Maxpedition Novo MOD: Subcompact EDC Attaché

We are back with another review and today we're gonna be checking out a EDC bag that I ended up customizing. So without further ado let's hop right to this review because today I ended up doing a full loadout and customized Maxpedition's newest bag the Novo. So I took the Novo which is basically like a crossbody sling EDC type bag. It's like a messenger bag crossbody sling and i essentially turned it into a subcompact edc attache and what do i mean by that let me show you so this is the final form of it which is essentially just a attache i removed all of the parts for the sling there was maybe one little small pocket that got removed but most part i was able to maintain all the integrity of the bag and i made a custom little bag for myself with a handle from the recycled parts and you can check it out this is uh this is the new bag so i was in talks with tim the owner of maxpedition and i sent him over a picture of what i ended up doing with the bag and everything and he actually sent me over a pretty encouraging response which is you know this is how their new bags happen is when you make custom versions or just make new design bags period so let me know down in the comments below if you want to see something like this into a real bag because really what i was looking for was this i didn't want a pouch a large pouch a messenger bag a crossbody bag or a full-size brief attache here's a here's the attache version um from max v so it's it is large it's it's rather large it's a bulky bag to carry if you want something subcompact can you put less in it yeah dude absolutely but it's still going to be a larger bag than what I was looking for. So like I said, subcompact EDC attache. And I'm going to show you all the crazy stuff I fit in this thing. My gosh. But let's talk about the modifications first before I unload the entire loadout here. So what I ended up doing, first thing I did was I went to work with some shears. Let me see if I can find the actual shears. They're not in here, but I have some Klein shears that I use to cut the fabric. So I got a nice clean line. and whenever the nylon frayed i hit it with a torch um to kind of make it so it stopped fraying if that makes sense uh seat belt was the shoulder sling and then you can see i went down here so i did a cut basically from this corner all the way up here and then i went straight across and that got everything off that i needed to cut um i removed a couple things i think on the bottom but that was yeah that was like that was last that was like the first round when i first originally reviewed the bag but i removed that stuff because that essentially what it did was it framed out actually this zipper part was a little bit over here i had to shorten the zipper i actually had to shorten this zipper part off because i did the full zipper frame which kind of went out to here so then i'm like screw it let's just make it flush and then i folded this piece of canvas over now sewing this canvas and this seat belt is not the easiest thing so here's the seat belt material this is what i had left over and you can see what i'm talking about, like the end frayed. So if you hit this with a lighter, it'll just, um, kind of melt the plastic and it just ends the fraying So, uh, this is the rest of the shoulder strap. I, uh, sprung for the expensive nylon string. Um, this is the needle I used. Now you're probably like, man, TRG, your sewing sucks. Uh, it doesn't suck. It's hand sewn. Uh, and I couldn't actually put through the multi materials here because i'm going again on the zipper frame right here so i'm trying to make it look clean too i'm not trying to make this look all janky just because i don't want to poke through all the material but i used the Knipex mini cobras and i used it to push through the needle each time so every time you see a loop here each of these loops multiple loops all these loops were put through with the mini cobras and this needle i couldn't use my fingers because it was too hard of material so i grabbed you can see it's kind of marred up a a little bit um but it needed to be because it didn't actually marred up too bad just a little bit but it needed to be in the middle i needed to be a plier um like that because i wouldn't get grip otherwise and like i said even with like a thimble or something you're like you're not going to push through the material you might push through some of the existing holes that the machine that they have made like i was just kind of pushing it on that little hole right there you'll do that but you can't do it the whole time so anyway needless to say next thing i said is i wanted to change the handle the handle was not this so this is where uh it got it got creative because my creative stitching was on the inside here of this so i basically just fold this in half uh gripped it kind of marked where my fist actually is sewed it up after it was folded in half and then uh slip some shrink wrap over um the folded piece of seat belt and then just shrink wrap it Now I got a grip, easy grip, real nice. I almost cracked the camera. But this inside here, you can see this square patch right here. This is actually hook and loop. So what I did was at the end of the seatbelt, I actually sewn some hook and loop to attach it to this interior part as well