Saddle choices...

[pinkbikes]

Hi Red Rock

I have two mountain bikes and a roadie. They all have different saddles.

The first mountain bike (the hardtail) came with a "WTB Speed She" saddle. I read a few reviews on MTBR qbout that seat and was quite worried I'd hate it, as lots of people seemed to. It doesn't have a cutout as such, but has a channel down the middle of it and a pronounced sag in the middle to protect the squishy bits. I have found this saddle quite good, and even bought another to put on my touring tandem, although with the different seating postion it is not quite so good. The tandem tilts me a little more forward due to a longer cockpit.

The second mountain bike (the dual suspension) came with the Specialized Ariel saddle with titanium rails. It has a small women's cutout and comes in a few widths, and also with cro-mo rails (I don't expect I'd be able to tell the difference!) When I first sat on it I thought "Hmmm - that's a bit hard!" but it is just fantastic and I like it even better than the WTB one. I am actually thinking about going and buying another Ariel to put on the hardtail.

My roadie came with a horrid Tioga seat with men's cutout. It was soft and felt great until about 20km and then felt like somebody had turned on a pain switch and it just killed me! I then bought the second WTB Speed She and put it on and it was OK but only when you were sitting up on the hoods. Eventually I got an inexpensive BBB road seat with a women's cutout for the roadie, which has been better but still not perfect. I have thought about talking to the bike fitter where I bought my second moutain bike about what Specialized road seat will give a similar fit to the Ariel for the roadie. And I might even just buy the Ariel for the roadie!

So in summary:

- The Specialized Ariel is terrific for me!
- The WTB Speed She was pretty good for me even though it had bad reviews!
- It is fine to put whatever seat you like on whatever bike you like. It's your butt that has to sit on it! And so it might look a bit funny while it's parked, but nobody can see what seat it is while your butt is on there riding the wheels off it!
- Just be aware that you may sit differently on different bikes (ie pelvis can tilt a bit differently in roadie vs mountain bike) so what is really comfy for you on one bike may not be comfy on a different bike with a different posture.

Good luck!