I contacted the owner of I&I Sports, Al Iba, for help on an unrelated project. Al had been looking for someone to do independent reviews of equipment I&I carried and I told him that I'd love to help out, but I retired from paintball writing. Al coaxed me out of retirement and convinced me to start writing for paintball again. (You can either thank or blame Al, depending on your opinion of my dubious writing talents.)
Al asked me what I'd like to review and I told him 'anything but markers". So Al sent me the Ronin Tournament 6 + 1 Fanny Pac to review for him.
What I got was three things. The harness, a set of standard suspenders and a set of deluxe suspenders. First the suspenders.
The standard suspenders are anything but standard. They have heavy duty metal clips (unlike the plastic ones you get on most) and they have three points of adjustment. The deluxe suspenders were the like the standard in that they have three points of adjustment. However, they were made of two layers of webbing and had additional twelve gram loops (great for holding cable squeegees); a place to clip the handset of a radio; a small velcro 'keeper-thingie' (for what I'm not sure, but I used it to hold my goggles by the strap) and what I assumed to be a barrel plug pouch. The pouch, as it turns out, is to hold the miniature FM radio tuner that comes with the deluxe harness. The tuner is smaller than a matchbook and has headphones so you can listen to your favourite FM station while slugging it out with the bad guys. The tuner has no volume control, so I just hang the earphones over the top of the face mask in my goggles. That way I can listen to tunes and hear what's going on around me. The tuner even comes with a battery. (The tuner is also a good excuse as to why you let an opponent sneak up behind you. Not that it's happened to ME, mind you.)
The 6+1 Tournament Pack comes with the standard suspenders and while there have been advertisements saying that the harness comes with tubes, that was a local store deal and Ronin says it does not provide the tubes with the harness.
The butt pack backing is of very sturdy mesh construction and has heavy duty edging tape. Unlike some mesh backed harnesses I've seen, the backing has extra webbing tape to help the backing hold it's shape and not bunch up. The extra webbing helps prevent the pouches from sagging when they have full loaders in them. The pouches are designed to hold the big pods (140 ball size), this harness was designed for tourney players after all. My puny 100 ball pods fit in fine.
Note the webbing reinforcements on the back side. Pouches don't sag.
What really impressed me were the robust pouch flaps. They are made from very heavy duty ballistic nylon (the kind you find in expensive firearms holsters) and have the added reinforcement of a strip of webbing sewn along the inside. The flaps also have plastic inserts, to keep them out of the way when you're putting that empty loader back. The flaps are held closed by the ubiquitous velcro.
Speaking of stiffening, the pouch openings also have plastic stiffeners in them that holds the pouch open, even when there's no pod inside. The stiffener isn't just a little one inch strip either, it's about half the length of the pouch. Incidentally, there are three pouches on each side of the harness, in case you were wondering.
Flaps and pouch mouthes stay open when you want them to.
On the flaps there are these big honkin' 'D'-rings which are place right above where the pod top would be. For the life of me I couldn't figure out what they were for until I put the harness on. These 'D'-rings are attached to webbing straps which in turn are attached to the end of the flap. A short tug on the ring and the pouch is open. Ronin calls them 'Quik-Pull Rings'. I find the rings handy because I wear full fingered gloves and on most harnesses I find I have a hard time feeling the end of the flap. You could feel those rings through arctic mittens.
The 'Quik-Pull' rings can be grabbed even with oven mitts on, they're so big!
I always hated bulk harness rigs that had pouches on both sides. It's obviously easier for you to grab pods with the hand not engaged in holding and shooting the marker. So when the pods on that side are all empty, you have to switch your marker to the other hand to get at the other pods. A major benefit of the Quik-Pull Rings is that you can very easily reach across your body and open the flap. So you can keep your marker in your shooting hand and still draw pods out of the both sides.
You can reach across and grab/insert pods very easily.
When I saw these rings I immediately thought what you're probably thinking: 'Yeah, catch them on a branch and there goes your pod.' Not so. I've purposely run through thick brush to see if they'd open, no luck yet. I have been using the harness for a while now and I've yet to open a pouch by snagging the ring. I have snagged the rings on the occasional branch, but the branch lost.
If players are that concerned about the rings, a quick snip with a pair of scissors solves the problem. However you lose the many benefits the rings bring to the overall design. If you're going to mutilate this fanny pack, I suggest you just stick with a crappy one.
