A new saddle design! good or bad?

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Grey_Showjumper

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at olympia yesterday, me and a friend spotted a new type of saddle.
the quantom (sp?) saddle. i thought it looked very well designed.
basically you have the tree which is made up of carbon fibre to distribute the weight of the ride more evenly. this is fitted wholey to the horse, then you have the actual saddle which is fitted to both horse and rider. the tree can be adjusted easily. you can clip the saddle bit off from the tree bit aswell...
good invention? or a bit of a waste of money? i geuss its a bit like the wintec design, except it is much more fitted and they are proper leather saddles.
 
i sat in one and it was SO comfy, i really liked how it felt..
i think if i were to ever be able afford a saddle it would be something i would look into. the people on the stand were very helpful!
but i would like to hear about people who have bought and ridden in them and how they felt about them before buying.
in principle, it seems a good idea though.
 
makes you wonder, with all this 'technology' and designs of modern saddles, how did our horses of 'the past' cope with 'one fits all' type of plain flat no extra padding saddle that used to fill our tack rooms? I am sure most of the horses just got on and were ridden with not many showing problems.....
Time changes fast!!
Anyway, not 100% sure I like this type of saddle.
 
I mentioned this new saddle a couple of days ago, Personally I think it is fantastic. The only saddle I have found to fit 2 difficult horses on my yard plus the benefit of alteration in 5 mins should a horse change shape. Thumbs up from me without a doubt.
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The first horse we tried in a Quantum is the most sane & sensible on the yard, but a very weird shape. He landed after the 1st X pole & started to buck like crazy. I can only hope it gave him much more freedom & he certainly let us know. He had never done that before. Rider thinks it is great too!
 
its weird how horses never used to have all this gear etc. but appeared to cope fine.. what have we changed?!
freshman- thats briliant! lol..
i may wait a while and see what the price does..
 
Quantum were at the British Open and I noticed how nothing had prices on. The sales staff were very reluctant to give prices, not surprising at £2500!
 
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I mentioned this new saddle a couple of days ago, Personally I think it is fantastic. The only saddle I have found to fit 2 difficult horses on my yard plus the benefit of alteration in 5 mins should a horse change shape. Thumbs up from me without a doubt.
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I dunno if you spotted my question the other day Freshman - I was wondering if you thought these were good enough to want to get them for other horses on your yard, or if they are reserved for the last resort difficult to fit ones? I guess I am wondering if you think they make enough difference to performance that they will up the game of the easy to fit already doing well horses?
 
ruthnmeg, ForeverWandering - having just been helping out at a yard where there are *plenty* of those old-school saddles (RDA so can't afford new and some of the horses have had hard lives in the past too) I can say that there are also plenty of white marks where saddles have rubbed and caused pain and damage. There are also a lot of unfriendly, unhappy horses.

I don't know anythign about these saddles but was actually shocked going back to seeing so many suffering animals with 'one size fits all' harmful tack.

Of course there are things that can be improved. We just have to work out which the useful inventions are and which are just passing novelties.
 
Well obviously we have to consider price like everyone else, so I think if something is an easy fit then at this moment I wouldnt try to mend something that isnt broken. However the 2 horses that are really difficult to fit are able to wear the Quantum without problems. I love the saddle, would love to have each horse in one but obviously that isnt going to happen at the moment. Whilst I know that each saddle will alter to fit others within a range, it would be impossible to do for several horses at a show quickly. So for now I wil use them on horses that have "other" saddles sliding all over the place & hope that eventually I can use Quantum on more horses.
 
Nice idea but I'm not 100% convinced about how the riders weight is transerfed through to the horse by a narrow little strip at the front. Even if the panels are totally inflexible (which isn't good) and therefore transfere the riders weight as much as possible along the panel, the weight is still directed into the front half of the saddle at all times. It's like the rider is standing up in the stirrups at all times. I'd be happier with them if they had a bridge at the back too, to tranfere weight front AND back, but that may mess up the flexibility of the panels.

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how did our horses of 'the past' cope with 'one fits all' type of plain flat no extra padding saddle that used to fill our tack rooms? I am sure most of the horses just got on and were ridden with not many showing problems

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Thats just the word - cope. Doesn't mean they were happy, they just coped. Plus horses today are a totally different shape from horses then - cobs and natives weren't ridden and warmbloods hadn't been bred yet!

