I had a chance to ride the Impact Naomi this week after checking it out at Unicon. After spending years chopping my foam to bits, I’ve finally found a seat that works great off the shelf. It’s the slimmest saddle I could find and feels the closest thing to a bike seat whilst still being a unicycle seat
-it’s flat (ish)
-low profile
-stiff
Forget perineal cutouts or brick like foam- a saddle should support you in the right places and not get in the way.
Many distance saddles feel like you’re riding an equine saddle, but I think a unicycle is more like a bike than a horse. Mostly this is due to excess foam- once something squishes a few mm’s, it’s not going to squish anymore, and just wedges against your crotch.
Standing up off the pedals was easy- there was freedom to move around and the saddle didn’t get in the way. Particularly important if you have as much cellulite as me (=no chaffing)
Anyway, enough raving.
The bad points
-the saddle cover is a bit fiddly. Instead of laces, it has holes that fit through the seatpost bolts.
If you have a thick seatpost it’s hard to get it on. I ended up clamping the seatpost directly to the seat, and only using two of the saddle cover holes under the bolt. Works fine though.
-not designed to take the KH T-bar.
-limited angle adjustment-
-Uses nuts to secure the seat instead of allen bolts
Aside from that- I don’t know why they sell it as a street saddle- I think it’s the best Road and XC MUni saddle out there.
Hmm, was wondering why I didn’t find it at UDC. That looks ultra thin and still seems to have a pretty prominent curve to it. You prefer that to the latest KH fusion freeride saddle for MUni/distance? To me it looks best suited for street/flat, where you’re not on the saddle much at all.
Absolutely. I have a KH Freeride- I’ve taken the foam off entirely and it has a couple of strips of neoprene on it. That is a little too little padding, but allows plenty of freedom to move and is much more comfortable- you don’t have all this foam wedged against your crotch. I think the Naomi strikes a nice balance though.
It’s not as curved as it looks- or maybe that 's just the fact it’s very low profile.
I’ve only ridden it for a few hours, but if I had to do my 24hr record again- this is what I’d be using.
I have changed my saddle from a fusion freeride to a fusion street for the same reason: less padding seems to be better for me. It was a good dicission.
Yep, we all have different seat preferences…this is my opinion only.
But just for the sake of comparison- was your Naomi on a trials uni? It’s not easy to ride 5km on a 20", no matter what the seat. And you’d have to compare that with something like a Fusion Freeride or other ‘distance’ saddle on the same unicycle.
The thing for longer distances is that handlebars help too. I reckon a Naomi with a good handlebar would be pretty close to perfect for me, without going to a bicycle seat.
I was wondering if you were going to weigh in on this one or not Naomi. Based on Ken’s original post I thought that we might have a little web page romance going on.
