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Saddle Fit Opinions?

Saddles are very much a personal preference. The monoflap style are designed for fast work, show jumping and cross country, so have the blocks and tend to balance with a shorter stirrup length, which works well for some people. Research suggests monoflaps can assist rider stability. The long billets make it easy to fit a short girth rather than fiddling with different girths as you horse grows and shrinks with diet and exercise. Durabilty reports are variable. Most monflaps have foam not wool flocking: opinions differ. The cost is usually higher because they are soooo trendy and, like, modern (with
big advertising budgets). The conventional saddle has the sweat flap and are generally more robust because of the heavier leathers used. They were initally designed for foxhunting in particular and a sweat flap is useful for hours of hard work. The stirrup length is perhaps more adjustable, useful if foxhunting or trail riding when taking a hole up or down eases tired legs. The shorter billets put the girth buckle under ones leg: depending on the saddle, this may or may not be a problem for you.

You may find a conventional saddle more adaptable for the different activities you wish to do but some people swear they will take their monoflap with them into their grave.

I love my Jeffries JMX monoflap. Very balanced, wool flocked panels, wasn’t that expensive new and can still be found on the used market. I am a foxhunter and it is very comfortable for long, fast rides.

At the very least, if you have a saddle fitter out, you can have them do tracings and give recommendations for what brands, sizes, panel shapes, etc. to look for. A lot of the better used saddle retailers will take pics/scans of tracings and then you can at least make an educated guess before you ship something for trial.

And I completely agree with the assessment on saddle fitters. Make sure the person you are using is well-regarded and competent. Definitely do your research.

Thanks for all of the suggestions!!

I have had a couple fitters out who have done tracings of her back, but I am limited in my area to fitters who are reps or at least very affiliated with a certain brands, and didn’t have any suggestions outside of buying a new saddle in their brand. So, I am gonna try to see if an independent saddle fitters further out would be willing to travel to my barn and continue to trial some saddles from my (not so local) tack shop.

Do you have copies of the tracings that the saddle reps did? Some of the online consignment shops like Pelham Saddlery will do saddle recommendations based on tracings. Not as good as having an independent saddle fitter in person, but might give you better ideas than a brand rep. Good luck! Saddle searching is horrible.

I’m no expert, but have tried two million saddles. I thought it looked pretty good and I loved the Amerigo saddle I had. It was the Vega mono jump, but it worked so well for me and the