In my experience, the panels do get grippier with time, but it can take a long time! Regularly treating the saddle with appropriate conditioners can speed things up, but only so much.You can improve grip with full seat breeches.
Also in my experience, you cannot change the real width of the tree of a saddle by adjusting flocking because it is more to do with the angle of the tree points, which flocking doesn’t affect. Flocking adjustments are mostly for adjusting for muscle changes.
I do not enjoy saddle shopping and hate the idea of having to buy and sell saddles every time I get a new horse (which hopefully won’t happen again for a long time, but you never know!). After much research, I went with a WOW saddle. They are pricey new, but can be obtained much more reasonably used. They are modular so you can change every single part (panels, seat, flaps, head plate) so there are hundreds of combinations to fit any horse. You can have them wool flocked or with air panels. Since the one I have has a seat and flaps that are good for me, I can just change panels and head plate if I get different shaped horse in the future. Now I know what panels are good for my current horse, I am shopping for another WOW saddle on the used market (I have a jumping saddle and now want a dressage saddle…we event).
Good luck!
