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My saddle of choice has always been the first revision of the SDG Bel Air and, whether it's psychological or not, I've always felt that a ti. railed one was was comfier than a chromo.
My current Bel Air is falling apart & SDG no longer produce ti. railed ones (I hated the Bel Air 2.0 and I'm not sure I want to take a punt on the Bel Air 3.0).
For the moment I've picked up a carbon railed Fabric Spoon Radius from the classifieds but I'm not sure that I'm going to get on with it (I've been off the bike for some time for health reasons and nothing feels 'quite right' at the moment).
Fabric have an [url= https://fabric.cc/faqs/ ]interesting discussion[/url] on saddle rail material in their FAQ suggesting that titanium is indeed the most comfy rail material (even suggesting that heavy riders might find it too flexy) and that carbon is stiffer and best used by those riders needing to put out the watts (certainly not me).
Is saddle rail material really that noticeable? I'm beginning to wonder whether I'm paying too much attention to it and wouldn't be better off with a cheap chromo. railed Bel Air (the shape clearly works for me) than something new with swizzy rails.
My saddle of choice has always been the first revision of the SDG Bel Air
Just wanted to agree with this. No idea about the rest of the stuff.
I've got two otherwise identical WTB's, there's definitely a difference, but it's only minor, not enough to bother me about which one i'd choose.
I have a carbon railed Fabric scoop on my best road bike and the chromoly railed one on my MTB .
I haven’t noticed much difference but then the road bike is carbon, has a carbon post and runs tubeless so filters out some of the buzz before it reaches the saddle.
Most comfortable saddle I've owned for years is a ti railed SDG. It's still on one bike, but has sagged a bit on one side might be getting to the end of it's life 😟
I also find the bog standard Charge Spoons very comfy too.
I've just bought a Brookes Cambium C15 though, and oh my sweet lord, it's comfy 😁
Ti is only a bit over half the stiffness of steel so a Ti rail saddle will have a bit more flex. I'd say they can feel subtly comfier having had a few saddles of the same shape with Ti or CrMo rails. The only seat rails I've had break while riding were Ti though (2 of them). Velo's Crn-Ti alloy seems good, done a lot of miles on those w/o any breaks.