, it can also mean soreness. To change things up, SDG created an I-beam rail that’s isolated from the base of the saddle. This allows some flex, and ultimately comfort in the saddle.

See the space between the i-beam rail and the bottom of the underside of the saddle.

The Duster is a saddle made for long-distance racing, but works for road and cyclocross, too.

In a unique effort to merchandise and brand their line, SDG created three distinct themed groupings.

This line was inspired by an aesthetic often found in Japanese fashion. Lots of color here.

I’d say this group is quite American. Possibly also influenced by a certain Evel Knievel

Digi camo. A rather conservative style for this group.

Chipps Chippendale

Singletrackworld's Editor At Large

With 23 years as Editor of Singletrack World Magazine, Chipps is the longest-running mountain bike magazine editor in the world. He started in the bike trade in 1990 and became a full time mountain bike journalist at the start of 1994. Over the last 30 years as a bike writer and photographer, he has seen mountain bike culture flourish, strengthen and diversify and bike technology go from rigid steel frames to fully suspended carbon fibre (and sometimes back to rigid steel as well.)