Can anyone tell me if I can expect similar performance out of these?? Apart from the little silver ring around the knot, they seem very much alike. Am I missing something, other than the $14 price difference?? http://www.westcoastshaving.com/Edwin-Jagger-Best-Badger-Shaving-Brush-Medium-Black_p_1572.html http://www.smallflower.com/edwin-jagger/ebony-best-black-badger-shave-brush-shave-brush-10068069
Well the more expensive one is out of stock. That's a big difference. I personally dislike the term best badger. It has too much wiggle room. The quality of the hairs used can be good to great, and anywhere in between. Since EJ is a Brit company, Best Badger should mean a premium product. As far as the cheaper one goes, the very dark hairs indicate either a poorer grade of Badger hair from the back or sides of the animal or it's Manchurian badger, doubtful for the price, but you never know...
I'd go for the cheaper one myself.... But then my go to brush is a "bestshave" #6 horse, all of $5-$6 shipped at least the ones I have were. To me how a brush performs on my face, how my face likes the brush and brush durability are the factors that determine if a brush is premium or not. If you like backbone and scritchyness for example, then a SUPER Soft BEST Supreme MOST expensive in the world Bagger brush isn't going to make you happy! At least thats my take on it.....
The $34 EJ brush looks like pure badger to me. It's far too dark to be best, and EJ doesn't use Manchurian - if they did, you'd have to add at least $100 to the pricetag of the brush.
I think I found the same brush with more details over on the westcoastshaving.com site: http://www.westcoastshaving.com/Edw...ger-Shaving-Brush-Imitation-Ebony_p_1738.html It looks like the same photo with the same characteristic chrome ring around the knot. They list it as an Edwin Jagger 181P26, and the hair as "Best Black Badger". So, is "Best Black Badger" another way of saying "Pure Badger"? Sounds like a whole lot of ambiguity to me.
No. Yes. Maybe. From what I've found over the years is that some brush manufactures claim that the quality of the badger pelts has gone down over the years. Pure badger is generally recognized as a way to describe a machine made knot with trimmed badger hair. Silvertip was always the fur around the muzzle and the ruff of the neck, but now includes most any three banded hair on the badger. I suppose if they got a high quality pelt, the black back and side hairs could be used in a hand made knot and called "best badger", though I feel that this is misleading. The biggest problem is that there is no industry standard. What one manufacturer calls "finest" another calls "silvertip." If Target wanted to call their $9 machine made badger brush "best badger" they could, and there would be nothing anyone could do to stop them. All that being said, I'm sure the brush is worth exactly what they are asking for it, no matter what it is called. The semantics of figuring out what the different grades are from each manufacturer is complicated. Badger & Blade has an entire page devoted to listing the different brush manufacturers and the order of their grading. It is what it is.
Thanks for the reply. I think my wife ordered this "Best Black Badger" brush for me for my starter DE kit that she put together for me for Christmas. I'll report how I like it, but I have absolutely nothing with which to compare it. If nothing else, I expect it should be better than that $9 brush from Target.
Don't underestimate the power of a well broken in boar brush I've found that Edwin Jagger tends to be very forgiving for lack of a better term, with their designations of badger hair.
