After a decade of making inside-the-waistband holsters, PHLster has incorporated the range of adjustment and the concealment principles present in their AIWB holsters into a brand new outside-the-waistband concealment holster.
The new Summit OWB holster, using a unique belt attachment system, allows the end-user to fine-tune their holster to reduce printing and accommodate the specifics of their body type or mission.
Each holster comes with a pair of trimmable wedges. The wedges control the relationship between the holster and the belt, allowing you to angle the gun inward, for maximum concealment, or outward, to accommodate your body shape or to clear concealable body armor.
Grip rotation, to mitigate printing, is accomplished by setting up an offset between the leading and trailing edges of the holster. Using the thick part of the wedge on the slide side, and the thin part of the wedge on the trigger guard side, tightening the belt will pull the grip inward. If you have experience with one of the many IWB holsters that have a wing or a claw, you’ll already be familiar with this principle. For maximum concealment, you can set up the Summit with the trigger-side belt loop and wedge on the face of the holster, for more aggressive grip rotation, just like your AIWB wing-equipped holster.
We’ve also improved OWB holster belt loops. Many pancake-style OWB holsters fall short in terms of concealment because they can’t accommodate a wide range of waist shapes. Our new high-strength, slim, composite polymer wings are strong enough to survive any violent physical encounter or hard use. And they’re rigid enough to transfer the necessary belt forces to accomplish concealment, while also being forgiving enough to fit your body shape like a custom holster. Like a quality leather holster, they’ll break in to fit you perfectly, but they won’t get weaker or softer.
The base of the Summit holster is an ambidextrous, compression formed, pancake holster shell, meticulously designed to give you firm, crisp, and deliberate non-adjustable retention. With an unobtrusive mid-ride body shield on both sides, the holster accommodates optics, suppressor sights, and muzzle devices.
At launch the Summit is available in two models. One for G19/17/34 and the other for G43/43x/48 (MOS compatible). Light bearing models and additional fits are forthcoming.
I think the MSRP of $120 is a reach when the competing tenicor ARX is priced at $85. In my experience anything that can be both LH and RH is a compromise. I’ll Pass.
At first brush, that sounds about right, except that this does things that other OWB holsters don’t do, and that range of adjustment and customization renders the typical ambidextrous compromises nonexistent.