Fred Rafael Rednor wrote:
(snip)
> But the completely-plastic Unicanitor was a special form of
> torture for me. I imagine the theory was that your shorts had
> chamois padding, so why put extra stuff on the saddle? For me
> it didn't work.
I think the original concept of the plastic saddle was to exactly duplicate the feel of the tensioned leather saddle in a material impervious to water, lack of water resistance being the source of destruction for a tensioned leather saddle. The tensioned leather saddle didn't have padding so no need for it on a plastic saddle either, or so the theory went.
Of course, in the end (pun) this was found not to be true and padding was eventually added to the plastic shell. Interestingly, there are currently made saddles with no padding at all.
Chuck Schmidt
South Pasadena, CA USA
http://www.velo-retro.com (reprints, t-shirts & timelines)