Ritchey have quietly developed a solid reputation for making some of the lightest and most reliable seatposts on the market. They also have the honour of designing some of the fiddliest methods of making their clamp mechanisms work.
Just make sure that the rubber web, which holds the bits together while you do it up, doesn’t come unclipped. The clamp sides bite onto a pair of bevelled carbon edges and once the clamp hardware is dialled and the saddle fitted that’s the last time you should have to touch it.
In action, the post is stiff feeling enough to keep the saddle well over the seat tube when you’re sat on the nose juggling body weight while climbing steep traction-free pitches, but with enough softness to help any hardtail feel a bit more like a place where you can deliver your power to the trail.
Ritchey have made several versions including cheaper alloy ones and more expensive Superlogic nano carbon versions. There’s a twin-bolt head version too.
This article was originally published in What Mountain Bike magazine.