Dean51 

SOLD QUICKLY WAS For Sale is an Ideale 90 saddle, Daniel Rebour version in what I call a honey brown color. See 2nd pic for road rash on the left rear corner. Otherwise in very nice condition with no rust to the chrome undercarriage. $65 shipped to US addresses via USPS. PayPal F&F only. 'Happy to respond to any questions and/or provide additional photos.

Dean

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E3CC72E4-1ADF-46EA-B029-CDF2C7015F2C
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panzerwagon 

PM sent

Classtime 

Nice One! 15 minutes.

ehcoplex 

Jeeze, that didn't take long!

Dean51 

One of the joys of selling on BF.

Dean

sd5782 

I recently purchased one of these later model 90s locally and really like it. Mine seems to be wider like a Brooks B17. It is really comfortable. That was a great price for a nice one, and purchaser should be pleased.
edit: Looked at my notes and mine was a very similar model 92. Nice Brooks alternative when they come up.

unterhausen

That's a cool saddle, did it originally come with a sketch?

repechage

Bummer, as original on my Bertin C-37 that when I purchased was fitted with a cheap sprung Japanese saddle… and sting -ray bars!

notenoughdaylig 

Most comfortable saddle I've ever owned

RCMoeur 

I thought that in order to be a truly authentic Rebour, it had to be black on white, not honey brown.

Hope both the buyer and seller achieve satisfaction with the transaction.

repechage

the example I owned was cognac, and others way back were near black, darker
‘oiled’ very dark brown and the ‘natural’ cognac color as seen here.

only much later saw an albino version.

unterhausen

Rebour was most famous for his line sketches. I did a quick search to see why he would have a saddle named after him and didn't find anything about that.

repechage

Rebour devised the Robour treatment for some top tier Idealé saddles- the number was high enough that I doubt it was done by him or his family but by a process he devised.
they were known to be more weatherproof and broke in much faster than saddles without the treatment.

I think the current Idealé makers also have offered it from time to time. same impression markings on the top.

repechage

There are a number of them on eBay right now. big dollars often achieved.

panzerwagon 

Saddle arrived and looks great, thank you!

rustystrings61 

Someday i may have to break down and buy one of the newer Rebour process Ideale 90s in the very dark brown-to-black range; it's what I had fitted to my '76 Puch Royal X before it ever left the sales floor when I got it new in March 1978, and when I finally recovered it in 2019 that saddle (and the 1st gen Dura-Ace/Crane rear derailleur, Lyotard Berthet platform pedals, and the Weyless/Mavic Montlhery tubular wheelset) had been replaced with something lesser. It's odd that everything I left original on that bike stayed original after it was stolen and during the long years it appears to have languished somewhere. Anyway, the Ideale 90 is perhaps my favorite saddle of all time, and this spurs me to start looking for one again.

repechage

a recovered stolen bike. Amazing and hopefully one that was stolen from me will return one day. been a while, 1976.
I sold my Idealé 90 from my first road bike long ago, comfortable but I was racing and my family was going to move to a city with winter snow, an all plastic Cinelli was so much lighter and weather indifferent.
we did not move, I continued to race, the Cinelli fit well enough. But the aesthetics of the original was never matched.
a few years later I exchanged to a Cinelli #3, the guys I trained with commented that they felt sore just looking at my basic all plastic saddle.

rustystrings61 

Thread hijack, I know, but -

BOTH parents decided to go back to school at the same time, Dad to finish his stalled PhD (he never finished his dissertation, so that was a bust) and my mother to collect a DEd. Times were gonna be tight, so I was promised the bike of my choice after the degrees were granted, as I would be doing without for a while. When the time came, I couldn't find anyone selling new Peugeot PX-10s. I looked at Puch Royal Force examples in shops in Macon, but knew I didn't want to race. On a trip to Atlanta we discovered a shop that could get me a new unsold Royal X for significantly less money that would better suit my needs - same frame, headset, BB and cranks as the Force, but with 27-in clinchers, Weinmann Carrera sidepulls, SunTour Cyclone derailleurs and a simpler paint scheme. My father bought it for me, fulfilling the bargain.

