As most faithful Slowtwitch readers know, I have shown an affinity for Syntace handlebars, on a personal (user) level, especially when it comes to aero bars.

But I thought it might be a good idea to spend some time with the Profile people and their products for a couple of reasons. First, this isn't your father's Profile. The company was sold about a year ago, and in that span of time much of what fueled Profile's strategies and direction has been changed in ways that I, as a user, can more easily accommodate.

Second, the fat of the aero bar market has really boiled down to two players—Syntace and Profile—and it doesn't do our readers any good to focus on just 50 percent of that equation. May I stop here and say, yes, there are others, including Cinelli and Vision Tech, and I'm glad to occasionally review those products and companies as well. But it seemed like it would be a glaring omission to skip Profile only to write about those other brands' products.

I also decided to take a day and visit Profile's headquarters, tour the warehouse, and get to know the "new" Profilers. By the way, when I say Profile I really ought to be saying Profile Design. There is another Profile out there, Profile Racing, and though they make stuff, they don't make anything I'm likely to review. But I thought I'd clear up any confusion between the two companies, and when I truncate the name to Profile it is due to my own laziness.

Profile's directional change appeared to be to call a halt to further innovations and product introductions in favor of bolstering the processes—and strengthening the sub-assemblies—of existing models. That having been largely accomplished, they do have new products to be introduced at Interbike later this month. But they're taking a more cautious approach than in times past.

A bike with Profile's one-piece wing-shaped carbon aero bar—the Carbon X—and its ADC fork (look for our description of this in a week or so) will have a very light front end. I chose to affix the Carbon X to a fork that weighed about what their ADC will, just to see what it would feel like. Boy, was that front end light. Just the way I like it. And that was without a particularly light front wheel.

The Carbon X comes with only one stem length, about 100mm, but almost everything on this bar is adjustable. The fore-aft of the clip-on extensions can be adjusted, as can the elevation of the extensions via placement either above, or below, the winged base bar. Likewise, the armrests are incredibly adjustable fore-aft through a series of four pairs of side-by-side holes that bolt the armrest to its mount. And the left and right mounts can be changed so the armrests can be positioned just in front of, or behind, the base bar.

My only beef with the adjustability of the Carbon X is in armrest width. The armrests have, as I said, several pairs of side-by-side holes, and two screws mount one pair of armrest holes to the armrest mount. But the mount has only three side-by-side holes, so you've basically got two options for armrest mounting: the middle and outside holes or the middle and inside holes. I couldn't get the armrests as narrow as I'd have liked.

Let me stop here and talk about adjustability. This was Profile's big feature during the past half-dozen years. But there were so many sub-assemblies, moving parts, and parts bolted to parts that the products were too adjustable. Too cute. And, accordingly, too flimsy. Armrests were rickety. They "spun" off their single-bolted fixtures. It drove me crazy. So I stopped using the brand altogether.

But I like what I see now. No, these products are not as rock-solid as their Syntace counterparts. But they're solid enough that if what you want is adjustability, then you've come to the right place.

Having said all that, I feel really cheesy telling them that their armrests aren't width-adjustable enough. But I rue the absence of a fourth hole on the armrest bracket, inboard of the other three, so I could get the armrests where I want them. Perhaps this is a fix for Profile in a later iteration.

Just like Republicans and Democrats, Syntace and Profile ought to become a little more like each other. Profile has already made big strides in that direction—its products are much more substantial. Syntace ought to look at the adjustability of the extensions on Profile's Aerolite tri bar. It would be so easy for Syntace to adopt such a scheme for its SLs, and Syntace would have a world-beater on its hands. But I digress...

One more thing I did to the Carbon X was to ream out the base bar extensions to adopt Syntace's Space Control brake levers. The Carbon X's inside diameter was almost big enough for the lever, but not for the expander wedge that fixes the lever in place. I'm not sure why Syntace uses a wedge bigger than its lever diameter but, in any case, I reamed it out so that it would all fit. What a nice set-up that made! And the Carbon X has exit holes right next to the stem so the cables traveled inside for most of their aero bar "route."

Should you ream your Carbon X out for a Syntace lever? I've got several answers:

1. No, if you want Profile's official word on it (liability and all that).
2. You can always use Profile's own hoity-toity brake lever, which is quite nice, and no reaming is necessary.
3. Me, on my own bike, sure, I'll do it, because I've got a very high quality adjustable reamer, and I'll look for cracks in the bar every now and then.
4. It is therefore a judgment call, and I'd only do it if I knew exactly what I was doing.

I also adjusted the aero bar extensions so that the ends of the extensions were closer to me, not so far extended in front. That meant the other end of the extensions were adjusted back toward my headset. No worries, I whacked off that part.

The final result? After a fair bit of whacking and reaming I had a very nice bar with a very nice set of brake levers.