as sewing the seatbelt here. So I did hook and loop to attach it originally. So it's like, here's the seatbelt, hook and loop. And then I got sewn stitch right here. So all I had to do is L and the handle, uh, after doing this. So that being said, let's kind of go into what I was able to fit into this awesome new bag. Um, so yeah, that's the back part. This was a pad. There was a little pad. There was like pads and like maybe one little pocket over here or something. But for the most part, we got this thing packed like pretty tight compared to like what I thought I was going to get in this. And I got everything I really wanted to. So man yeah this thing's a tight little beast oh and i this was some other stuff that i salvaged i only put this on here just for a little demonstration for you to be able to put something on here but you can put like a fire starter like this or you can put like you can put some palm you know i'm saying you want to put some palm on there uh you can put whatever you want on there but this was some leftover parts from the shoulder strap so these are some parts for the shoulder strap and they're just like a little you know it's like a little holster you know i just put some fire starter in there just for s and g's you know what i'm saying so let's do the lid do the two side pouches do the front main pouch and then we'll do the interior large main compartment so we got our daisy patch of course we love some daisy badlands is coming out hopefully everyone's excited for that next up we got is some Ray-Ban Meta glasses up top here has its own little dedicated case I love that on the ready I want to take any POV footage of anything this is just a little dump pouch for me to be able to toss in some pens pencils and some markers that's really all that's in there nothing too crazy just like realistic stuff I would be going to grab and that's everything that's in the lid which is nice oh I'm sorry everything on the outside of the lid the interior of the lid has another pouch right here which as you can see I have it sectioned off the first aid kit goes right over this pouch and the bandana goes over these other two because this one sinks down and this one raises up so i did it like a little level here so it actually fits congruently bandana very nice of course then we have of course the mini Coleman first aid kit you're going to see a video on this coming up next week probably uh this little kit right here is a standard nine dollar kit that i amplified or added the actual components to make it a legit pack out first aid kit so be on the lookout for that this is the end of the lid where we did everything that we could possibly do there now let's go check out this one side over here it looks like it has a water bottle compartment you're getting teasers of what's in the center but as you can tell most of the stuff in here are modules this is a water bottle compartment but you can use it for whatever you want what do i got i have my precision fastener kit here from Wera and Nyplex check this out oh that's my flashlight from Led Lenser i grabbed the wrong tether looking through the camera but there's my little subcompact kit you guys know and love this one i know and too because that's what I like to use with my tech stuff my electronics and anything else where I need some precision um grippage and usability that's going to be uh this kit right here I don't need super heavy tools that pretty much maxes out with uh you know like the 13 or whatever on the sockets uh and the equivalent on the SAE but anyway that's the mini cobras that I used for the needle and here let's check those out those didn't get chewed up too much either you see those didn't get chewed up at all barely barely any use on those and i used that for probably what two out of the three Lord of the Rings movies so a good amount of time was spent using those pliers and they barely look used other side compartment right here i used one of those little molly velcro straps that i salvaged from the shoulder strap and i just have a little savivi microfiber cloth here to wipe down device screens my phone whatever and it's just kind of being held down that little velcro strap thought that was cool to repurpose something like that then we have a power bank that does both my devices which you'll see in a second lightning and usb-c very nice from anchor that is a split charger which is cool so that's a side bag now let's do the front compartment here then we'll do the main the main event so i got nothing in this front zipper i'm not a front zipper kind of guy because when i load the main compartment this part right here this part almost becomes unusable a lot of the time like i mean i can maybe fit something like this in there you know something like that but then it's bulking out maybe the bandana can go in there but not much i don't usually i'm not able to put stuff in there most of the time so here's a scatter pattern here's the other device so iphone 14 with a tether it's got a tether on the back so i can launch put both phones there and then i can charge both phones just like that so pretty cool right and then this folds up and slips right back in there and i keep it in my Klein holster so that the screen doesn't get all jacked up and that helps me with my uploads it allows me to do multiple workflows at the