When this thread started in January, I had minimal interest in suspension seatpost or stem. But my next tour that I am planning right now will be on narrower tires at higher pressures than I have usually toured on in the past.
After thinking about it more, looking at some reviews including a review from CyclingAbout, last night ordered one of these:
https://www.cyclingabout.com/vibrati...atpost-review/
With the current REI 20 percent off one full price item to members sale, plus an extra 5 percent kickback for using REI branded credit card, price was right.
And last night on a whim, bought a nearly new one of these on Ebay last night at a pretty good discount from new price too:
https://www.cyclingabout.com/vibrati...n-stem-review/
Last summer did a brevet and there was a long stretch of concrete highway with expansion joints about every 25 or 30 feet that were quite jarring on my rando bike with 32 mm tires. I do not know if I will ever put these on that bike, but remembering how uncomfortable that stretch of highway was is still fresh in my memory. That gave me a bit more incentive to consider these suspension devices for my light touring bike.
I often use the drops on my drop bars, the Redshift stem is not expected to perform well at all in the drops, that pushed me to the Kinekt stem instead.
At my weight of roughly 80 to 85kg, or about 185 pounds, those should both work well for me with the extra Redshift spring installed and using the stiffer Kinekt spring.
UPDATE (Mar 30, 2024):
Instead of a new post, chose to edit this post.
Last night put on the seatpost, previously had installed the stem. So far have only ridden 1.5 miles on the bike, all on pavement. Was looking for rough patches to ride on. So far am quite pleased.
The stem is pretty stiff, I can just barely see it move which is probably what I am looking for, I just want something to cushion the big hits. The stem appears to be an earlier version (I bought it used on Ebay), I am not sure but I think the medium spring is installed. The extra springs are not color coded so I can't visually see which spring is or is not installed.
I weigh between 80 and 85 kg, I added the second spring in the seatpost, set it at level 3, it seemed too soft so I increased it to level 4 but have not yet ridden it with that setting, but I think that will be perfect.
The bike has 37mm tires, I usually pump them up pretty hard because these tires have some flat protection, not the ultra flexible tires, thus harder is better to reduce rolling friction.
I need to figure out a new way to carry spare spokes, carried them in the seatpost but the suspension seatpost has suspension hardware there instead. With multiple bikes I like to keep the spokes with the bike instead of in panniers that are switched to different bikes over time.