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- #21
YAY, I found a used Marin hard tail / hybrid at a local used bike shop! $220 total, with a nice wide-butted gel seat!
all great info, but it really depends on how far/long you are riding. The shorter your rides, I think the less important the quality of the saddle is.Asking a bike enthusiast what kind of seat to get is sort of like going on here and asking what is the best shaving brush. I think the general issue a lot of people have with gel seats, though, can be summed up by Grant Petersen in Just Ride: A Radically Practical Guide to Riding Your Bike: "Supersoft gel saddles actually feel better on your hand than your crotch. If the saddle is too squishy, your sit bones compress it, and push it up on your crotch nerves."
Read Sheldon Brown's blog. He's basically the guru of everything bike related. This is his article on seats: http://sheldonbrown.com/saddles.html
A decent bike shop will probably let you test ride of couple of seats in the parking lot. Sometimes, though, finding the right seat is...well, back to the shaving issue, kind of like finding the right razor or shaving brush. A matter of trial and error.