Saddles

Basically there are two varieties of saddles, the leather saddle and the plastic saddle. Both varieties are then divided into a number of categories, classified in accordance with the type of bicycle.

Plastic saddles
Plastic saddles are most widely used because they are easy to shape and above all are cheap.

The current plastic saddle is in most cases a hard plastic baseplate, covered with a polyurethane foam, in many cases an extra layer of gel-like material and a PVC cover.
The Lepper saddles all have a spring-matrass instead of a plastic base-plate enhancing the comfort greatly. (Comfotech)

The advantages of plastic saddles are:

  1. cheap
  2. easy to maintain
  3. an instant, however short, feeling of comfort.

The disadvantages of plastic saddles are:

  1. friction heat generated when riding cannot be channeled away, thus weakening the skin and the main cause of pain.
  2. The construction of plate and foam leads to unwanted pressurepoints causing pain. The foam is compressed between body and plate, whereby the surrounding foam is pushed up, leading to new pressure(=pain) points.

Leather saddles
Leather saddles are made of buttleather. Lepper uses only vegetatively tanned leather, which is an environmental friendly process.

The advantages of leather saddles are:
  1. The open fibrestructure of the leather, allows it to “breethe” and dus conduct frictionheat away.
  2. Leather saddles shape to the bottom of their rider and thus shaping an individual seat.
  3. Leather saddles are natural and environmental friendly products

The disadvantages of leather saddles are:

  1. In the beginning they feel hard(er) and need breaking in.
  2. Leather saddles need, however little, maintenance and care.