PeteHski

There are about a million high end saddles on the market in various widths, lengths, shapes, padding, not to mention cut-out vs solid. There are even shop ass-ometers and manufacturers often have on-line saddle choosing guides to help get the right fit. So I find it odd that people would buy say a £10k bike and just ride whatever random high-end saddle it came with. For me it makes more sense for them to fit a budget saddle (a bit like when you get cheap flat pedals). Canyon actually did exactly that with my mountain bike. It was a top end £5k build, but came with a very cheap, basic saddle. Perfect. It would probably have been £20 retail, so no loss in replacing it with a better saddle of my own choice.

GhostRider62

I could not imagine using a saddle that came with a bike let alone not buying a frameset and carefully selecting every component and installing them properly, myself. So, yes, it makes no sense to me for a saddle to come with a bike.

PeteHski

Fitting a fairly low end saddle to a high-end bike seems like the best compromise to me. If I bought an off-the-shelf S-Works Tarmac, it happens to come with a £250 saddle. Chances are I would probably want to swap it for something else, so that is not ideal. But some manufacturers do fit much more modest saddles to their flagship super-bikes, which is a better idea IMHO. Saddles are about as personal as it gets for bike fit. Pedals too of course, but they seem to do the right thing there in just leaving them to the rider to fit.

msu2001la

Somewhere else on the internet, someone is complaining that their new $$,$$$ bike came with a heavy/cheap saddle that is garbage and they immediately had to go spend $$$ to buy something decent.

On a more serious note - Specialized likely sees a marketing opportunity by including their top-flight S-Works saddle on their flagship S-Works bike. Seems like it would be tough to sell this saddle as a stand-alone item if they acknowledge that it isn't good enough for their own bike.

It's hard to see what benefit there would be for Specialized to sell a more base-level version of the S-Works Tarmac. They already sell the frameset if you want a custom build.

rubiksoval

I don't use the same saddle or the same length stem, handlebars, or cranksets.

It's why I only build. Have to swap out far too many things.

Doomrider74

Aren't bike shops obliged to only let "safe" complete bikes out the door? In which case, they wouldn't be allowed to sell bikes without saddles. They get away with selling them without pedals because you can't really ride it without pedals.

PeteHski

Don't get me wrong, I fully understand why they do it. But it's not ideal for the buyer unless that specific saddle happens to be exactly the one they want. Other components (excluding pedals) are much less personal. There isn't anything else on an S-Works build that I would be looking to swap, but the saddle would be 50/50 at best. I've swapped out the saddle immediately on the last 2 bikes I've bought. Haven't swapped out any other components on either bike. I don't think I'm unusual. Most experienced cyclists will have their preferred saddle choice, just as they do with pedals.

sfrider 

Agree. Saddle, pedals, wheels, tape, tires, reflectors, etc - just let me buy a bike without this, and I'll either bring my own to install or buy something to suit that I actually want. I have way too many bins with checkbox parts and meh wheelsets and tires that are just a waste of storage space really. If it's someone's first bike, just point out it's not ready to ride as is. It's different if it's a floor model of course and not ordered and built, in that case it will come as is - except I'll want fresh bar tape regardless.

Branko D

Pedals and saddles aren't the same thing. We've got Look Keos on all our bikes and if a bike came with Shimano pedals I literally couldn't ride it until I either swapped the pedals out or swapped the cleats on my shoes (which raises another problem, what am I going to do with my other bikes). I can ride for a while on any saddle, although I am likely to swap it for something I prefer. The bike is still functional, though, and for short rides up to a 100km any decent saddle will probably be fine, anyway.

Now, ordering online, having some customization options would be / is nice.

Trakhak

I wonder whether the people who insist that they would never ride a stock saddle tend to be heavier. At 5' 8" or so and around 120 to 125 pounds (guessing; I don't own a scale), I'm not sure that I've ever come across a saddle I wasn't happy with (except deeply padded saddles).

msu2001la

I think this varies depending on jurisdiction. In some states/counties, shops are required to install reflectors on all new bikes that are sold, for instance (including reflectors on pedals). I'm sure some shops don't adhere to these (well intended, but somewhat silly) rules, but I have definitely purchased a road bike in Illinois where the LBS installed cheap plastic platform pedals with reflectors on them for this exact purpose. They told me it was required and offered to remove them and install my own pedals immediately after the sale.

PeteHski

I think it's more related to how long your rides are. I can tolerate pretty much any saddle for an hour or two, but saddles can be a major pain on 5+ hour rides if they are too wide/narrow or simply the wrong shape. Then there's your riding position. Some saddles suit a more upright position, others work better in a more aggressive position. Some saddles allow you to easily move fore-aft during a ride, others have a much smaller sweet spot. Some people like/need a central cutout in their saddle, others prefer no cutout. Some people like flat saddles, others prefer more shaped saddles. You only have to look at saddle manufacturer websites to see how many variables there actually are. A typical manufacturer will sell dozens of different saddles for a single discipline, often with individual models coming in 2 or 3 different widths.

msu2001la

Maybe. I am 5'9" and 165lbs.

A few years back I bought a new bike and found the stock saddle uncomfortable, so I swapped it out for a Selle Italia Superflow, and really liked it. When I bought another new bike last year it came with a Fabric Scoop that I assumed I'd also swap for the same Selle Italia saddle, but after riding the Fabric saddle for nearly a year now I think I actually prefer it more.

