Wove saddles

[Former_User]

Not sure any serious athlete looking to spend $600 on a saddle would weigh more than 85kgs so a bit of a moot point? And the Kia to Ferrari comparison is a bit silly-you can clearly show the performance increase of the Ferrari, can you similarly show the performance increase of your saddle? In your post above you talk about performance increase and 30 watts-what is this based on and compared to?

As for the custom Dash saddle it is very much custom, varying the saddle density in various parts based on the individual riders weight. Do you also do this? Also includes custom colors, logos etc, again if you are wanting to do comparisons do you do this? And the Dash saddle is lighter. And if none of this matters you can still get the stock hand made version for $229, so wouldn’t a fair comparison be the stock saddle?
Hi gunna, coming out the gate “gunning”.

Our saddle is hand made and you can choose your choice of custom grip on the cover and some customers have requested extra layers of carbon on the shell (track riders). The Dash is 11g lighter. Ours has over 10mm of long lasting, high quality foam. (again, we highly respect what Weston has created with Dash and anyone who walks through a current day transition area is bound to see hundreds of Dash saddles, which is awesome).

We have a number of track riders who weigh more than 85kg riding our saddle and there are plenty of amazing athletes who weigh more than 85k and we respect them, welcome them and include them. Probably best to only compare company’s weight policies if they make passing ISO-testing public.

We did not make the 30 watt claim. Please see this link to the #saddlebattle Slowtwitch post by kileyay; there’s a healthy debate over there. We had his statements in quotes.

Ferrari vs Kia: see the description of our innovation, and see our sub 140g weight - some folks consider low weight to be a performance advantage. we aimed to make a darn comfortable saddle - kileyay made the point that saddle comfort is a performance advantage that he attempted to quantify.

Thank you for your questions.

[gunna]

Thanks for the responses. Not sure I agree re the innovation-at the end of the day all that matters is results. Also edit-the weight limit for Dash is 95Kgs.

If your saddle is super comfortable then some people would gladly spend that money, as would some people for a bit of bling or bespoke item. And again that’s fine if that’s your selling point.

But things get murky when you start to try and throw in performance and watts saved etc, especially when comparing to existing saddles like I have, hence my initial questions. All the best.

[Former_User]

Thanks for the responses. Not sure I agree re the innovation-at the end of the day all that matters is results.

If your saddle is super comfortable then some people would gladly spend that money, as would some people for a bit of bling or bespoke item. And again that’s fine if that’s your selling point.

But things get murky when you start to try and throw in performance and watts saved etc, especially when comparing to existing saddles like I have, hence my initial questions. All the best.
Thank you.

To clarify: kileyay’s point is that the saddle is your most important piece of equipment. What we wrote was that ‘some of Wove’s DNA can be found in kileyay’s post.’ He is claiming that the right saddle can mean an increase in watts and reduction in drag. He is not saying that saddle is a Wove saddle (Wove did not exist when he wrote that post) and other than sharing how much our saddle weighs, we are not making performance-gain statements. We agree with Kiley that the saddle is the most important piece of cycling equipment.

In that same post, mathematics wrote, “The right saddle isn’t necessarily +30 watts, but the wrong saddle can easily be -30 watts.”

While Wove did not exist when kileay wrote that post, he was aware that I was prototyping saddles. We both lived in Philadelphia while I was working on my PhD and we spent a good chunk of time biking together and having lively conversations that are reflected in Wove’s products and values. Here’s the saddle I was riding/testing at that time: link here.

Innovation: having carbon rails made of unidirectional carbon fiber that spreads throughout the entire shell of the saddle and both pieces being molded at the same time and greatly surpassing ISO standards with 7mm round carbon rails. And then molding liquid foam and cover material directly onto the shell at the same time and doing all of this at a sub-140g weight. **(without foam, our shell+rails weighs 70g) **

• Maybe you’d need to hold this super light, 30cm long saddle in your hand and see just how well padded the saddle is to truly appreciate all of this.
• Maybe you’d need to work in composites to appreciate this.
• Maybe you’d need to understand that ISO testing consists of 250,000 repetitions of 240lb/1,000 newton-metres on the rear of the saddle - again, we greatly surpassed that weight/force.
  If all of that is not considered innovation… well I’ll be damned. ha.

[Pwraddr]

I’ve been wanting to try one of these badly, but struggle on the price also. I have a tub of saddles that suck and still ride one that sucks. Now, if this solved my problem would be the best 600 I ever spent, no question there.

Question, any plans to make it without the extra part on the rear to mount a bottle?

