It would be nice if Nick could come on here and talk more about it. The use of ropes for the for the life support components, as he said, makes the hole thing adjustable and inexpensive to rebuild. Trying to do the same thing with webbing is much more complicated. With stiff enough leather pads you wouldn't even begin to feel those ropes.
I'm here! Just not as often as I like.
Regarding Matts saddle, I met Matt at my first TCC in Ohio. I thought his saddle was a great idea then and that it made perfect sense. Over the last year we have worked through the sourcing, manufacturing and production prototypes of what Matt has been climbing in for about 5 years now.
As for the adjustability, this saddle offers pretty much infinite adjustability but more importantly set it and forget it type setups. Have a friend help you the first time and its set until you need to replace it. The legs adjust easily with the anchor bends and never creep. I insisted on the grommet belt, we really think its reliable, easy to use, and offers on the fly adjustability that again doesn't creep.
The pads are actually 3 parts. The back is an incredibly tough rough belting material and the fronts are full grain leather. Each pad has a high quality dense memory foam inside it and vertical baffling stitches to keep the pad in place, provide lateral stiffness and create a channel for air and sweat. Combined with the specific tunneling guiding the rigging, the burliness of the padding disburses the pressure of the ropes supporting the saddle.
All of the ropes were hand picked and custom produced for TreeStuff and Matts harness.
For me the option to rebuild the saddle is cool. I like the idea of wearing in a leather saddle that will last forever but being able to replace the life support components and even reconfigure it to a changing climbing style.
We have fully tested the saddle components and as a system. Tests were done with configured and grossly MIS-configured (no knots connecting in the back of the saddle. totally untied) saddles. The bridge has been repeatedly tested in configuration and with other likely modifications. There wasn't a single break below 7500lbs. The saddles are currently undergoing third party ASTM testing. We broke Matt's 3 year old saddle rigging and the results were awesome!
FAIR NOTICE: My review is totally partial. I am completely biased by my friendship with Matt, my love of tough leather shit, my love of techy new gear, and the obvious fact that I work for the company producing it.
