Ghost saddle

kaiserchief said:
EDITED - sorry! Should have read the opening post better - an Edix round skirt. I'll Google it! :)
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Hello! Yes that's the one. There are only two or three stockists in the UK that I know of, so you'll have to wait for it to get through customs etc, but I do like mine a lot and feel it was worth the price tag. The only thing I would say is to buy the merino backed type rather than the felt one with the jazzy Western patterns; the felt ones are so thick that there's known to be a bit of a manufacturing issue with them in that the bottom layer of felt basically gets rucked up while being stitched. I think they're aware of it and I'm sure they'll be working to fix it.

I liked my merino one so much that I bought a felt one too, but Edix, via the UK company I bought from, ended up refunding me because it wasn't actually usable on a horse without being fixed by my local saddler. They were very straightforward about it, and good to deal with, but when you're shipping something in from Europe the wait is long enough anyway without running the risk of needing a replacement for a NQR product.

ETA oh yes and the sizing is quite large (I guess because conventional Western saddles are quite long). I have a piccolo Ghost and bought an Edix roundskirt Small in the merino. Large would swamp my saddle a bit, I think.
 
That looks really cool. Does it work OK without a shimmed pad underneath? The panels seem to me to be on par with the panels on a treed saddle so I'm struggling to ratify why I would need to use a shimmed pad under a Ghost (never had this train of thought with other panel-less treeless saddles where the need for a shimmed pad was obvious). Thank you :)
 
kaiserchief said:
That looks really cool. Does it work OK without a shimmed pad underneath? The panels seem to me to be on par with the panels on a treed saddle so I'm struggling to ratify why I would need to use a shimmed pad under a Ghost (never had this train of thought with other panel-less treeless saddles where the need for a shimmed pad was obvious). Thank you :)
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That pad has 1/2" felt pads on its underside. It's a beast.

The panels on the saddle are not the original Ghost ones. They are Freeform panels. Quite a different shape. My horse did not like the Ghost panels, and whatever I did with shimming, I couldn't get the pressure off the area just behind her shoulder blades, which annoyed her. I had these lying around from previous adventures in treeless saddles. As you can see in the photo below, they have a lot more surface area. You can stuff them with as much or as little padding as you want and shape them to your horse.

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However, the problem I was having when riding in the Ghost pad was that the saddle wobbled about. Neither me nor the horse are perfectly straight (who is) but I have another Ghost saddle on my other horse (with Ghost panels), and the thing is rock solid. Some inherent instability in the system was definitely exacerbating our lack of straightness, and it was a cycle of dysfunction, a catch-22 where my uneven riding would throw the saddle to the left, and I was riding more unevenly than usual because the saddle was going to the left. Tried various solutions, and felt I was onto something when I gave a heavier pad a go. Thought, "ah, maybe a really heavy pad designed to support saddle and stabilise the whole shebang might be what we need." No need to reinvent the wheel, because that's how western saddles work. They don't have their own panels. It's all in the padding. So I found a western pad on FB marketplace.

Saddle doesn't move at all, which means I can ride with a more stable leg and seat, and horse is more forward.

It is a pretty ridiculous bodge job. But no one system seems to work for this horse. Not that I have found anyway. I've wondered how she'd go in a real western saddle but there are no fitters anywhere near us, and they weigh 20kg. I am not sure anyone wants to drag that around.

I've not entertained the idea of using a Ghost without any shims or padding. I suppose sbloom will have to answer that.
 
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