I know so so so many horses who aren't happy with their traditional saddle. Most 'cope', the odd few make a huge fuss (they're the lucky ones really). Many are from just general poor fitting but there are plenty for whom it's really difficult to find a saddle that fits due to their shape. I have one!

I'd be intrested in trying one but the price is incredibly off putting. No doubt the R&D cost requires them to charge so much, but it really cuts of 99.9% of the saddle buying market. WOWs are expensive but affordable, just. These are way out of the vast majoirties price range. I wonder how much they'll come down in price?
 
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how did our horses of 'the past' cope with 'one fits all' type of plain flat no extra padding saddle that used to fill our tack rooms? I am sure most of the horses just got on and were ridden with not many showing problems

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also remember, we are asking much more from our horses now, so things have to adapt to make things a bit easier for them.
 
Are they a new design though?

Look really similar to the old fashioned military saddles.

ETS and looking at photos they aren't that far away from a western saddle. Just looking at the bottom side obviously, not the top bit.
 
we tried the Quantum on three different horses last week, all the horses moved more freely especially from behind. 2 of the horses have been in well fitted WOWs for last 3 years the most difference was on a little TB eventer who has always been difficult to fit as she is slightly roach backed and ridden by long legged rider, she moved very diffently in the quantum much smoother and threw a much better shape over a fence, we videod her in the quantum and then immediately afterwoods in her WOW. Rider described it as a "magic carpet" just exactly the right balance and feel between her and the horse.
 
Looks suspiciously like the Free'n'easy saddle that has been around for years - http://www.fnesaddles.com/fnesaddles.shtml
All the horses we tried in these went better, but when we bought one for a horse that was particularly difficult to fit he gradually got less and less comfortable in it. We eventually got rid of it and put him in a Balance saddle, which he loved.
 
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cobs and natives weren't ridden and warmbloods hadn't been bred yet!

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What an inaccurate statement!

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Actually, it's not. The traditional saddle used nowadays were designed what, 100yr ago or so? In those days there wasn't the big wide warmbloods about - the ridden horses were all TB 'blood types'. And natives and cob types were used for carrying/pulling stuff and, if ridden, were most likely ridden bareback. They were certainly not the type of horse the 'saddle' was designed for!
 
i really like the concept and design of this saddle.

i will seriously be considering trying/getting one but will be waiting a year or 2 for more reviews to filter out from people who aren't sponsored by Quantum.
 
I think they are the only company with one of those machines that shows pressure [ only 3 of them in the country ,I think] although others have used them , so they have been tested to show constant even pressure. After the problems we had last summer and Rafi only being ridden in a GP saddle now, we are going to have them over and try one out before ordering one[ and taking out a loan to pay for it]
Claire has been waiting for this saddle to come on the market since her problem and we spoke to them at Olympia. Tried to get sponsorship and got a 15% voucher instead but better than nothing
 
Interesting, but not totally convinced, i would like to see and try one. At £2750, I don't think I will be buying one!
 
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what an inaccurate statement!

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Actually, it's not. The traditional saddle used nowadays were designed what, 100yr ago or so? In those days there wasn't the big wide warmbloods about - the ridden horses were all TB 'blood types'. And natives and cob types were used for carrying/pulling stuff and, if ridden, were most likely ridden bareback. They were certainly not the type of horse the 'saddle' was designed for!

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Ummm.... surely not. For a start 100 years ago was 1910 and "modern" saddles can be seen in Stubbs paintings from the 1700s. TB blood types were introduced from 3 Arabian stallions for racing in early 1700's. Until then, surely everyone on a horse not a pony was riding a draft? And cobs and natives most definitely were ridden, there are plenty of pictures in art galleries of people on them. Have you not seen the film of Queen Victoria riding a highland pony, led by John Brown? Modern "warmbloods" are only draft crosses themselves, so those shapes have always been around.

The quantum is not a completely new design it's a remake of the cavalry saddle, as are free'n'easy and reactorpanel saddles. It's the materials and the bridge that make it different. I'm waiting to try one but I will take a lot of shifting from my WOWs. What I won't ever do again is put a non-flexing tree on a horse, since I discovered just how many horses are affected by a fixed arch over their withers.
 
Can someone with a Quantum tell me - does it fit right over the shoulder blade like a reactorpanel, or does it stop behind it like a WOW?

Thanks!
 
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