[Closed] £100 plus saddles ...

too boring looking for me

looks over comfort - just get more padded undershorts if an issue

Saddles are about shape and fit, it could cost £1000 and cripple you or £10 and be awesome and every other combination.

Ti Spoon here, not the lightest not the flashest but I can sit on it all day long.

I'd want it to be 29er specific for that kind of money.

If showing off and price is important then why not just strap a wad of £50's to the top of the seatpost and sit on that?

To be fair the Trailmaster is a really nice looking bit of kit.

That Chromag looks like the On-One Bignose

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Lots of brands get made by the same OEM manufacturer, but with different covers, graphics, etc.

I've got a Bontrager Evoke RXL Carbon, it came fitted to a bike, and I planned to change it to Phenom, but it's really comfy!

Fit's more important, but more so on the road bike. 145mm saddles havee limping after a road ride, but on the MTB I can barely tell them appart from 130mm models. Case in point, my current MTB saddle is my old road one which was too uncomfortable.

I usualy buy expensive saddles 2nd hand afer some other muppets paid 150 quid plus and sells it for 50 after one ride.

I've got a Bontrager Evoke RXL Carbon

Me too, 'feathery' light to offset the weight of the reverb a little. Thing is though, I bought it on the basis that I know'wide' Bontrager saddles suit my backside and through a sale and PSA voucher it was only £40. I wouldn't have bought it otherwise.

I bought one of these which I thought was most definitely worth it...

http://www.probikeshop.com/dirty-zero-camo-saddle-carbon/88417.html

I've had a fizik Akiante carbon/ carbon rails on my road bike since 2006. I find it very comfortable and its been very reliable. On a cost/ mile basis it's probably much cheaper than some of the cheaper saddles up there ^^ 😉

it goes under your arse, looks not important.

I would say, after frame, forks and wheels, the saddle is the most important thing looks-wise on a bike - when you're not riding it. it can totally transform the way it looks.
similar to how a stem/ top-cap is important because that's what you see when you're riding it - at least when you're bored going uphill. 🙂

Just bought my first properly expensive saddle (Bontrager Paradigm RXXXL) for the road bike, and although I've only done a few hours on it, its waaaay more comfierer than any other road saddle I've had, not cheap ones either, £50-£80 range.

I got an ISM Adamo on 14 day free trial while I was waiting for Hydrocele Testis operation.
I ended up buying it for over £100, because it was the only way I could keep riding. Normal saddles were just too uncomfortable.
Since then, I've had the operation, so can sit on a normal saddle again, but I've bought two more anyway for my other bikes, although I got them a bit cheaper off ebay.

Better quality saddles will generally be lighter, have hulls that are tuned to flex with you and have covers that have been both glued and stapled so that they go for much longer without coming away. The padding will generally go for longer before becoming overly squidgy and unsupportive as well.

If you've found a £30 saddle that suits you then brilliant. Sadly my rump has expensive Italian tastes.

I know they split opinion but I swear by Brooks and Assos chamois cream.

Does it matter what materials the rails are made of? Sometimes I'll see a saddle with ti rails alot cheaper than one with cro - mo ... The Chromag Trail master Ltd according to distributor is unavailable for a while - I do think leather is a nice material for a saddle...

I keep thinking of trying one of those selle smp saddles, but I do baulk at the price. If I knew they would be more comfortable then I wouldn't mind paying, especially for touring and bikepacking, comfort for long days for a week or so at a time, then the cost becomes irrelevant when compared to the benefits (within reason). I can't find anywhere around here that has trial saddles though.

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they're bloody ugly though

Does it matter what materials the rails are made of? Sometimes I'll see a saddle with ti rails alot cheaper than one with cro - mo ... The Chromag Trail master Ltd according to distributor is unavailable for a while - I do think leather is a nice material for a saddle...

Rails usualy go from solid Cr-Mo, to hollow Cr-Mo, other various steel alloys like Vanadium Trioxide, then Ti, then carbon. The shells on cheep saddles are injection moulded reinforced plastic, then more expensive ones will have increacing ammounts of carbon or other fibres to lighten/stiffen/make springy.

Ti is usualy lighter and flexes more which gives the saddle more 'spring'. Gilding the lilly though, or making a purse form a sows ear. If the saddle isn't comfortable it won't improve it.

If you're picking saddles without trying them then there's a few things you can guess at. Width, usual 130 or 145 or sometimes wider, has no relation to how wide your hips are, but how wide the bones you sit on are, some shops can measure this, otherwise just buy a few saddles and try them back to back on the road, after a few miles the wrong width ones become fairly obvious. Some saddles swoop up at the back, some dont, generaly MTB saddles are better flat. The cut out in the middle is determined by how rotated your pelvis is (mainly due to short hip flexors from too much cycling and not enough stretching), more rotation means bigger cutouts as essentialy it moves your junk further back/down.

I find the less saddle under me the comfier I am. The 135g selle is perfect but I wont pay that for a new saddle. 2nd hand always great in saddles!