[Former_User]

I’ve been wanting to try one of these badly, but struggle on the price also. I have a tub of saddles that suck and still ride one that sucks. Now, if this solved my problem would be the best 600 I ever spent, no question there.

Question, any plans to make it without the extra part on the rear to mount a bottle?

Have you seen our demo program?

wovebike.com/demo

And we have a 30 day money back guarantee.

As of now, no plans to make without the integrated bottle mount, BUT several pros have chosen to not use it and use their bike’s bottle cage mount system or a zip tie solution with no issue. According to British Cycling, the longer rear is more aero (see the direct mount saddle on the Hope Olympic track bike we had a part in).

[Pwraddr]

I looked early on and didn’t see either. Maybe I missed it or maybe it is new.

Thanks for pointing it out.

[Bdaghisallo]

$595 USD for a saddle??? No matter which way you spin it that’s crazy expensive. Dash $229, Gebiomized $278, Fizik Mistica carbon $250, what makes your saddle worth more than double the price of those?

There’s a number of folks riding around on Specialized Mirror saddles that retail for $450. $595 doesn’t seem that high in comparison to those saddles.

I have been thinking about trying the Mags road saddle but I have one more option I want to try before trying the Wove.

[rob_bell]

I’ll be using the Wove V8 for Unbound XL next week.

Why?

• It’s the lightest saddle i have (lighter than my Antares 00, Selle Italia SLR, etc)
• I don’t worry about it breaking on any of the gnarly stuff on course because ISO testing is way more brutal than anything i’ll put it through
• But mostly, it’s the most comfortable saddle I’ve used in all the positions I ride in (tops, hoods, drops, and aerobars). For 350 miles of gravel, comfort is one of the most important considerations

[IKnowEverything]

Not sure any serious athlete looking to spend $600 on a saddle would weigh more than 85kgs so a bit of a moot point?

Have you ever been to any triathlon, ever?

[Former_User]

Just added Joe Skipper to our roster. He’s been on our V8 saddle for a bit now and he’s all in as of this morning, so we’re excited about that.

Our roster now includes:

Rudy von Berg (with us since 2019)
Jason West (shot some great video with him last week that we’ll have on Instagram soon)
Joe Skipper
Matt McElroy
Neah Evans
Josie Knight
Jason Pohl

some additional top 30 PTO ranked athletes have been testing.

[Pwraddr]

Honest question, are these athletes reaching out to you to solve a saddle issue or you reaching out to them to get your saddle under them?

[Former_User]

For Joe, I saw that he had been changing up saddles during the Sub7 project and made a best guess as to what issue he might be having, contacted him, I was correct in my guess and the V8 was a good fit for his needs.

I offered Rudy a prototype in 2019 and he’s worked with us ever since, helping us iterate through dozens of prototypes and arrive at the current V8.

The British Cycling women: the British Cycling team requested several saddles to rotate around with their athletes and the riders get to choose.

For Jason West, we reached out to Jason, he tested and tried for some time, has been racing on the V8 all year, and he decided it was the saddle for him. We take our time because a saddle takes time to warm up to, even if it feels great right off the bat.

Jason Pohl has been rotating through different saddles for a couple of years and landed on ours.

Matt McElroy was having issues on his TT bike with his saddle so I offered to let him test the V8 and it worked well for him. We keep a pulse on bike fits and pros reach out to me behind the scenes for bike fit help, so this has been one way we’ve been in touch, and again, I don’t push Wove’s saddles if it’s not working for someone, and still offer fit assistance as requested.

Some folks reach out to us on their own. But I will say, nobody is riding our saddle because of a fat check, ha. We only want folks riding our saddles because the saddle is working for them. And, if in the future the saddle stops working with them, no hard feelings and maybe we’ll see them again in the future and we always take feedback seriously and incorporate (that’s on advantage to our US based manufacturing; we can make changes pretty quickly behind the scenes)

[Th4ddy]

Any reason why both the V8 and Mags use carbon rails, and will you produce versions with metal rails in the future?

[Former_User]

Any reason why both the V8 and Mags use carbon rails, and will you produce versions with metal rails in the future?

We started with our flagship model. Carbon rails because we as a company care about weight and are weight-weenies and a large swath of the target market for this flagship model are also weight-weenies. more about weight, here.

The V8 is ~136g at 30cm long with integrated bottle holder, and Mags is ~126g and both have no rider weight limit. That would not be possible with metal rails. That’s where we wanted to start with Wove as a brand. We had no desire to come out of the gate being something for everyone, just everything to someone. It is just the beginning for us as a company.

Yes, there will be future versions, but no further comments at this time.

