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In Gate bridles

quick question, how many buckles are there on the right side of the bridle? It looks like an anatomic crown but I’ve seen ones that pass the noseband through and only attach the throatlatch on one side so you don’t have what feels like 45 buckles on that side of the face.

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I love your horse. I don’t love how that bridle fits him.

To my eye the In Gates seem to not have generous browband, cutback, or a long enough crown; I see photos of their bridles where the cheek straps are too close to the eye for me to comfortably say they fit. It could be photo angle though I’ve observed it now in nearly every photo posted of these bridles.

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I was going to say the same thing as @beowulf. That bridle, in this pic, looks like the browband is far too short. And also the crown piece. You can see the browband pulling the throatlatch forward, when in my mind a properly fitted bridle has the browband above the part where the throatlatch splits off. It also should be long enough that the cheekpieces sit a little farther back from the eye and the ears have more space. This could totally be an illusion (and I’m not a bridle fitter or anything so, grain of salt), but it looks like a very nice bridle that doesn’t fit very well at all.

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Unfortunately, that’s not the reason – I spoke with his partner at WEF this winter, he’s had significant health issues and isn’t making anything now and hasn’t for a while. So, there is little to no inventory floating out there right now, and none in the pipeline, and that’s unlikely to change any time soon :frowning: So I’m not sure that the new In Gate one is actually his, unless he just collaborated with them on design and they are handling production.

My curiosity was piqued, so I made a comparison chart of the sizing from the In Gate bridles with some other ones I’ve looked at. Horsemanship Saddlery and Henry James are definitely “euro”/dressage styled. Red Barn/KL Select has both dressage and hunter bridles, PS of Sweden is mostly “euro”/dressage but makes a hunter style, and of course the In Gate and Edgewood make only hunter bridles. I knew there was a bunch of variation in sizes between brands, but I was shocked at how much. There’s a spread of 2-3.5 in difference in cheekpiece length for all sizes!

Pony

Brand Cheekpiece Browband Crown Split to split Noseband
Horsemanship Saddlery 7 14.5 11.5 22
Red Barn 8 14 34.5 11 28
In gate Coronation 8.5 13.5 41 12 25
Edgewood 9 12.5 9 24

Cob

Brand Cheekpiece Browband Crown Split to split Noseband
Henry James 7 15.5 28 13 28
Horsemanship Saddlery 8 16 13 25
PS of Sweden 8.5 15.75 24 25.5
In gate Coronation 9 15 43 12.5 27
Red Barn 10 15 39 12 29
Edgewood 10 14.5 10 27

Full

Brand Cheekpiece Browband Crown Split to split Noseband
Henry James 7.5 16.5 30 14 30
Horsemanship Saddlery 9 17 15 26.5
PS of Sweden 9.5 16.5 25.5 28
In gate Coronation 10 16 45 13 28
Red Barn 11 16 42.5 13 30
Edgewood 11 15.5 11 30

XFull

Brand Cheekpiece Browband Crown Split to split Noseband
Henry James 8.5 17.5 32 15 32
Horsemanship Saddlery 10 18.5 17 28.5
In gate Coronation 11 17 46 13.5 30
Red Barn 11.5 17 45.5 15 31.5
Edgewood 12 16.5 12 33
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@equinelibrium, thank you very much!!!

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I don’t think TIG is having Castelow make their bridles.

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This is the original bridle

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@vxf111, and everyone else, does this look tight behind the ears?

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Very

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She doesn’t care and I wouldn’t say it’s tight. It could probably slide back and forth maybe 1/4 of an inch. It’s not at all tight. If anything that part of the bridle is a smidge loose.

I would say it doesn’t have a cut out/anatomic shape behind the ears. But neither do my Aramas or Edgewood or Hadfield or Beval or millions of other bridles that aren’t super new and neither she nor any of my other horses have ever cared. The cut out shape is relatively new and honestly I’ve never had a horse who noticed or cared. There might be horses out there that are sensitive but I don’t own them.

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As an old person, I have to wonder if we are getting a little more than bonkers about the “fit” of everything. When I was a kid, I had one saddle from the time I was 8 until I aged out of the juniors; my parents bought the saddle for me from the parents of another kid at the barn who happened to have decided to quit riding just as I was getting into it. I had one bridle, and I’m pretty sure it wasn’t bought new. Over the next ten years, I rode hundreds of ponies of all sizes small, medium, large, in that one single saddle, and most of them in the same bridle, and I cannot give credit for even one of our successes or failures to my saddle or bridle. Horses are not as picky about tack fit as we give them credit for today.

