I’ve had a Leatherman Wave since the fall of 1998 and it is without a doubt one of the best $100 I’ve ever spent. I don’t think a day has gone by where I haven’t used it for something.
When Leatherman came out with the Wave 2004, I ended up getting it as well. While some things are an improvement, all in all I still prefer the original.
The sheath of the original is something else I prefer over the newer one. The original was made by Bianchi and was essentially one of their AccuMold line. In 11 years of hard use, I’ve had to replace the loop Velcro once.
The new sheath isn’t terrible, but left some things to be desired. So I changed what I didn’t like. (You can see a pattern emerging here...)
It has elastic slots on the sides (which can hold a Fisher Space Pen) and can have the bit holders placed in along the back. That's pretty good, although I worry about the long term viability of the elastic.
It also has a hole in the bottom so that you can place the tool with the pliers opened in it and the pliers will poke out the bottom. Kind of handy, but I just see the potential for an injury that way.
And the biggest flaw... velcro. It took less than the length of a pregnancy for it to have absolutely no “stick” at all. Just useless.
And the attachment on the back, was better than some – it allowed for both horizontal and vertical carry, but it was fairly flimsy webbing.
So I removed the velcro and the loops on the back, and sewed a length of webbing with a side release buckle and PALS webbing on the back.
All the sewing was done by hand on the daily train commute. It’s ugly, but it works.
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