Finally got to take my first shave with this little guy today and it was...not quite what I was expecting.
I'm not going to make any judgments about the actual quality until I've used it for a much more significant period of time but I have some observations. I bought it mostly on the recommendations of this board so I am surely going to give it its proper shake.
1. It stunk to high heaven...yes even worse than my AoS demo kit badger brush did...the badger wasn't so horrible when you got used to it, this was something all together awful. Hopefully it won't last that long.
2. It has lost a bunch of hairs. Not so much that it seems to have affected the brush, but its surprising that something of this expense would lose much if any.
3. It does lather quite differently from my badger brush. It is very springy, and when I started whipping up the cream, it sent fluffy over hydrated and under aerated cream skyward in the mug, so that I kept having to push it back down to continue to whip it with the brush.
4. The brush acts very differently on my face than the badger. It doesn't seem to "hold" as much lather, so I tend to use more of a painting motion and go back to the mug more often than with the badger, which only needs to go back to the mug between passes.
All told...I did have a great shave and the smell should fade, so I wouldn't say these knocks against it are a bad sign or not. Only time will tell. I did remember Mantic saying something in the shaving brush video about synthetic brushes requiring a different lathering technique, I can only assume my experience is exemplary of this.
I'm not going to make any judgments about the actual quality until I've used it for a much more significant period of time but I have some observations. I bought it mostly on the recommendations of this board so I am surely going to give it its proper shake.
1. It stunk to high heaven...yes even worse than my AoS demo kit badger brush did...the badger wasn't so horrible when you got used to it, this was something all together awful. Hopefully it won't last that long.
2. It has lost a bunch of hairs. Not so much that it seems to have affected the brush, but its surprising that something of this expense would lose much if any.
3. It does lather quite differently from my badger brush. It is very springy, and when I started whipping up the cream, it sent fluffy over hydrated and under aerated cream skyward in the mug, so that I kept having to push it back down to continue to whip it with the brush.
4. The brush acts very differently on my face than the badger. It doesn't seem to "hold" as much lather, so I tend to use more of a painting motion and go back to the mug more often than with the badger, which only needs to go back to the mug between passes.
All told...I did have a great shave and the smell should fade, so I wouldn't say these knocks against it are a bad sign or not. Only time will tell. I did remember Mantic saying something in the shaving brush video about synthetic brushes requiring a different lathering technique, I can only assume my experience is exemplary of this.