Dale Chavez
San Simeon QH Show Saddle
Show Saddles
Manufacturer: Dale Chavez
Model: San Simeon QH Show Saddle
Category: Show Saddles
Purchase: From a local tack shop for $1900 in 2006. This is an used San Simeon show saddle with full QH bars and a 16" seat. Regular skirts. It's about three or four years old, and retailed for $5800 brand new.
Likes: Pretty much everything. It's super comfortable, absolutely gorgeous and well-balanced with a good equitation leg.
It fits flat backed, mutton-withered or low-withered quarter horses very well, and has excellent contact with them if they aren't wide- or round-barreled.
Dislikes: The seat is a bit wide under your thigh, and creates slight bridging, reducing the amount of contact you can get easily. It's hard to fit on anything with withers because the gullet is rather low, and hard to get your leg around a wide-barreled horse. This lack of contact is amplified if you have to pad up your horse to keep the gullet off their withers.
Also, it's been a real pain trying to find the bridle with the matching silver pattern.
Quality: Excellent. The Hermann Oak leather is soft, supple, and the tooling is exquisite. The suede on the seat is soft and fine. The silver is drop-dead gorgeous, even with a relatively simple pattern. The saddle is well-sewn and well-balanced with wonderful attention to details and the overall statement "this is quality" is loud and clear.
Summary: Awesome show saddle for any level, for any one who appreciates and demands quality in their show tack. The width across the seat where your thigh lays could be narrower to allow more close contact, and the underskirts being close-contact/cutaway would also help with this.
Excellent saddle for those low or mutton-withered pleasure horses, though you'll want to have a horse with a slightly long back or a big tall horse as the skirts are quite long.
Rating: 5
Author: Sarah from MacFarlane Show Horses
Date: 2007-03-03
Usefulness Rating: 4.84848 out of 5.
33 reader(s) voted.
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