The pack has an absolutely huge tank pouch in the centre. I doubt there are very many bottles that couldn't fit in there (even the big nitro tanks). The pouch had very sturdy cinching straps for smaller bottles. There are also two securing straps which are long enough to wrap around the neck of the bottle. Once properly secured, there is no way that bottle's coming out until YOU want it to. I put a full 20oz C/A tank in the pouch and secured it, then I turned the pack upside down and shook it for about five minutes (and that's a lot of shaking). That bottle didn't budge in that pouch, which means it's not going to bang against your back or hop out when you're running to that next bunker, either. If you're not using a remote, the pouch is a good place to keep a spare bottle handy.
Back view, note the honkin' big tank pouch.
The next thing is the waist belt. It is two wide ballistic nylon flaps which are attached to the harness by an equally wide elastic. The fit is snug and secure, and there's no fastex-type buckle for a paintball to break on. To ensure further snugness, there are two additional flaps that can be pulled towards each other. So there are two sets of robust elastic to make sure that rig stays where you want it. You can make the straps very tight, thus preventing the rig from bouncing about, but the elastic still allows some 'give' for you to breath. It also serves as an excellent lower back support. I have had lower back problems for a while and this harness is every bit as supportive as one of those back support belts. It's also very slimming and hides my 'spare tire'. An extra bonus for us players who are not as young an trim as we once were.
The extra belt tighteners help keep the pack snug.
Due to the width of the belt, the harness rides very high (as you can see in the pictures), so there's no binding or pinching when you crouch. The pods stay up and out of the way.
I know what you're thinking — 'But Dan, the pods stick out on the side'. I am fully aware of the trend to try and 'turtle' or concentrate the pod pouches behind the back. Number one, I find that awkward for drawing tubes. Number two, the pods sit close enough to your body and high enough that you're going to get hit in the arms, not the pods. Number three, if you're getting hit in the pods, you're not making effective use of your cover. Yes, the pouches stick out a bit but you won't look like a taxi going down the street with both doors open. As I said before, this is an acceptable trade off as the Quik Pull Rings allow you to draw pods from both sides with the same hand.
Incidentally, Ronin Gear also makes one of those 'turtle'-type packs as well. They have just released their new 3+2 Stealth Pack (I'll be writing a review on one shortly I need a chance to play with it some more). This is designed for the smaller, thinner player (but I use it anyway). Ronin Gear is developing more harnesses that cater to the smaller, thinner players. This is a good thing because I've noticed that there are less and less middle aged guys (like me) and more and more teenagers at the fields lately.
Back to the harness. Everything, and I mean everything, is doubled stitched. This rig is not going to fall apart on the field, or in the wash, either. The harness is only available in black, though. That may turn off some players who simply must have everything in matching camouflage patterns (like they have nothing better to spend their money on). However, black is such a versatile colour -- both formal and casual -- black goes with anything.
This pack is officially called the TOURNAMENT 6+1 Fanny Pak, but oddly enough I found it still works when you play Rec-Ball. One of the great mysteries of life, I guess -- kinda like where that one sock goes when you do laundry. I've used it on semi days and pump days and the pack has really given me less to worry about during a game. I've used it in open fields, speedball, villages, castles, and dense brush. I've run, I've crawled, I've tripped and fallen and generally made a fool of myself. It says put, it's comfortable and sometimes I even forget I have it on. This is one of the best packs to come down the 'pike in a long time. (And I've seen a lot come down the 'pike.)
Comfort and stability is an added bonus for scenario and big game players. You can wear this all day and be no worse the wear for it.
I'm not telling you to buy this pack, but if you're tired of the bargain basement, floppy, bouncy and uncomfortable harness you have now, I'd look into the Ronin Gear harnesses. They can be found at Ronin Gear (www.ronin-gear.com) and I&I Sports (www.iisports.com). I&I sells them for $59.95 a pretty good price, considering the quality of the harness. For those of you still in the Dark Ages without access to the Internet, call I&I Sports at: 1-800-898-2042 (for retail) and 1-800-570-1659 (wholesale ONLY). You can also contact ACI at 1-877-832-6224. Ronin Gear also makes other types of harnesses as well as gear, gun and goggle bags.
Don't forget to tell them Durty Dan sent you!
All of the articles in the website Durty Dan's Paintball Information Services are free to use for webpages, school projects, reference and to promote paintball to players and the non-playing public. Credit for the source of the information should be included in the bibliography or references page.
© Durty Dan Enterprises 2000. All rights reserved. All works contained herein are under copyright of the author Durty Dan. While the Terms of Use are broad they do not include the right to republish this work in any publication (hardcopy or electronic) for the purposes of personal financial gain.