same time when they're all tethered together like that if that makes sense we have a little speaker here this one is from Renn uh this has a really neat feature which allows you to have a little flash card there um where you can look like a dog area you can load it up with music let me see if it'll play it'll it'll load up with music and you can basically play music without having to sync it so if you want to be offline listening to music you can totally do that so it's like basically an mp3 player built in i think that's pretty cool now you're gonna ask me why there's probably so many notebooks in here why do you got four notebooks dude well they're all a little different and for me personally this is some stuff that i'm working with right now so i have this packed out in here because i'm trying to work through it if you would so we got the CERT community emergency response team operating guide we have a field interview notebook which has a standard little grid here of questions and then this one is an EMT vital stats chart and then we just have the standard right in the notebook so just some notebooks that i'm working with right now here you know what we'll put this over here because we're going to kind of illustrate what we all fit in here so now everything in this front area is out we have the main compartment which is only going to have three things we have a Maxped patch right here which will go through and then we have two little hard cases right here that will go through and that is everything that we fit inside of the Nova which is pretty oh here's the compartment back here that i salvaged because i could have probably removed this compartment but we had to have a place to have a paperback and what paperback do we have today we have Night of the Living Dead by John Russo check this out OG original paperback Night of the Living Dead the story that started it all all right next up we got is these two tech cases you've seen the orange one but i've been i built it out i got this i got a second one i got a black one and the black one has Frank Reynolds on it so that makes it even better let's check out what we got in this one locking little hard case so this is my little tech kit basically got a little flashlight up here if i want to illuminate the case got an sd card storage i got a little razor knife for opening up packages i have alfred my offline ai model there i got a little tech just go through a couple of these things some tech tools and a little tactical titanium bottle power bank from anchor in aries one terabyte drive i have an anbernic little player here that has like every game from playstation one down uh we have the gerber arm bar i got the chalk trg edition spooky fidget i put my name on there that's awesome um this is a little cardputer these are two multi-tools that I set up for myself digital multi-tools if you would this one is the ADV which is more of an online meshtastic communicator node and then this is a wi-fi signal little wire I'll show you turn this on this little wi-fi signal strength meter you can see all the little apps and stuff that I load load up for use this one is an atom that I put a little hexabus cord on and double-sided taped it to the bottom and then this basically allows me to walk around while it's powered i can actually plug this into a power bank if i want doesn't matter uh it's all programmed into the atom and this is a wi-fi signal tester so it allows me my starlink is like right there on the other side of the wall it's about five feet from me but you can see the bars going down they'll change color as they go down as well uh it's green yellow and red so if it would have went down like one more it would probably turn yellow so pretty cool on that uh this one is more of an offline it's got notebook calculator um here let me turn that on i can show you some of the stuff that's in there maybe you want to check out matrix rain matrix rain so we got a calculator in here uh dice roller fancy clock ir remote matrix rain you can check that out uh basic a notepad number script radar signal you and you know timer wikipedia files terminal and then we're back at the end so let's go to matrix rain and check that out show you something cool this is like a screensaver you know from like the 90s uh it's all the other stuff are like useful utilities this is more like a pretty cool so there's the matrix rain on the cardputer if i want to have this on the table next to me with the matrix rain for an ambiance or whatever i'm doing um but lots of utilities offline notepad excuse me was programmed by me so all the stuff was programmed um into this one and loaded how i want it so i set up basically an offline multi-tool that's a little card computer pretty cool huh so anyway that's neither here nor there that is the orange case let's check out the Frank Reynolds so anyway i started blasting the case this one up so in this one in the lid we got the Garfield okay these are little nets let me show you how these deploy little nets that hold up i got a local area map right in the very notebook the Garfield little uh plasma lighter which USB-C charging so i can charge everything here that's everything that's in the lid and then over here i just got some light EDC tools that you know aren't in this bag we're gonna check out this Maxped pouch last i'm not sure