Brooks’ new line of Select saddles has been slow to arrive at the in the U.S.

The North American distributor got a few of the B.15 Swallow Select models and we grabbed a couple of them.

The Select line is made of thicker, organic leather with a natural finish. We measured the leather on one of our Swallows to be 5.6mm. (Brooks leather is usually 4-5mm thick, regardless of model.) These saddles are made with the high-mileage rider in mind.

The Select line includes the B.17 and B.17S, the B.67 and B.67S, and the Champion Flyer and Champion Flyer S, along with this Swallow. Brooks shipments from England have been a little thin lately but we hope that more Select models will arrive soon. They are nice saddles.

Tags: Brooks Select

Phillip, at Bike Tinker, replaced the frame on an old B.72. He writes about his experience and posts a few pictures here. The chromed-steel rivets are not from Brooks and I asked him about them:

I got them at the hardware store (True Value), which is inside a farm store (Wilco). I had the old saddle, so I could gauge the length I needed, and I got some good advice from a young guy there who seemed like he’d riveted a time or two. “The copper ones just go over like butter.” He also recommended splitting the rivet with a chisel to make it easier to peen the parts over.

Tags: frame, repair, rivet

The Lovely Bicycle blog analyzes the Brooks product line and explains the suitability of the different models in “Demystifying the System.”

Team Pro - B.17 Champion - B.17N

We’ve been showing you the new colors that Brooks has introduced in the past few months. The saddle maker has also been filling in some blanks in their traditional black-honey-antique brown selection for some models. We have three Brooks mainstays in colors that haven’t been available in a long time.

The Team Professional could be had in black or honey. Now we have a brown version with chrome-plated rails. The B.17N is now available in honey, and the b.17 Champion Special, with copper-plate steel rails, is now here in brown.

Tags: colors

The next Brooks model to get colorized is the B.18 Lady, the flower-embossed recreation of a vintage Brooks design. The new pink B.18 should arrive in a few weeks. It will come with matching Brooks grips.

Brooks has been filling some gaps in their model/color selections this year. The most recent addition is antique brown leather to the standard-trim Champion Flyer line.

Flyer and Flyer S saddles in brown

Tags: colors