When you pedal, your body movements create forces that can activate the suspension. This bob will occur to varying degrees depending on the seatpost model and setup.

The downsides to this seatpost are that there is no pre-load adjuster, so you might find it springy sometimes, and it’s heavier than most (around 700 grams). degree in 80, 90, 100, 110, and 120mm lengths (in both standard 1 1/8" steerer and oversized 1 1/4" steerer) Now the difference between the Redshift and the by.Schulz was almost as prominent as the difference between the by.Schulz and the Suntour. Wow! The Redshift “eats” everything, speed bumps, road chatter, roots … I sometimes begin to say “sorry” to the rear wheel as I see the impacts coming and remain quietly seated …It’s great if you have a ‘sporty’ ride position like me, or if you mostly ride smoother roads. Given it only has 20mm of travel, you will have to compromise on the rougher roads, but I still find it offers a significant comfort improvement over a regular post. Plus it doesn’t bounce, it’s light and it’s elegant. This air spring system has been tested by GravelBikes.cc to be much less active than other suspension seatposts, but it’ll still take the edge off those bigger hits, and performs well on gravel roads too. Here’s where it gets interesting though. I’ve been suffering from some knee pain recently from a noncycling incident, and thus have been spending a little more time seated while pedalling than I may have liked. Suspension seatposts never really went away after their 1990s’ heyday. But they dropped out of the mainstream, due to a performance that was often less than stellar. Take control - customizing your suspension feel to float over obstacles so you can maintain control Stem Details:

If your bike has rear suspension, your saddle is already suspended so you do not need a suspension seatpost. If you ride a mix of gravel and tarmac roads, I don’t know if you can do any better than the Cane Creek eeSilk. The NCX seatpost features a patented parallelogram design that Suntour claims works well for small bump compliance. The post has a total of 50mm travel and was designed with low maintenance and long term durability in mind. Meanwhile, the elastomer Cane Creek eeSilk offers around half as much vibration improvement, however, it’s worth noting that it only has around half the suspension travel (20mm). It’d be interesting to see how a longer-travel elastomer seatpost compares here. The small unweighted saddle height increase needs a slight adjustment when mounting up for the first time. At the suggested preload setting, I immediately felt neutrally suspended and didn’t notice any negative effect on seated pedalling.

Select your (multi) tool wisely

I’ve spent years on the previous version of the Cane Creek Thudbuster. With its slower rebound speed, I think it’s a great option if you ride a larger percentage on smoother surfaces, as you don’t really notice the suspension bob. The 50mm of travel is ample for off-road use too. Krzysztof over at GravelBikes.cc has been using his smartphone with a vibration meter app to compare the vibration absorption of different bike components on both a bumpy forest trail and fast gravel road. The elastomer design, short travel and reduced weight make the Pro a choice that we think more riders will value. With race-oriented and stiff gravel bikes becoming all the rage lately, this is one of the best ways to find some added comfort without sacrificing performance. We would even argue that with the added comfort and ability to pedal over rough terrain while seated, you might perform better. Its two-bolt saddle clamp remains level atop a parallelogram linkage pivoting on dry-lube bushings. When weight is added to the post a link compresses the internal spring(s), creating user-adjustable sag, which Redshift recommends should be around 20 per cent of the 35mm total travel. Reduced fatigue: By reducing the amount of stress and fatigue on your body, a suspension seatpost can help you to conserve energy and ride for longer without feeling as tired.

In general, you'll find the +30 deg stem provides a more upright, comfort-oriented fit, whereas the +/-6 deg stem puts you in a more performance-oriented riding position (standard for a typical road bike). A telescopic post is usually considered inferior, as the angle that it compresses is different from the direction of force coming from the rear wheel – resulting in a less reactive suspension system. Telescopic posts also end up with a shorter saddle-to-pedal distance when you are riding over bumps. But interestingly, data recently collected by the University of Exeter (England) suggests that once the seatpost is installed on a bike, it may not reduce vibration exposure. And finally, the air seatpost improved things a bit (6% improvement) but clearly requires a higher bump force to activate than other suspension seatposts.

Weight & Pricing

First Impressions: Out of the box I could immediately feel the lighter weight of this Pro version of the post over the standard version. The hollowed out pivots were noted next. Otherwise, detecting the other differences required a side-by-side comparison. The look is subtly different, but the over all look is definitely similar. The only dead giveaway that a rider would have the Pro version being the hollow pivots. For my riding style, I’d love to be able to slide the saddle forward just a couple millimeters more than I can with the current seat head. For most riders, this won’t be an issue, but I prefer a more forward saddle position. Saddle choice can help here, but ideally the seat head would allow for more forward adjustment. The Verdict… for now One thing I really liked about the Kinekt is the saddle rail clamp. It has two simple screws to tighten and adjust the saddle. There’s a spring that keeps tension to separate the lower and upper plate. This self-fixes the nuts into place so you don’t have to hold them while loosening or tightening the plate into place. A nice touch.

These seatposts are particularly active or ‘bobby’ in the initial part of their travel, so they tend to be better suited to rougher trails, rather than smoother roads – in my experience. I’ve only gotten four or five rides in with the new Thudbuster, but I’m quite impressed. The redesigned seat clamp is fantastic, and I found the new elastomer system to work very well. Unlike some of the softer, coil-sprung posts, the new Thudbuster offers a nice mix of chatter dampening and medium-hit suspension to take the edge off of sharper bumps. And, it doesn’t feel as if it has as much of an effect on pedaling efficiency as other, longer travel posts do.You can measure the length of your existing stem as shown in the following picture. The length is measured from the center of the handlebar to the center of the steerer tube. But there is a cost to this high reactivity. I’ve found that when spring posts are perfectly set up for rough terrain, they bob more than I’d like on smooth surfaces. Ride faster - feeling refreshed from the energy that is normally wasted suspending your body as it is converted into forward motion The other dropper option is the PNW Coast, which has 40mm of suspension travel and is the best-value dropper, by far.