I think my situation had more to do with getting a proper bike fit than switching saddles. The stock saddle on my old bike may have been fine if I bothered to get an actual bike fit done on it (or spent time making adjustments) rather than just assuming a new saddle would solve the problem. I'm sure I spent time adjusting the new saddle to get it comfortable.

I now switch between the two bikes with different saddles regularly and don't find it to be a problem, though the Selle Italia is a bit firmer than the other so I notice that.

aliasfox

I highly doubt any saddle with non-exotic materials takes a whole lot of money to make. Sure, it may sell on the retail market for $100, but provided it's fiberglass and some sort of steel rails, it probably doesn't cost the manufacturer more than $5 to source. Structurally, they just aren't going to be that different than the saddles that Wal-Mart sells for $30. Now, if the saddle has a carbon shell, or titanium rails, or some other lightweight magic in it... it still likely costs relatively little to throw on a saddle - and it's just easier and quicker for a smaller shop to deal with the picky customer by putting on the right saddle than it is for them to have to allow a customer to test ride three different saddles in three different widths before selling a bike.

Now, I was definitely a little miffed at Lynskey - not a shop/dealership model, but direct online. I could pick from their small selection of wheels, stem length, and bar width, but the narrow 132mm (I think) saddle felt like a wedge up my butt - would've been happier if they'd allowed me to pick something in the 142mm range. Same with cassette - doubt it would've been hard for them to keep a few different ratios on-hand.

PeteHski

I think it's irrelevant what it costs the manufacturer. If a new bike comes with a $100 retail, or in some high-end build cases a $300+ saddle, you can bet there won't be very much discount to the customer. I wish they did just throw high-end components on complete bikes at manufacturing cost!

CliffordK

A couple of years ago, Cannondale added a crank based power meter to some of their bikes. The catch was that while the power meter was included for free, it required an expensive activation to actually use it.

Most notes on the program are a couple of years old, and I doubt the whole thing went over well.

growlerdinky

Its just typical big saddle BS.





*EDIT: I know, I know. It's always "big saddle this", and "big saddle that" with me. WAKE UP!

Trakhak

All true, and an additional factor for me is that the majority of my rides, including my 5-hour-plus rides, are on hilly northern Baltimore County terrain with a fixed-gear bike, so I ride out of the saddle more than most people probably do.

Still, as I said, I have different saddles on most or all of my bikes, all of them either stock or replaced at random by cheapish saddles ordered over the Internet. On the basis of my experience, including what I observed in the earliest days of working in bike stores, I suspect that most people would be able to acclimate to any given saddle after enough miles.

Certainly, when I started racing in 1964 and for many years thereafter, for the most part people stuck with the stock saddle. The first hint that saddles would become a matter of personal choice that I can remember came in the late 1960s, with the appearance of Cinelli and Unicanitor saddles---hard plastic, with or without "buffalo leather" or suede covering and with or without a thin layer of padding.

aliasfox

The point is that it costs manufacturers a negligible amount to include a saddle in the bike, and including the saddle probably helps dealers move a lot more bikes in the midrange - and if you're including a saddle in the $1-3k range, it's kind of hard not to include one when things truly get pricey. And because it costs manufacturers $5-25 to include their saddle, they're definitely *not* going to discount the bike $100-200 by eliminating it.

PeteHski

I'm not suggesting they don't include a saddle. Merely that they don't include an expensive saddle on their high-end builds. They could absolutely bring down the price of the bike by not including a really expensive carbon saddle. When you look at various manufacturer builds, some actually do fit fairly cheap saddles on their £10k+ super-bikes, which is fine by me. Now I wouldn't mind if they charged $5 for a $300 retail saddle on the bike, but I'm kind of sceptical that they actually do that. Otherwise there wouldn't be such a vast range of difference in build cost across their bike range using the same frame. You would expect some discount on group-sets etc, but it's not going to be anywhere near cost price and I don't see how a saddle would be any different. Especially if they are buying the saddles from a 3rd party manufacturer, which many are.

Anyway, it's not a big deal for me. I just thought it was a good question and one I've thought of myself as I gaze at a shelf full of discarded OEM saddles!

CliffordK

I think this all really is a bike shop issue.

When going through the Bike Friday configuration page, most of their high end bikes come without a saddle or pedals. Nealy all of their bikes are "custom builds", and "mail order".

Looking at Trek Project One
Ok, you can order a more expensive saddle, or less expensive saddle, but there is no choice for NONE.

PeteHski

A quick look on the Orbea website shows that their high end Orca has 3 saddle choices. Default is a high spec carbon model or you can save £120 by downgrading to one of 2 mid-range saddle choices. None is not an option.
So at least you can save £120 if you don't happen to like their one and only premium saddle choice.

Oldguyonoldbike

The only time in the last 25 years that I bought a complete bike I ended up changing half the components.
I just wish more bikes were sold as a frameset only. Nowadays, it seems that most brands sell only the flagship models as a frameset. Those are out of my price range, but I’m still picky about the components I want. And not just the saddle.

urbanknight

FWIW I ended up switching BACK to the stock saddle after gaining weight and aging, but that was a mid-level bike with a stock saddle designed for a more upright position.

Sy Reene

Why don't higher end saddles come with bikes?