Unboxing a New Helmet

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I’ve had a crappy modular and decent full-face helmets for a couple of years.  Throughout my riding career, I’ve had occasions to ride into low-sun and this is horrifyingly dangerous.  The most recent, I lost sight of the bike in front of me, the stripes, the edges of the road, all I could see was blinding sun.  Thanks for your concern, yes, the face shield was in perfect condition and clean.  So I’ve decided to consolidate into one.  Yes, I’m a cliche, an old white guy in a ‘stich suit, German helmet, on an EU giant-touring bike.  But these helmets are freakishly quiet on top of well-made.  My current daily-riding modular is from a very popular budget brand and besides fogging, it’s clumsily put together, in that no fastener is any better than the overall need.  Plus it’s loud, incredibly loud.

So here we are, opening a brand new E1.  This is a C3 or C4 with a brim.  And 2 mods to the venting system.  This one is Matt finished, which I’m sure I’ll destroy in no time.  It’ll be amazing to see the white parts turn green as smushed bugs only partially clean off.

I’ve had 2 occasions to test riding the E1.  Local city stuff, the airflow seemed pretty ok.  At first, I felt the bill wasn’t doing much but when I got into the sun, oh my, it was really shading handily.  The interior seems usefully cooler under the brim.  At city speeds, the brim (or bill) is absolutely the cat’s pajamas: shading the interior, no lift problems, no noise.

The highway is a bit different.  I’ve done a to/from 40 minute highway run, and the bill’s effects are predictable.  It shakes, it lifts, it very subtly works out your neck.  If you’re going to ride lot’s of high speed miles with an E1 + bill, you’re going to need to work out.  Or work up to it.  The noise, which I’ll get to in a bit, isn’t terrible but louder than a normal Schuberth.  Any burden of the bill, I will totally accept when next riding into a low-sun.  If the helmet-shake or sounds make me slow down, that’s just gravy.

Without the bill, this is a normal C3 or C4 helmet with better intakes.  It’s pleasantly quiet, absolutely neutral in lift, and even for my Arai Profile/Signet shaped head, comfortable.  I don’t know if I was supposed to do this, but I “plugged” the pivot-holes with the spare bill-lock knobs.  I suspect this contributes positively to the noise experience.

Let’s talk about Schuberth helmet noise.  Quick reminder, I’m extremely hard of hearing.  My range from minimum-detectable to pain-threshold sound amplitude is probably 1/100th normal.  I’ve also lost the ability to perceive high-frequencies so stuff above ~1kHz gets pretty lost.

With that in mind, my perception of Schuberth helmet noise is “no high frequencies.”  There’s still wind noise, you should wear ear plugs, but it’s wildly diminished.  There are no fast-transients, no hisses, no sharp sounds at all.  City riding, this is so pleasant as to be mind-blowing.  Seriously, there’s no helmet like a Schuberth, you should eliminate them before selecting any other based on noise alone.  It’s that radically better.

My budget modular is so unbelievably loud, I won’t be sad to see it go.  My Schuberth S2 will be missed, but the general challenge of putting a full-face on with both glasses and hearing aids just makes it pointless.  It’s also pretty toasty.  Take the bill off the E1 and it’s as quiet as any of their helmets.

Accessories: do you need them? Damned if I know, but here’s what I need.  A spare face shield, without the pinlock.  I find pinlocks very hard to install, so the factory-installed one should be put on the shelf and saved for colder weather.  Having 2 shields is also smart, like having sport safety goggles: you never know when your daily shield will give its life to save your face.

Tinted shields: No.  I’ve had them, they can keep the interior cooler, but Schuberth’s sun shield is unbelievably excellent.  Color-neutral even if it is a tad brownish, it’s surprisingly dark.  It holds at any position so you can just shave a few f-stops off the sky if you want.  Since a tinted shield at night is an expensive ticket and a real disaster for old folks’ night vision, I don’t want to deal with them.

Bluetooth intercom: Maybe.  I have the Schuberth re-branded Cardo in my S2 and have many hours of enjoyable snarking with friends.  The new version is a Sena S-10, which more of my riding group prefer.  However, it looks like the only control is inside the helmet next to your left eye.  In other words, they are committing you to the additional Sena Remote, which may be smarter than adding buttons to the helmet.  Still, I’m not so sure.  Having lived with hearing aid remotes, I can tell you the boring and simplistic complaint “one more thing to lose” is pretty sound.  If you’re the rider with one jacket, the Remote might be easily kept.  I rotate 2 suits + 1 jacket so the amount of crap I need to pull off shelves or hangars to tuck into pockets, it’s a recipe for forgetting something.  (Add stretchy skullcap or base-beanies now, for both sweat mgmt and hearing aid containment, now I’ve got MORE to lose.)

Fit: as mentioned, my long-narrow head is not a Schuberth head.  I have to buy a huge XXXL to cope.  I also have to modify my helmets.  Looked at from the side, my head in the helmet doesn’t make contact at the crown.  Or bald spot.  Instead, all the helmet rests on the prow of my forehead and top of my occiput.  What I do is strategically fill that gap with pads from bicycle helmets.  I place male velcro dots so that the pads align with and not block the cooling channels, and get some fraction of the weight onto that open area.  This is, of course, illegal, vile, and stinky and will cause lawyers to come murder me in the night. Though since I’m adding padding, and stuff designed for helmets that use EPS linings, I’m having a little trouble seeing how they win in the court of Public relations.  Heck, I see a market for corporate

So keep in mind that my head doesn’t fit any Schuberth product, my hearing is crap, and I’m not 20 years old: I’m still telling you to first reject all Schuberths before buying ANY other helmet.  Yep, that $200 HJC. Go to Craigslist if you must, that’s how I got my S2.