[Pwraddr]

Thx!

[Former_User]

We’re doing a side-by-side comparison of channel width, nose width and width transition and I’ll post a preview here.
Channel Width: The V8’s channel width provides ample soft tissue relief.Nose Width: The V8’s nose width supports the pelvic bones - it’s not so narrow that the nose sits between these bones and increases soft tissue pressure & discomfort, and not so wide as to rub & chafe the inner thighs. (nose widths measured at the furthest point forward that the rider can sit on the saddle - saddles with rounded noses are measured further back for this reason)Transition: The V8’s transition from rear to nose quickly tapers to get the saddle out of the way to maximize thigh clearance and reduce the likelihood of thigh rub and chafing.

can see hi-quality images on instagram: https://www.instagram.com/...hid=MzRlODBiNWFlZA==

[rob_bell]

Funny, but not so funny story about my Wove V8.

I finished the UnboundXL on Saturday. The mud made it take about 7 hours longer than expected, but that’s another story. Hours were spent walking, but even more hours were spent riding, and I never even thought about the saddle all day because I never had any discomfort. That’s amazing.

Fast forward a bit… After the race, I was shattered. The extra hours meant I was also awake longer than planned and wasn’t able to start refueling as early as I would have liked. I fell asleep at the table right after the finish line. I fell asleep again in the passenger seat of my buddy’s car on the 1-mile car ride back to the Air BNB, and then in the Air BNB garage in a camping chair for about an hour while people tried to wake me up. They finally got me in the shower, and then I fell asleep on the floor without eating and stayed asleep on the floor until the next morning. They tried to wake me up to get me in a bed and couldn’t.

That’s how shattered I was. My friend drove me back to OKC. I had left my car at my friend’s bike shop, so he dropped me off there, 9 miles from home. I felt fine to drive by then.

I put my bike on the roof rack of my beloved e46 BMW m3. It’s a seasucker rack with 4 cups that vacuum to the sunroof. Now, I should mention that I almost never use this rack. I always try to just use my trunk for my bike, but aerobars make that challenging; especially with all the extra stuff I was taking up to the race.

So I’m on the phone with my wife as I pull into my driveway and slowly pull into the garage, and I hear a crunch. I’m so out of it that I immediately assume I must have hit my side wall with my mirror, but the mirror looks fine. That’s when I realized how big of an idiot I was. My bike doesn’t fit into the garage on the roof rack.

I jumped out of the car and saw that the seasucker was ripped off the roof. I’m not sure how much force it takes to rip off all 4 cups, but I did it. It pulled the sunroof glass up and out of the car, bending the mechanism of the sunroof. It scratched the crap out of my roof. I was in horror.

But…

The bike looks totally fine. The Wove V8 was the piece of the bike that made contact with my house. There’s a mark on my house the width of the nose of the saddle. I don’t see a single crack on the saddle. Somehow my 3T Exploro isn’t showing any cracks either. I’m going to have somebody with a bit more brain power than me look it over, but I don’t see cracks, don’t hear creaking, and a ride around my neighborhood felt totally normal on it. I have a feeling if any other part of the bike had made contact, I’d have a broken bike.

So now I need to deal with a broken sunroof. I feel like such a dummy, but wanted to share my experience and give kudos to one heck of a strong saddle.

[Former_User]

Wow Rob! That’s one heck of a story and epic race with a tragic ending for your car, house but luckily not bike/saddle!

Stephen of Rodeo Labs finished on a single speed with our Mags saddle (we’ll post some pics on instagram soon).

Have to imagine you’re still catching up on sleep!

[RowToTri]

Wow. A lot of amazing things in that story! Sounds like some pretty serious hypoglycemia! I’m amazed you finished the race.

Also amazing that a 130g piece of carbon fiber attached to a bike by carbon fiber rails a few mm thick can take that amount of force and be ok. I drove a Felt IA into the top of my garage once and the fork crunched.

I used to really like my Adamo saddle that is now on my road bike on my trainer. Now that I have gotten used to my Wove saddle, the Adamo seems seriously uncomfortable beyond an hour… I’ve gotten spoiled now.

[Bdaghisallo]

Wow Rob! That’s one heck of a story and epic race with a tragic ending for your car, house but luckily not bike/saddle!

Stephen of Rodeo Labs finished on a single speed with our Mags saddle (we’ll post some pics on instagram soon).

Have to imagine you’re still catching up on sleep!

I saw him - and his Mags saddle - in one of Ben Delaney’s YT clips.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ZgdQg6p1D4 Head to about the 7:44 mark.