So I've been riding an SSM Aspide saddle for quite some time, and liked it a lot. Out of curiosity I got a Zoncolan for another build recently, but riding it with bibs felt like the chamois crammed below me.

Now, riding the Zoncolan wearing normal pants, without chamois, feels very good.

Does anyone have similar experience?

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Bikes: Raceur, Beateur

Well, perhaps something similar:

I have been testing a San Marco Mantra saddle with the "scrotal valley" cut out (term coined by someone here) and it definately does not play nice with Assos bibs. The pad gets squeezed into the cut out and creates hot spots when ridign in the saddle for extended periods. I foound I had to rise from the saddle and do a little adjustment every so often to get the pad seated properly again.

The Mantra saddle is definately super comfy with Castelli pads and Cytech pads in other bib brands. For what it is worth, I was coming from a San Marco Squadra Ti saddle which was my Holy Grail combined with Assos pads.

Each saddle has its own taper, which I try to match when setting up a new saddle.
Measuring simply from the nose often produces bad results when switching to a new brand/model.
(I assume you have adjusted the saddle height to compensate for any difference in saddle height.)

Interesting. Do all Assos pads behave the same with that seat?

The Mille_S5 pad behaves in my experience very nice with the Selle SMP Composit and Carbon seats, and those seats have no center at all, basically.

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Bianchi-Campagnolo

I never realised anything simillar like that with San Marco Mantra. My most used bibs are Cervo Rosso at the moment, but also Assos Uno Logo and Uno S5. All of them works nearly same.

The Assos FI. UNO and FI. Mille S5 pads were problematic for me so far. I don't use the FI.13 S5 bibs.