Bought a noseless / hornless cycle seat (Spongy Wonder) :)

PCharvet

Absolutely fantastic at removing pressure from the perineal region, in fact there's no pressure at all, and the pads fit perfectly onto my 'sit bones'. The pads are slightly harder than I thought they would be but thats really my only gripe. Adjustment of the seat (angle and length) is everything, though they come with fairly good instructions about placement on the seat post.

I'm really pleased because I've spent absolutely ages (as well as over £200) trying and quickly discarding various 'normal' cycle seats including the Specialized body geometry range, various Selle, etc

Bike seat:



Bike seat (with additional replacement pads, covers, bolt)



Mounted on my Marin Bolinas Ridge '06 hard tail MTB:







Bought the seat from a e-tailer based in Canada (difficult to get noseless seats in the UK), and it arrived pretty quickly:
http://www.tesco-shopping.com/bikeseat.htm

Here's some of the other seats I tried but didn't work out for me.

ISM Touring (the 2 prongs made it uncomfortable for me - they'd either stick into the back of my things or directly into my glutes if I moved the seat backwards).



Some conventional 'touring' seats. The Specialized Expedition Plus (on the right) is horrible and weighs an absolute tonne. The Intake budget comfort (left) wasn't bad - it has a reasonably sized cut out, though you still feel a bit of pressure on your perenium :



So overall, I have to give the Spongy Wonder a thumbs up as its fantastic at removing perineal pressure. The other alternative would be the SpiderFlex seat which has a similar design.

PCharvet

Here's a picture with the covers removed The pads have sticky undersides so could be removed and replace with different ones in theory....

alienator

Good luck with that. The big issue with noseless seats is they decrease the amount of control a rider has over his bike, especially cornering. Some writer for one of the bike mags found this out when he ended up on the ground.

Keep us posted on how it goes.

PCharvet

Yup, going round corners at speed and at a 45 degree angle isn't a good idea...

I can't see it being used by anyone for racing or any sort of time trial because as you point out, if you're whizzing round corners or downhill through a hairpin, you can grip the nose of a normal seat with your thighs to help control the bike. I think its more suitable for touring or fitness riding.

I got into cycling fairly recently to try and get some fitness back because I had pretty horrible footballing injury to my ankle (osteochondral fracture and ligament tear) which has sidelined me for over 12 months with two operations, but found the perineal pressure uncomfortable on long rides.

I've done about 20 miles on this seat so far, but that's mostly road / upright cycling. Once I've got a few more weeks of cycling under my belt (and got my glutes back into shape), I'll let you know how I've got on.

Slugster438

Noseless saddles work best on bikes such as the Lightfoot Surefoot and Day6Bicycles.

Alternately the RANS bikes (such as the Fusion) already have a proprietary noseless seat mounted (they won't accept regular seats at all).

RANS makes the Gruv which is an "MTB-style" bike but I don't believe it's really meant to withstand being pounded the way an MTB is, it's just more inclined to light trail riding. And the previous two bikes aren't neither; these are really fitness/casual/touring bikes.

The RANS Zenetic is a "road"-style bike; the general opinion is that overall it's about equivalent to a normal upright bike in performance. The rider position is a bit more aero but is also more closed, impacting breathing. It's certainly more comfortable than a normal bike, not causing any saddle pain--which could positively affect longer-distance/ultra riding.

If you want to ride pain-free, it is possible--but probably not on any "normal" style bicycle.
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alienator

This is simply wrong. If someone is experiencing pain on a bicycle, then there is either a physical problem or a fit issue. The majority of people ride bikes without pain.

That traditional bikes have to involve some form of pain is just some BS that someone dreamed up to sell whatever snake oil they have in their bag.

Slugster438

Well I don't know who dreamed it up, but I know it sure sells a lot of padded shorts and gloves.
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Jim R

Every seat in your pictures would kill me to ride on. They are all the wide, thick padded / gel foam seats that would seem to make sense but never work well. I have tried many of these same kind of seats and thrown them all away. I also tried many standard type seats (including the Specialized Body Geometry seats - terrible for me) before finally finding one that fits my particular anatomy pretty well (for me it was the Fizik Arione but that is irrelevant).

Look at all the thousands of bike racers and riders in the world that are riding many hours every day on comfortable bike seats. I have never seen any yet riding "Spongy's." I think the problem is that you simply haven't found a standard bike seat that fits you well. Unfortunately this takes experimenting. Fortunately, sites like Ebay make this easier and cheaper (I have bought and sold at least 6-8 seats on Ebay myself without losing much money).

PCharvet

Looks like a really interesting design, and would love to try it. I even Googled for it and there's an interesting article here which you may have already seen:
http://www.bikesportmichigan.com/reviews/arione.shtml

At the end of the day, everyone's as different as their fingerprints. What works for one person doesn't work for another. I'm really happy with the SpongyWonder simply because it solves the problem which I've had which was too much perineal pressure.

Funnily enough, another one of alternatives arrived in the post today (thought I had been scammed by the Ebay seller as it took weeks to arrive). It's a Rido Saddle which has unusual plastic design again designed to reduce/remove perineal pressure.

Slugster438

-That's because you tried them on the wrong bicycle.

I tend to think that most of those people aren't really comfortable so much as their saddles are "tolerable". And dare I say - they aren't aware of the alternatives.

If your bicycle was truly comfortable, you wouldn't need padded shorts to ride it.
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