The Julie Ashton ultra harness set is one of the most appealing of the Doc Johnson Vac U Lock strap-on kits, and as such is aimed at couples who want to explore strap-on play. Since the style of the harness is that of a g-string, it cannot really be comfortably worn by a man, although I suppose you could try. The accessories included are: the Vac U Lock base; two bottles of the powder lubricant (to go on the Vac U Lock base so you can remove it after use); a probe style dildo; and two butt plug style attachments intended for the wearer, one larger than the other. These last two are permanently attached to Vac U Lock bases that can be threaded on to the central thong of the harness facing in wards. From our experience I would say it is aimed at beginners, partly because the attachments are soft and not big enough to be intimidating, but mainly because if you had any experience with strap-ones you would not buy this kit for reasons I'll expand on later.

Let's start with the positive: the harness itself. This is a nice deep purple leather, yes, real leather (as far as I can tell) which looks very attractive (unless you don't like purple) and has proved very durable. We bought it five years ago and whilst it hasn't been used extensively we haven't treated it or anything, it's travelled a lot but hasn't deteriorated in any noticeable way. In terms of hygiene I'm not so sure if you're wearing this directly on your private parts as intended, it certainly wouldn't be safe for sharing and does retain a bit of smell. The Vac U Lock base is also not bad, it's hard plastic which is durable and wipe clean with a soft velvety underside that is less easy to clean, but it sits on your skin so whilst not safe for sharing should be fine for just one wearer.

Where this kit falls down is the jelly the attachments are made of. Now sure, so begin with they didn't smell too bad and for beginners felt pretty nice, smooth and soft for both of us, although the material is so soft on the smallest of the plugs you can feel the hardness of the plastic base through it, which isn't too comfortable. However, after a few months they really started to smell strongly in an unpleasant chemical way, they left a weird oily residue on cardboard and in a test that I don't recommend when the base was tasted with my tongue it gave me a horrible burning sensation! Needless to say, they went straight in the bin.

If you haven't examined the Vac U Lock system before, this is how it works: the front of the harness as a small hole, big enough for the protrusion of the base but not for any kind of dildo other than the thinnest of probes. The base then has metal poppers to fix it firmly to the inside of the harness, and dildos in the system have a small hole in the base that the protrusion fits into - if you intend to take it off you need to squirt so of the powder into the hole first or it's very hard to get off. The idea is that this keeps the dildo more stable during thrusting than O-ring style (or at least the ones available when we were looking) and allows you to swap dildos depending on what you want at the time. You can also get suction cup bases, handles and double ended bases so as to expand the uses to which you can put the dildos you have.

Whilst we found that the dildo was indeed quite stable, we also found that the base of the main attachment, being hard plastic dug in quite uncomfortably to the bottom of the wearer's stomach. This was disappointing as it undermines the whole point of the system, and you can't use non-Vac U Lock dildos with it, so we're left with a harness we don't want to use much. To compound this, while the attachments for the wearer are also on Vac U Lock style bases implying that you could change them for other dildos, you can't without cutting them off the plastic (though you might not mind doing that given the material they're made of). Even ignoring this flaw and the material, it is very fiddle to get them in the right position on the thong (completely killing the mood) and then once inserted they really didn't do much for her. There is a small slit in the inside of the front of the harness to attach a vibrator for the wearer, but we haven't found any that fit securely and comfortably there, so another fail in the execution.

The included dildo is fairly comfortable, though the end is a little pointy - in fact when we tried using a condom on it for hygiene and ease of cleaning, it broke on that tip. Again the only really positive thing I can say about it is the actual harness, whist is well made in that it has lasted well though the straps are quite thin so can dig in a bit with particularly energetic thrusting.

Both the waist band and central thong of the harness are adjustable and should fit a wide variety of body shapes - perhaps not the largest but it's certainly not just aimed at the skinniest demographic. Also since it's leather with a buckle system, if the available holes aren't quite your fit you can add your own to fine tune the fitting, but as mentioned above the width of the straps can dig in.

As for the attachments, before we threw them out they were a fine fit for beginners, but more experienced users would want to invest in some other, larger dildos.

As mentioned above, fitting the two attachments for the wearer comfortably is really quite difficulty and kills the mood, particularly annoying as you probably want to remove them for cleaning so then need to reattach them the next time. In any case they didn't do much for her. The main dildo system was actually fairly easy to use, but as mentioned the top of the plastic base dug in painfully during thrusting. In all it hasn't really encouraged us to use it very often, which is a real disappointment.

It's leather so if you did use it a lot you should probably wax it every so often, and certainly wash it with soap and water after each use. We haven't though and it's lasted fine just stored in a box.