Trial will be higher in general than street and flat because you need the extra height to hop set in front without bending forward
@_@ Which is it?
If you are riding seat in you’ll want a lower seat but when it comes to seat in front with proper technique the seat should be higher. Look at the difference between a high seat in rolling hop and a high seat in front side hop.
Sounds like some riders could use an “adjust as you ride” seat post driven off the hub. 
It’s available for mountain bikes, so why not?
Wow they look quite practical for uni if they can take the bashing a uni seat gets. It appears they are basically a gas strut with a control valve.
Of course we would need a model with a different bolt pattern. There was a thread a while back about a new company that makes an adapter to fit a uni seat to a plain post so it would do nicely if the sizes worked out.
It seems to be technology on the cusp of acceptance. The price certainly suggests this stage of its product cycle. I’d be waiting for prices to drop.
This one might even be adaptable to the seat plate of a KH adjustable.
Been looking further into it.
Here is the English manual. Look at page four.
Anyone seen one in action?
How low for trials/street?
Lets say a rider has their seat set at 31.5" for learning and general riding around. How much lower would they set the seat for trials/street? One, two, three inches?Would buying a long neck unicycle limit a shorter rider from being able to do trials/street riding? Let’s say they could only lower the seat two inches. Is that enough?
I’m not a Trials expert by any means, but you would definitely want to lower your seat more than two inches to get leg compression for hops. Seat heights for Trials/Street/Flat basically follow a different set of rules than “mostly seated” riding.
Check out some trials videos on youtube, when they’re not jumping, they ride pretty low indeed.
My impression of trials unis is they have a big padded handle that the rider sits on occasionally. 
Ok that’s what I thought. I’ve considered the Equinox unicycle that comes in a street or freestyle version as a good 20" unicycle to buy because it can be switched from one or the other type. The only downside is the long neck, especially for short riders.
There is little to no downside to having a longneck frame, especially if you are willing and able to make some minor simple modifications if it does prove to be too tall.
If you are going to want to have the wide range of seat heights necessary for all those disciplines on a single unicycle a short neck simply won’t have enough room for adjustment with a single seatpost.
A 300mm longneck will give you about 25 cm of adjustment, a standard 150mm seattube length will only give you 10 cm of adjustment.
Lets say you want your seat-base 450mm over your crown for practicing standard skills, you could use a standard frame with 350mm (standard-uncut) seatpost extended to it’s maximum but you would only be able to go down to 350mm as your minimum height with that seatpost.
If you used a longneck frame and a 300mm seatpost you would be able to adjust all the way up to 550mm (100mm higher than before) and down to 300mm (50mm lower). this is how I have my 19", It’s great having the extra adjustment
And here is where modifications come in. If you are short and want your seat down to 250mm for trials but still want to be able to adjust it up to 450mm for practicing your standard skills then you can cut both your post and seat-tube to 250mm giving you the whole adjustment range you want, which is not possible with the standard short-neck frame.
I’ve often wondered why dropper seatposts haven’t caught on with unicyclists, since it seems like they’d be very useful. (And unicyclists love a fiddly piece of gear which costs more than the uni itself.
)
They don’t fit?
They’re not reliable?
I’m sure someone will chime in and explain this…
Wow thanks for laying this all out. This gives me more ideas to ponder.
In reality I’ll never do any trials or street riding. My one regret in life will be not learning to unicycle when I was younger. I had the chance but like many people, gave up after 20 minutes. I wish I had the energy that Terry has. In my own way, I’m trying though.
I’m itching to get another unicycle although I don’t really need one. Like many riders, I’d like to buy a nice one that suites multiple needs which is difficult to do. I thought about getting a long neck and then shortening the seat tube if I needed that flexability. I’m not sure how difficult or easy that would be with an aluminum one. I’ve been browsing old threads for that info.
There is actually an 200mm equinox frame but UDC US doesn’t carry it. I wouldn’t hesitate to buy an equinox if they offered it with that size frame. Riders in the UK are lucky to have UDC UK. They seem really keen on helping customize unicycles. They even offer to cut seat tubes.
So I’m dreaming. Should probably by cheaper version. It’s good to know that, in theory, I could get a long neck and shorten it.
I wish I had had the chance when I was young. I am quite sure I would have taken to it.
Every unicyclist needs another uni.
The Australian UDC does that too and even got me in a 27.2 x 400 mm Nimbus seatpost I saw on the UK UDC. They brought in a few and now they are in stock here. No extra charges either.
I haven’t searched the proper thread about it so I will answer from memory.
Seems like such kind of seatpost are not designed for lateral forces as applied on a uni when it hits the ground. For a seatpost costing a couple of hundreds of $, it may be frustrating…
And on top of that, you will need to source a KH rail adaper or a Qu-ax rail saddle + you will have to have somewhere to put the adjustment throttle (so either under the saddle on a brake mount or on a handlebar).
I don’t really know if somebody really tested one or if it was educated guesses. It will still be a decent budget for a paperweight (if it ends up broken…).
You are right, you can never have enough unicycles. N+1
Roger
I have used a couple of different dropper seatposts on bikes. The problem is fitting the inside trickery into a skinny 27.2mm post, meaning the actual sliding part is well under an inch. It’s hard to make it strong enough while not being overly heavy. That’s why the benchmark, the rockshox reverb, is only available in 30.9mm and 31.8mm. There are a few available in 27.2, but none in 25.4.
Also, they are very sensitive to seat clamp torque. Nip it up even a quarter turn too much & it just won’t slide properly.
I doubt they’d stand up to the abuse a uni seat gets. It’d be good if they did, but as with many things, uni is just too small a market for companies to put the money into development costs.
I guess that’s why we have qr seat clamps!
Thanks OorWullie – that explains a lot!
Strength is certainly a problem with dropper seatposts for unicyclists. The torsional twist on a unicycle is dramatically greater than you get on a bike and it would not be greatly practical. QR seatclamps especially the double quickrelease ones work well.
Roger