Before delivery I had the freewheel changed from 14-22 to 14-24 (max capacity of the standard Cyclone rear), chainrings swapped from 42/52 to 40/46 (like Ian Hibell used!), saddle replaced with an Ideale and the Berthet pedals - not knowing that Berthet had married into the Tron family making Ideale saddles and probably had a hand in designing the model 90. I rode it lots and all over, eventually switching back to 42/52T rings about the same time I had the shop build me the tubular wheelset. Rode it a lot more that way, then discovered guitars, then Fender Telecasters ... and by 1987 I wasn't riding anymore, and there was this amazing blackface Fender Vibroluxe Reverb amp. By this point the Puch was living in my hall, having been moved several times to different apartments in multiple states. During one of those moves something had scarred the head tube badge decal, and I remember being irritated with myself for letting that happen, and thinking I should see if I could score a replacement decal - and then doing nothing, because, life.

So I sold the Puch to a friend of mine and bought the amp. A couple of months later I concluded I wanted the bike back and contacted the buyer. Unfortunately, one day he had returned from a ride for lunch, leaving the bike in his backyard. When he went back out, it had been stolen. I was bummed but went on with life.

A decade later I stumbled back into cycling, and discovered both the internet and the fact that the bikes I liked were now considered vintage. I spent the next decade or so trawling the 'net, but I never found a single white 23-in Royal X for sale. The salmon-colored ones were out there sometimes, and I could find 21-in white bikes, but never a white 23. Some time after Capitol Cycle in Macon, which had an enormous trove of vintage bikes in their basement, sent them all off to be scrapped, I figured mine was lost forever - but I still looked for one every now and then.

I was trawling FB Marketplace on a whim one day in 2019, doing the usual searches for Raleighs, Gitanes and Peugeots. I idly typed in "Puch." Up popped a white 23-in Royal X for $100 in Stone Mountain, and I stifled a whoop of triumph. I studied the photos, looking past the scars and scratches and the unfortunate saddle. I located a bike shop in Stone Mountain and made arrangements for them to pay the seller for the bike and for them to ship it to me in South Carolina. A few days later it showed up. I had already realized that none of the distinctive parts I had swapped were on this bike - but the parts that weren't stock were the same components I had swapped out, and that was odd. When I unwrapped all the packing materials, I looked at the headbadge - and froze. It was my bike.

Best part of it for me was this - I got it back in April 2019. The first person I told was my 91-year-old father, who was delighted I had found this bike he gave me so long ago. He passed unexpectedly a few weeks later, but I got to communicate to him how much his gift meant to me, so much so that I had searched for it for decades.

Here I am posing in the front yard with the bike in late 1978 -


- and the bike pretty much as it is today.


This one comes out for laid-back rides on sunny days now, enjoying its semi-retired status.

jeirvine 

Any idea what the treatment is?

repechage

was a trade secret. From handling them my guess BEFORE the leather was attached to the frame it was infused with an elixir of an oil(s)? and maybe wax underneath.
possibly manipulated afterward to break down the leather fibers a bit.

there were other saddle customizers in Italy, but much more independent, Ottussi being one of the more famous ones., he started with a finished saddle, modified the frame, reworked the shape and dressed the leather.
Big money when they come up for sale or auction.

sd5782 

Since the original item has sold, and this thread has widened, here is another version. I purchased a model 92 Diagonale with faded markings indicating this same treatment. It came from someone locally and I think he said he put something on it. The 92 I think is B17 dimensions. Perhaps the 90 is similar size to the 17 narrow.

rustystrings61 

Somebody with better memory or access to literature can correct me, but I think the 92 Diagonale was marketed as a saddle for those who rode the permanent randonees that were cross-France events. So, yeah, roughly comparable to the classical B-17.