09 Jan Product Review – Singing Rock Harness

Singing Rock Expert II Steel Speed Harness Review

A few months ago we were talking with Jason Shumaker at Liberty Mountain and they were kind enough to send us a Singing Rock  harness for testing and review. This willingness to gain feedback from real world testing is greatly appreciated, and we thank them for this opportunity to test out this specific harness.  With our tower climber certification courses and SPRAT training we have held over the past few months, we have had a nice time evaluating this product. When you pull the Singing Rock Expert 2 out of the bag, you don’t notice any huge design differences from any other Y-Harness. It is the small details that made the big impressions on our testers. The first thing we noticed was the stylistic red and black fabric set off by the grey bar tack stitching.

Harness Analysis – The Good

There were many pros we noted about the harness.  Before we put the harness on we noticed it was light, weighing only 2.73 kg. In the at height world, where, “light is right”, this harness is right at home.  Singing Rock took the time to really dial in the padding and recognize the spots where harnesses traditionally have pinch points. The padding is not overdone or in the wrong places. The leg loops as well as the shoulders have tapered sections that made the harness comfortable to hang in. As an added bonus the shoulder straps have the ability to be used for confined space retrieval. Singing Rock accomplished this not by adding D rings to the shoulders, but by crafting a pick point in the webbing/ padding.

Harness Analysis – The Not So Good

Unfortunately, no harness is perfect and we did find issues we would correct.  The hardware is the Achilles heel in the harness. The dorsal ring is sewn in such a way that when you tighten the harness, the ring is tensioned downward. This makes clipping your own fall protection lanyard almost impossible. The Sternal ring is small and straight. When our testers outfitted the unit, with cows tails and other rope access equipment, the sternal attachment became cluttered. This was concerning because the sternal is the preferred place to attach when performing a rescue. The sternal ring was also hard to clip because a strait D ring was used instead of one with a bend. The harness comes with a carabiner as the connecting device between top and bottom. This carabiner has a double action 3600lbs gate and is certainly preferred to the mallion. Unfortunately, the carabiner comes with the keeper in it from the factory. This makes it hard to add a chest ascender. You must either painstakingly remove the keeper from the carabiner or rig your chest ascender another way. We would have preferred a triple action carabiner, without keeper, oriented gate left so the rope has the cleanest path possible through the chest ascender.

Harness Analysis – The Results

The Singing Rock Expert II steel speed harness gets the thumbs up over all. The pros have the advantage  and outweigh the cons. The craftsmanship of the stitching is superb and the overall comfort has overcome the minor hardware issues. This harness would be a great addition to your rescue bag or be welcomed on any jobsite. Add in the fact that the MSRP is only $340 and it can be found for less with a bit of shopping.

Pros

• Light 2730 grams (6 pounds)
• Stylish
• Tapered legs and neck
• Confined space lift points
• Competitive price

Cons

• Sternal D ring too small and not bent
• Dorsal ring threaded downward and hard to clip solo
• Central carabineer has keeper bar from factory, hard to add chest ascender

Thanks again to Liberty Mountain for donating this harness for review. We will have more harness reviews in the near future and a product comparison matrix that should help everyone understand their choices a bit better.

Climb Safe!

Brian Bourquin

Andrew Pavone (Contributing Author)