On the rarest of occasions one will find an innovation that is also an improvement. This is nearly never true in the world of tack. The bosal and mecate will never be improved upon. A well cared for antique saddle will often fit a Colonial Spanish horse better than any saddle made today.
Replacing cowboy knots with billets and latigos filled with holes certainly is not an improvement.
However, sometimes one can take modern designs and use them in tried and true manners and get a good result. The instrument in the picture above is a new design and is called a "Merlin." It came out within the last two years.
I have acquired a taste for it.
When played using the hammers, pull offs, and slides rooted in ancient African music it can sound first rate.
There are many lessons one can learn from playing music that apply to solid horsemanship. The reverse is also true.
1 comment:
The new..or newfangled as our forefathers
(Foremothers?) Might have put it is almost always a result of some inventive person not understanding the nuance of the old..
I have yet to see a genuine improvement on the coffee pot that occurred in the last 100 years...with the possible exception of the french press..which I use..
Antonio Stradivari...been dead a few centuries...I am not sure the fiddle has improved beyond then...
Center buckled cinchas are definitely not an improvement on solid latigo with a good knot...how many times do you come up between holes?
The real lack of improvement there is not that the simple mechanical device of the tongue amd buckle is inherently bad, but that it takes away the oportunity to gain a small but useful skill...that running larks head, or windsor knot or cowboy knot has much utility in life...same knot used to tie a necktie holds your saddle in place...that would occur to very few people who do not both wear neckties of the non clip on variety (also not an improvement) and ride horses in old tack.
I suppose the world is going to go on amd do as it pleases...and I suppose I shall keep on likeing old stuff and simple ways of doing things....up to a point. This telephone I am writing this on is right neat...and far beyond the dream of old A.G. Bell...It will even help a body tune a guitar..
Nobody has improved on old Equus Cavallus though, without reaching back in time...funny how that works. -Lloyd
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