Saddle Brand & Quality: What's the Connection?

The question we're asked the most by our readers is some version of "Is {fill in the name of a saddle brand} a good brand?" or "What's the best brand for a {fill in a riding activity} saddle?" We so wish that we had a nice simple answer, but saddle quality and suitability is much more complicated than that.

There can be significant variation in the quality of a particular brand's saddles. Some brands may have very good saddles of one type (i.e. roping), average or mediocre saddles of other types (i.e. trail and show), and downright poor saddles of still other types (i.e. endurance and reining).

Some established brands have gone through changes in ownership and construction methods that has resulted in their saddle quality varying greatly over the years. To complicate things further, there are quite a few new brands that have hit the market in the last ten years. Many of these brands are producing cheaper, low quality, mass-assembled models. But there has also been a number of new smaller brands of good quality entering the marketplace.

So, what's a buyer to do? We've found that price is a good general indicator of saddle quality. While some features and decorative elements (i.e. tooling, silver, brass stirrups) can affect price, in general, a saddle that costs $1500 is a better saddle than one that costs $1000. And, on the low end, I don't care how pretty a saddle is, if it only costs $300 new, it's a low quality saddle. There is no way that it can have quality materials and assembly methods at that price.

To help you better evaluate brands and their saddles, we've created a chart of saddle brands and their price ranges. This chart is a good starting point for determining which brands you should consider.