what's in there that's going to be kind of a bonus little pouch you don't know what's in there halloween edition uh next tool full knife blade this one is cool because it has some of the normal features of a multi-tool like you know the bottle opener the file and everything which is great it's got a precision double-ended bit but it also has a full set of scissors here check this out so some really great tools uh to have in a multi-tool especially for like a little admin kit like this and anything that this thing didn't get the power access is gonna get from SOG look at that beautiful hinge system love this multi-tool that's why it's in here uh bit rack for the SOG we have the little O knife precision bit driving kit with a little pencil a double ended bits in there that's going to be some more precision stuff so lots of precision stuff in here i'm dealing with electronics and tech we have the Pere from Civivi a very nice little knife offering here um we also have the little Gerber dedicated bottle opener and package opener so i'm not using the Pere to open boxes i'm using this to open boxes and bottles not this or anything else not improvising dedicated uh right in the rain pen cross pencil fire starter kit matches even though i have the lighter matches are great for me it's a little tinder box here i'll show it to you it's pretty cool actually a little tinder box it's got fire starter accelerated cotton swab striker strip matches that are 69 in there and then this is a box that you can rub sticks or any wood on to get shredded tinder or kindling i should say for your fire to start a fire it's basically a full-on fire starter kit so pretty cool on that and then this is a very powerful magnet on the bottom of this lantern this one from Tank 007 this has a neat little feature you can do cool lighting or warm lighting which is nice and you have a bi-directional here to USB-C so you don't have to worry about um having an issue with charging it i guess you can say um it's going to be one of those ones that you can find a universal way to charge it in this kit and what i like about it you can put on the table and create yourself a nice light ambience for yourself last thing in here is a deployable EDC kit which you've probably seen this the MagSafe Zip Zap kit and it's got a power pint in here 711L kit tactical knife Nitecore flashlight it's got right in the ring pen pad and what's nice about having a nice little deployable kit like this little EDC one because if i don't want to take all this stuff with me if i want to leave it like in a hotel room wherever i'm at i don't have to take all this stuff with me and i can grab this little kit which I think is super convenient so that's the Frank Reynolds case we're gonna put that over here by Night of the Living Dead and the last thing we saw was this little Maxpedition pouch so this is the this is a skinny this is the skinny I want to say fatty because it is thick but it's called a skinny and this one has some pretty cool dedicated tools in here I have an offline android device which has like a full survival arc and offline AI Wikipedia and everything I did this in a video you want to check that out go check out that video offline AI on my channel, and that'll show you. I have that on there, but I also have this set up for a few of the devices that are in this kit. This is the Klein Tools, the ET920. This is a little USB voltage tester. It allows you to see how much your device is basically drawing whatever device you plug into that. This is a Heltec base node right here, which shows me all the different nodes in my area for the mesh network. This is a 5R Mini, which is a nice little Baofeng device. comes with a short stubby and this allows me to listen to things that i can't normally listen to with my ears and then we got a little pipe multi-tool here it's got a hidden little pipe function which i thought was kind of cool i threw that in here for smgs in here we have a few cool things we have a little camera here that charges via USB when you hit the button on the lighter the normal function turns a camera on here so it's a little spy camera little lock pick kit that i shrink wrapped together what else we got in here here's the rest of the lockpick kit we have some firecrackers for diversion and then the last two things in this kit we have a thermal camera for the Android device so then we can see things that our eyes can't see and then we have a borescope which also plugs into the Android device now we can see places that our eyes can't see so what do you think about this super super super loadout in the Maxpedition Novo i wanted to kind of illustrate how much stuff i could fit into this actual bag after i modified it and you can see i fit a lot of stuff in here i didn't even really go through literally everything like the first aid kit or anything else so that being said why don't you let me know down in the comments below what do you how do you think i did what do you think about this kit what do you think about the stuff that i put in here would you cherry pick something for your own what do you think about all the gear that's in here um would you carry all this stuff in one bag for yourself you know down in the comments below if you like this video give it a thumbs up want more content like this subscribe for more Navigator study.