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@TWilson no we aren’t getting bonkers we are just more aware.

I had the luxury to know old horseman who pointed me to a saddlery to get a custom saddle before it was the norm.

I shopped at places that would let me “make a bridle.” It was never weird. It just took the general public to make it a fad for it to seem over the top.

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It is certainly not weird for people in high places to take advantage of those in lower places in order to make money. It happens all the time. I’m sorry that it happened to you, although it seems that they at least made you feel very special at the time.

What? I paid less for a custom saddle than people did for off the rack. What are you going on about? My make a bridle was $90.

Seriously what are you objecting to? 5k for a fully custom saddle with the actual saddler fitting it? Or my 90 dollar piece bridle?

If you really are an old person you’d know there were way more sizes and saddles were made to fit without pads. Or did I just age you to the 90’s?

ETA: that custom saddle I spoke of. Yeh still being ridden in 17 years later. Yup totally got duped.

Edited because I suck

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I think on this thread, people (including myself) are being quite picky. Mainly because IMO if you(g) are gonna spend $400, $800, $1200 on a BRIDLE, it better fit perfectly! And more to the point, if you are spending that, you’re not just wanting a decent bridle - you’re wanting good quality and a certain “look”. Just like clothing and boots, fit can make something of any quality look polished, or not.

FWIW the main bridle I use is a 10+ year old Ovation unpadded hunter bridle, that I bought an oversize browband for from a website that used to sell parts so you could cobble something together that matched. For some reason my horses have big foreheads :woman_shrugging:t3:. So I’m specifically picky about fit, and have been for years.

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Yeah, back in the good ol’ days when the answer to every horse ill behavior was to basically beat them through it.

We know more now, about a lot of things. Why not care more about the horse’s comfort, when the knowledge and technology is there?

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I think you are looking at my bad photography and a bridle that was put on an antsy horse in a trailer. It fits him. Nothing pulls and nothing is tight. This is the anatomical crown and it sits nicely. I forget who asked but there is only one buckle for the throat latch which I like. He’s happy in it and if he wasn’t we would know. He’s a sensitive sort.

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I’m being picky too. I learned a lot about bridle fitting in the last three years, in part because of my increasing interest in trying to make a fundamentally uncomfortable piece of tack (bridle, metal bit in mouth) comfortable for the horse. I learned that a lot of traditionally fitting bridles don’t actually fit at all, including some of my own. It’s lead to a few frankenbridles as very few bridles actually fit my horse perfectly off the rack.

I think we can all agree that horses don’t necessarily find pleasantry in this article of tack, but we can make ways to make it more ergonomic and comfortable. If we can do that, why shouldn’t we?

I am not in love with the fit of these bridles including in @vxf111’s absolutely stunning photo (is that your boy?). But I also am aware I’m coming at it from a different discipline and a different mindset. The popular and traditional HJ bridles will not have the fit I look for so it may be a me problem.

In general I want a bridle with two inches of clearance from behind the ears. I want cut back crown, and I don’t like seeing short browbands - which I think is the real issue with TIG bridles. It looks like their browbands run small across all sizes if we look at the measurements. Industry standard is something more like P/S 14, C/S 15, F/S 16, and O/S 17. That small tweak would affect the fit of the whole bridle, including where the splits align and how close to the ears the crown piece sits. It’d also change how close to the eyes the cheek straps are — another thing I’m very picky about in my bridles. What I’m seeing consistently in the photos of TIG bridles is the browband is too short and it disrupts the line of the crown, pulling the crown forward and creating a “broken line” with the cheek straps, which then rest too close to the eyes for my preference. I also notice that the cheek pieces for both the bit and noseband seem to not lie flat (pictured above), and usually the noseband cheek straps pull away from the bit cheek straps. This could be because the top of the noseband circumference is not generous enough (not the bottom, where the buckles are) another thing I’m seeing consistently in these bridles.

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Here is another bad picture of the bridle on our horse. I can assure you there is no pulling anywhere. If the browband were larger it would just stick out or droop and look odd.

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