I needed a full season to be sure I wanted to do it, but I was comfortable modifying them. If you encounter a situation where the leg straps are responsible for holding more than your body weight, you're probably in a world of hurt anyway. I kind of view them as locators - they keep the saddle on your butt so the it can do it's job.
I have a slightly different take on using a razor blade to cut the stitches...I use my fairly dull pocket knife. It's stiffer, and doesn't have a super sharp point. This gives me less risk of tearing up the webbing due to razor flexing or the sharp point, or my clumsy hands slipping. Be prepared to have your heart in your throat until your done cutting and have all the little thread pieces out. You'll breath a sigh of relief then. Go slow. It probably took me an hour to get all the threads cut and all the tiny pieces pulled out of the webbing. Another tip - take your lighter and melt any frays and loose fibers in the webbing by passing it across quickly. Don't overheat it for obvious reasons. Once you sew it back together It'll look like new. Also, I used a different color thread so I could keep track of my stitching, and I made sure to overlap all of the stock stitching to tie it all in. New Tribe does some real quality work - the stitching alone for the leg buckles was probably stronger than the webbing!
