According to Peter White cycles, Nokian studded tires required riding for 25-30 miles on pavement to seat the studs because they have poor quality control. I bought a set of Schwalbe tires and they now have the same recommendation. Anyway, it was nice to go test them out, and I rode them easy on the Cherry Creek trail which runs near my neighborhood.
First impressions is they are noisy with 240 studs hitting the ground. Overall I think the grip is a little less with studs on pavement than if it was all rubber. It takes away some of the stickiness since the studs are first to contact the road. No matter, I didn’t get them for stickiness on dry roads, but for ice.
While Schwalbe says that you can lose 5-10 studs during this process I didn’t lose a single stud. So I’m happy with that.
With some snow coming later in the week I hope to have a chance to really test them out. It’s going to test me too since it will be in the single digit temps in the morning. Brrr 🙂