Help Choosing The Best Harness!!!

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Kenner1

New
Messages
3
Reaction score
2
Location
Las Vegas, NV
# of dives
25 - 49
Hi,
I've been diving for a little bit now am and relatively new I guess. I am wondering what harness I should get. I have logged my 25 dives and I am really wanting to learn sidemount extremely badly and am so excited to learn it as soon as possible!!
I want a harness that I can use for both sidemount and back mount diving (for both single and doubles). I will be doing a lot of travel all over and want to only carry one harness and a couple item to change depending on what mountIng style I'm doing.
I'm not really sure what to ask and look for. I've looked at the Hollis sm100, Nomad XT, and the Xdeep Stealth tec 2.0.. I love the Xdeep and am really curious if I could do a back mount setup on it if possible..
I know I'm asking a lot and am kinda going in a couple directions but I would really appreciate your help and advice!!
 
Hi,
I've been diving for a little bit now am and relatively new I guess. I am wondering what harness I should get. I have logged my 25 dives and I am really wanting to learn sidemount extremely badly and am so excited to learn it as soon as possible!!
I want a harness that I can use for both sidemount and back mount diving (for both single and doubles). I will be doing a lot of travel all over and want to only carry one harness and a couple item to change depending on what mountIng style I'm doing.
I'm not really sure what to ask and look for. I've looked at the Hollis sm100, Nomad XT, and the Xdeep Stealth tec 2.0.. I love the Xdeep and am really curious if I could do a back mount setup on it if possible..
I know I'm asking a lot and am kinda going in a couple directions but I would really appreciate your help and advice!!

Multifunction equipment is rarely the best in any category. A Swiss Army knife can be handy, but I'd rather have an actual place setting…….

Tobin
 
If you're just looking for a travel sidemount rig, grab the xDeep Stealth 2.0 with the normal BCD. It's small and will pack well. Then stick to sidemounting your tanks and don't bother with backmount.

The "combo" ones just don't work very well, not nearly as well as dedicated.
 
You really need to find an instructor and talk to them. Don't buy a harness until then. And choose a tech instructor not an ow instructor. You will have a much better experience. No offense, but I have some observations. If you think there's evens chance you could back mount using a stealth, you have not done even a touch of enough research into sidemount. Next, why do you want to go to sidemount. It's a tool. A tool you don't need now. With only 25 dives under your belt you need to go out and just dive and learn how to dive. At 25 dives, there is so much you need to experience to enjoy diving. At 25 dives are you always diving horizontal? Through descent, dive, and ascent? Of not, you need to learn about horizontal trim before moving to sidemount.
I'm not trying to be a douche. I'm just being honest. Sidemount is very labor intensive to get yourself setup. Little adjustments throw everything off. If you don't know what you're doing simply diving, you can have a tough time with sidemount. My fiancé and I are cave divers and have been diving sidemount for over 3 years. We changed her to a new sidemount system and are having alot of trouble getting her 100% perfect in it. We took the classes, have done the dives, and know the physics of sidemount, but are still weeks of work into futzing with tiny adjustments.

Sidemount t is awesome, but isn't something people should be just jumping into. It's currently a huge fad, and unfortunately people are jumping into that need to just learn to dive and understand proper trim before considering sidemount.
 
Thank you guys so very much! I think I will just focus on just diving and then later down the road maybe get into sidemount. Thank you all for your information and advice!!
 
Thank you guys so very much! I think I will just focus on just diving and then later down the road maybe get into sidemount. Thank you all for your information and advice!!
You misunderstand the intention.
There just isn't a harness fitting your description and diving anything without training will take a lot of dives to learn.

Find a teacher, take his recommendation and forget abut backmount.
 
Hi mate,
The amount of dives you have should not be a factor if you want use a sidemount rig. Skills can be developed in any type of rig.

What others have said about combo rigs not being optimal is very true, I don't believe there are Many advantages over dedicated sidemount rigs as there would be only a small amount of dives that sidemount would not work in. Happy to be corrected.

When choosing the right rig for you, instructor input is a good start but try to find one that has used multiple brands/types as we all believe the rig we have is the best because our experience is limited to a single unit.

One last thought, the lift that different units have vary. For me smaller lift capacity is not the best choice,as I believe that like gas lift may need to be shared, and better to be looking at it than be looking for it when something unexpected happens.

Paul
 
What sidemount and diving as a whole is really missing now is competent 'primary school' teachers.
There are very few highly experienced teachers not teaching the better paying technical diving classes.
In normal teaching primary school teachers are the most highly skilled but least specialized ones.
Most OWD teachers are the opposite and have only used a few or even a single jacket ever and have about as much experience as the brandnew looking device.

Diving needs OWD instructors who really can show every type of diving to the students.
Avoid misconceptions like putting a backmount bottle on an XDeep.

It is just ridiculous to think that might work, there are conceptional issues - no offence.

Every open water diver should know at least a few details, like where to get the air from, which valve to close and how to find the inflator, on any equipment he can come accross by chance - next to none do at the moment.

It should be a logical choice to use sidemount equipment for the known advantages, not because it looks great in pictures.

So the only recommendation to give to people at the moment is: find a teacher for your preferred system and try to use it.
If it suits you, training works and you are lucky, you will soon be experienced enough to make competent choices on your own.

There is, however a harness system that works 'well enough' for both backmount and sidemount with the DIY sandwich wing systems.
You need experience to build and use one though.

There are also the Hollis jacket style systems with the same ability.
But it is rather hard to get those to behave well in both sidemount and backmount and even harder to find competent training (easy though to find very bad training).

If you like the XDeep, find a teacher to explain to you why it does not work as a backmount system.
If he can, he must be competent enough to help you along, perhaps you will even decide to buy something else entirely.
 
ok I skimmed the above, but let's nip something in the bud real fast

the "hybrid" units happen to have the ability to mount backmount tanks, correct. They are no worse at backmount than any normal stab jacket in this regard. If you are doing a lot of backmount diving, then you need to have a dedicated rig, but that doesn't mean you can't use one of the rigs you mentioned above as your primary sidemount rig. I would argue that MOST of the cave exploration in sidemount is being done in these so called "subpar" combo rigs because they are actually the preferred rigs for this style of diving, that said, none of them work particularly well with aluminum tanks because they were not designed for it.

the xdeep will not accept backmount, nor would you want it to. It would be horribly unstable and have almost no usable lift. There is no real reason why you would backmount a single tank vs. sidemount it if you are travelling unless a diveop forbids it, but that is much less abundant than it used to be. If you are committing to sidemount diving, I would get either an xdeep stealth or a razor at this point, though the Subgravity Diamond is also pretty good
 
I would argue that MOST of the cave exploration in sidemount is being done in these so called "subpar" combo rigs

It's completely impossible to say...

For travelling, xdeep, razor, or that kind of harnesses are probably best (because of their light weight and lack of rigid plates).
 
https://www.shearwater.com/products/teric/

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