Zeitgeist straps too wide. Will they break in?

[loma]

Recently received a Zeitgeist backpack and the straps don't fit great on me--too wide; they feel bulky in my armpits and don't sit flush against my body. Curious if anybody who had the same complaint initially found them more comfortable after breaking in. Obviously they won't get narrower, but I'm wondering if they'll soften up or something.

Cute pack though! I had really disliked the moon logo in photos but I don't mind it IRL.

[Tonya]

Have you tried the bag weighted/filled? I often find that packs don't fit well unless properly filled, and the weight will often pull the pack and straps down, closer to your body which helps fit. If so and the straps are still too wide, and especially if they are chaffing you, then I don't think that will change. You're absolutely correct in that straps may soften slightly with use, but they won't change position. However I've owned a lot of packs and learned that if a pack doesn't feel great on me from the beginning (once properly weighted and adjusted, of course), it doesn't tend to get better. Usually the opposite.

I bought a S25 right when TB first changed over to the Edgeless straps and (if I'm remembering this correctly) immediately afterward, TB sent an email that said the shoulder straps should be modified, that they were sewn too closely together. They offered free shipping and to fix the issue, but my S25 fits me great so I didn't take them up on the offer. I'm fairly wide-shouldered for a slim female, so this concerns me that the current packs might not fit me well. Anyway, maybe others will chime in who are more familiar with these things. Good luck with your fit! If not this bag, maybe another.

[moriond]

Hi loma To add to @Tonya’s comments, I agree that you need to check the fit of the backpack when loaded for typical use in order to judge how well it fits after adjusting the straps. It’s hard to extrapolate how well a given design for backpack straps will work for your frame when the design is completely new (as is the case for the Contour straps used for the Zeitgeist and the Paradigm). They are more lightly padded than the pure webbing straps used on the Daylight Backpack, but less so than the Bound straps of the earlier Synapse backpacks before the introduction of Edgeless straps. Here’s the description G42 gave in another thread in response to a question of how much padding was in the straps of these backpacks:

To build on what bchaplin said, these Contour straps are a new version of straps entirely. They have more padding than basic webbing straps, but much less than Bound or Edgeless straps (which makes sense, these tiny packs will never have a lot of weight unless you commonly carry gold bricks around). The edge that is closest to your neck does have the binding tape, but not the other side.

So in my head it's: webbing - Contour - Bound - Edgeless; in terms of most basic to most padded.

Hope that helps

ETA: the Luminary had straps that were similar to the cush of the Edgeless but a wee bit different and to my knowledge that exact version is only on the Luminary, though I could be wrong

Sometimes use of the sternum strap can improve the feel of the fit when backpack strap spacing feels slightly wide, but if you feel the straps cannot conform to the contour of your body, and that you systematically feel that the outside or inside edges of the backpack straps press against your body, that’ s probably a sign of a less than optimal fit. You can try taking a picture of what the bag looks like when worn to customer support for an opinion.

By the way, there can be real manufacturing subtleties that are not obvious that affect the fit of the bag. In the earliest versions of the edgeless straps for the Synapse backpack that were sent to the mods for feedback, it turned out that the straps were sewn to the top of the bag at a slightly different angle than intended. (This is not something that is really visible to your inspection). I tried on every single TB backpack I owned in the 24 hours after receipt in order to try to figure out why the straps were subtlety but noticeably less comfortable than for all of these other bags despite the padding before Darcy sent us a comment that the straps had been sewn on at slightly the wrong angle. That was a big relief to learn. Having the padding of the edgeless straps can improve things when the fit is close, but it doesn’t make up for not matching the optimal shape for the fit — people would says things like “my original Brain Bag straps still feel more comfortable” in these early iterations on getting the edgeless strap design right,

HTH

moriond

[Cristina]

And just to add to what moriond said, that S25 from the batch with straps sewn at the wrong angle is my Forever Bag and it’s the most comfortable fit for me of all my TB bags. I’m fairly narrow on top and most TB backpack straps cut into me either at the neck or armpit, but not the “wrong” ones!