I have an omega 49 en route. I'm trying to pick up one of each hair to start then branch out to better versions... It's between the vie-long and the his synthetic.
On all the forums I've looked at, for all the years I've been wetshaving, I've never understood- If boar and horse are so good in their own unique way and have such devoted followings, why do brush manufacturers feel the need to dye the bristles to imitate badger brushes? I know on this forum, badger brushes are not the "gold standard" but it seems so often to be "silvertip or the highway"on other shaving forums. I like my silvertip, but I have an old 3 band badger brush that I love way better. It's getting to the point where I even see new badger brushes bleached to look like silvertips. Sorry if this derails the topic, but I had to get it off my chest.
Good day Gents, I have the Vie Long 13520 but I am not too happy with it. The workmanship was poor on the one I got. A large amount of glue had run up one side of the brush and a lot of the hair was stuck clumped together. I gently massaged, combed and brushed my Vie Long for about an hour trying to get the glue out. In the end I got most of the glue out. Additionally, the logo on the handle was not positioned very well. My brush wasn't exactly cheap either. I got it at www.fendrihan.com because I was heading to Canada on vacation. The brush was a bit smaller than I had imagined. The photo on the website shows a medium brown color with a nice burled look but my brush was just dark brown. The brush seems to work okay but it is nothing special. I really like the look of the big brushes on shavetools.com (the Pro Hybrid and Pro Horse, $18.00 models) so I may try another horse hair brush in the future. Of course if I do get another brush, it will purely be in the interest of conducting some serious comparative research and NOT because I have any sort of silly acquisition disorder. Interestingly, the day before yesterday, I ordered a horse hair brush from Turkey. It cost all of $2.45! This cheap brush has had some very favorable reviews including this one bruceonshaving.com. Cheers, Lyndon [Edit: I just noticed that shavetools.com also has the super cheap "Turkish #6".]
