"The reality is, the saddle is the part of the bike with which we share our most intimate contact, and it’s worth getting right. While it may not be cheap, the upside is that many of the most useful saddles are also the best looking. Further, like anything that’s going to be touching your privates, it’s worth shelling out for."
Amen. That's an excerpt from our buddy Pops Jr.'s True Facts About Saddles, a highly recommended read if you still need to be convinced of the merits of riding a Brooks B17.
We love a good Standard B17. They're more durable than any other well recognized brand of leather saddle. They come in nice classic colors. The Brooks B17 is still made in England, in a mid century factory. The leather is veggie tanned, rather than chrome tanned, the former of which is a much more ecologically sound way to do leather tanning.
Still made in England, using thick leather tops and beefy steel rails. And unlike most saddles out there, Brooks leather saddles are semi-easily repaired, and many repairs we can do in house. Usually if you have a saddle with a major issue, it’s trash. Not so a Brooks. We can add new rivets, repair cracked leather, and repair heavy sagging. If a repair goes beyond that, we have a place we send it to for bigger repairs.
You want to run it with your handlebar tops anywhere from 1cm below to 5 cm above the top of the saddle. If it you bend over more than that, say on a race bike, it’ll be uncomfortable, you’ll get pressure, and you’ll think it’s the saddle’s fault. It’s not, it’s the bar height’s fault.
If your saddle and bars are set up right, the saddle is good right out of the box, but gets BETTER as you ride and sweat in it, and break it in. It’ll eventually form to your sit bones, like a good hiking shoe. Just like with a good hiking boot though, that doesn’t happen over night, so just enjoy the saddle as it is until that happens.
You don’t need to wear cycling shorts with a Brooks. Everyone I tell that to thinks I’m nuts, until they actually try it. Just wear lightweight hiking shorts, or jeans with some stretch or that are baggy enough not to need stretch. Brooks saddles were invented before synthetic fabrics and huge thick chamois pads. They were made to be comfortable in a pair of shorts. Padding just compresses under your sit bones then bunches up where you have soft tissue, often causing numbness, not relieving it.
Brooks saddles don’t like the rain, but the solution is simple. Cover it in the rain.
Goop these up about once a year. We like Brooks Proofide best, but when you can't get that Obenauf's makes a great goop too! Neither soften the leather, just hydrate it. Softening the leather (i.e. Mink Oil) is bad, the saddle will sag out prematurely.
Deets:
17cm wide where you sit. DO NOT BE FOOLED by most saddles that say they are 17cm wide. The part you can sit on is usually way narrower than that, because of the arch of the saddle. B-17’s are flat across the back, so you sit on the full width.
Veggie tanned leather and steel rails
We only stock the standard length, not the S model, which has a shorter nose.
