So my Soma Smoothie ES is coming together nicely. Went to mount the Brooks B-17 saddle only to discover that it won't work. I'm using a DuraAce seatpost which has a pretty fair amount of setback and yet even with the saddle slammed all the way back in the clamp it's still a good 10-15mm too close to the bottom bracket. Yes, I could simply use a longer stem but that's a really poor way to compensate. Rule 1 of bike fit is to not tinker with the relationship of the saddle to the bottom bracket. You don't compensate for reach by moving the saddle forward/backward which is basically what I'd be doing by mounting the Brooks. I took off the Brooks and put on my Fizik Rondine. The Rondine fit just fine with the seatpost clamping the rails more less smack dab in the middle. Tried a few other saddles and they all fit more or less in the center of the rails. It's definitely the Brooks. A seatpost with more setback might help but I'm not aware of any seatpost that has at least 10mm more setback than the DuraAce post.
So my question is this: why has Brooks chosen to ignore the changes in frame geometry that have occurred in the past several decades? The rails on the Brooks are perfect if your bike has a 70-72 degree seat tube angle. If your bike has a 74 degree seat tube angle (as most bikes do these days) it's more than likely you won't be able to achieve the proper amount of setback because of the peculiar design of the Brooks' rails.
There's really no excuse for this. Brooks has introduced new models in the past decade and also produced titanium rail saddles. This gave them ample opportunity to modify their design to better accommodate today's frame geometries. So why haven't they? I've e-mailed Brooks and hope they will respond.
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Before reading this comment about Brooks seats, please understand that I am very committed to keeping what has evolved over years of riding racing, MTB and touring bikes as my "ideal" seat position. I won't go into details about why seat location relative to the bottom bracket is important, nor try to convince anyone what is "ideal" for them.
I set my seat position according to the guidance in Bernard Hinault and Greg LeMond's books--high and aft to take advantage of the body's biggest muscles. Another position resource I refer to is Steve Hogg's articles. These fit philosophies are not radical, so you'd think most hardware would allow you to achieve the target seat position, right? Wrong...
For about 15 years I've modified many seatpost heads to clear a bit of the seat rail bend, allowing various seats more aft adjustment. I dislike "straight" or "zero setback" posts, because they make it essentially impossible to get the seat back far enough behind the bottom bracket.
My inseam is 87 cm. I've always liked bikes with seat tubes around 72 or 72.5 degrees, which helps reduce the amount of seatpost modification. Anyone paying attention to frame geometry tables knows that such angles are hard to find in modern bikes my size. So whenever buying a seat, seatpost, or frame, I try to select ones that allow me to attain my preferred seat position as easily as possible.
After being bludgeoned with testimonials about the virtues of Brooks seats, I strayed from my component selection criteria mentioned above, and decided to try a Brooks on my Surly LHT. First up was the B17... I rode with it for a year on an Easton EA70 post. The EA70 has the front edge of the clamp in line with the rear edge of the post tubing. This post is awesome for gaining setback, and I chose it specifically to compensate for the issue with how Brooks bends their seat rails so far behind the nose of the seat. But after futzing around with clamp modifications, I never did get the B17 seat far enough back. In fact it was still about 1.5 cm too far forward when I gave up and took it off a year later.
After reverting to a more modern seat for a while, the Brooks bug struck again--this time I scored a sweet deal on a Brooks Swallow. Cool thing about the Swallow is that the rails allow for much more rearward adjustment than any other Brooks I've seen (...but still not on par with models from Fizik, Selle Italia, etc.) A year later, I have a love/hate relationship with the Brooks Swallow. It allows me to sit for longer periods of time than a modern racing saddle, but the metal plate under the seat that holds the sides of leather from pooching out bashes into the top of my seatpost clamp on every bump. The tensioning hardware under the nose of the Brooks clicks and twists during aggressive riding. A pad of adhesive-backed foam helped moderate the metal plate contact issue, but there is no simple cure for the sloppy hardware under the nose of the Brooks seats.
So much effort (and money) went into my Brooks seats, but I've given up on them and don't plan to try another again. It's a shame because while the comfort in the middle of a Brooks seat can be outstanding, the heavy, wobbly tensioning hardware as well as the rail bend location are in my experience unforgivable shortcomings.
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