Saddle Fit: Tests, Tips, and Tricks

[Sky King]

hello everybody, my first post apart from getting to know detail. so I am the proud owner of a whole garage full of saddles, not cheap ones, but I am not getting it right, so maybe somebody here will have ideas.

so ive been riding quite comfortably on spez avatar 155 for years, until I started riding a bit more aggressively, from thereon they are to cushy and caused chaving. Got sella italia slr (ladies one) but think its too narrow, chaving again. Spez ruby okay for up to 3 hour rides then same thing, and I find the saddle flexes too much to my liking.

now this is the thing, went for bike fit on my new stumpy fsr, the guy sold me a fizik arione donna, and whalla, no chaving!! but.... it squashes other tender bits badly. I tried to make it work, drop front a bit etc but no. apart from that the best saddle ever though. so where can I get something with that shape but a cut out or deeper indentation?

I ride the Rivet Independence which is very similar in shape - is leather without any padding so no squash anywhere! We sell them so i attached the link

160mm X 280mm

[Scrappy]

SkyKing - I just purchased 2 Rivet Saddles, the Pearl and Independence but haven't tried either of them yet. How do they compare in comfort (for you) to Brooks + Brooks Imperial?

Scrappy

[Sky King]

SkyKing - I just purchased 2 Rivet Saddles, the Pearl and Independence but haven't tried either of them yet. How do they compare in comfort (for you) to Brooks + Brooks Imperial?

Scrappy

I have the Independence on my Gilles Berthoud and Pearl (Cromo) on my Surly ECR. I had the Rivet Pearl TI on my Rivendell. I never liked the Brooks B17 for me. I sorta liked the Brooks Imperial however the "fenders" - the long sides on the Brooks saddles make my upper leg and lower Glutes go numb after about 35 miles, that doesn't happen with the Rivets. The Independence's long narrow nose took a bit of getting used to but now I like it - I only have about 300 miles on the Independence. Let me know what you think!

[jobob]

I *really* like my new-to-me Rivet Pearl Ti -- hi SkyKing! -- even more than my previous fave Brooks Team Pro, which, for me, is more comfy than the Brooks B17.

The Rivet Pearl is da bomb.

[Awsmile]

I had a Terry Butterfly on my old Cannondale, never had many issues except some usually tolerable chafing in the bits. When I got a new bike the saddle was AWFUL (Specialized Ruby) so I ditched it and bought a Terry Falcon X as I wanted something a little more performance - oriented (and to fix the chafing). It has a bigger cut-out than the butterfly which completely solved the chafing issue but now I've developed these hard lumps in the crease between my thighs and labia. They are hard and don't seem to be fluid filled or infected in any way (not warm or red - in fact they aren't even visible I can just feel them. Oh and no broken skin). I went back to the butterfly for a 45 mile ride this morning and it seemed to be easier on the wierd lumps but it still chafes.

The Falcon is more pear shaped and MUCH more flexible than the Butterfly.

I took another look at the Ruby and I might give it a second try now that I've had the bike fit (of course, changing saddles will change that somewhat) and I'm going back to my bike fitter guy hopefully this week in any case but in the meantime does anyone have any thoughts? I don't mind buying another saddle but I'd like to make this the last one for a while...

Cindy K, I know this is an older post and you might not see this, but did you ever find out what those hard lumps were? I've gotten them also. The first time was on a beach vacation where we rented cruisers to ride on the sand - no cutout and absolute agony. Since then, the lumps show up periodically on rides of more than 25 miles on my regular pretty-good saddle. Just wondered if you still get them and if you were able to find a solution. Thanks!