Adjustables: Pros and Cons

[JonnyAngel]

The Futur was what I started with. It was quirky as I have seen, but I kinda miss it. Mine had a boiling accident.

Anyway...Adjustables give you a range of aggressiveness. You can arent stuck with just one blade gap. Just be careful!

 

[LondonCalling]

Pros: the most amazing bit of personal technology available before we all went digital. You'll spend hours playing with it.
Cons: you'll spend hours playing with it.

To sum up: for shaving purposes I'm convinced that the 2-piece razor is best. Start with a HD, and if that doesn't float your boat then shop around. But get one of these marvels to, er,marvel at.

 

[revrat]

The engineer and tinkerer in me finds that the biggest con to the adjustable is the adjustability itself. I have a Fatboy, and a Slim, and I found myself retarding the development of my technique because I was impatient and was trying to adjust to a better shave rather than trying to learn how to shave. I prefer the Slim to the Fatboy, but I switched to a 38C Merkur, and have seen much more progress in the last couple of weeks than I did in the first couple of months when I was using the adjustables. I did finally get a BBS result with my slim, but the tinkering was really making my developing technique a see-saw ride. When I switched to the 38C, I had a couple of rough shaves, but the learning curve has greatly accelerated since I have removed a variable that was just too tempting to not play with. I actually prefer the 38C now due to the almost daily blood and irritation-free DFS and occasional BBS that I'm getting since I'm building more consistency in my technique.

The biggest pro to the adjustable in my view is that it gives you the ability to adjust to a wide variety of blade gaps, thus giving you ample opportunity to try more different types of ASB to cure the razor burn and nicks you will give yourself when you fiddle with it too much.

If you can resist the urge to tinker, the adjustable will be fine for you to learn on, but I just can't resist knobs and dials.