I might be wrong but thing we are mostly on the same team, just a bit of different in the experience.
Sort of fun to see different thoughts and all.
Gibbs Adjustable Replica from Heritage Collection Shaving
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Sort of fun to see different thoughts and all.
Right at 1
So all the way opened up is back around to #1 also. So below #1 back around to 1 ?
Correct
Sorry for all the questions just trying to get a grip on this razor, pun intended.
Thanks bud
I finally picked mine up from my box today and was all prepared to “fix” it. But as it turns out, I wasn’t, that was a lot of fiddling to get it right. I got my zero at six and will be dialing up to four from there tomorrow morning!
Perhaps the merchant set yours correctly before sending as it only takes a minute.
good to hear that it arrived the way it should.
No, the merchant has maintained that it is supposed to start on N and that is where it was. This makes no sense at all as N is the neutral setting which is 3. Leaving it to start on N would make 6 the actual neutral setting. Confusing enough? I am about to go shave right now...
A good shave this morning with the Heritage Gibbs Replica. Did the quick change of the dial and rotated the adjuster plate 180°. I will state that it is not necessary to make the change as it is just for visual correctness and nothing more. It shaves exactly the same gents. This is my 5th shave with it and they have all been near flawless. Blade rigidity is good enough for me and yes, there are numerous other razors that hold the blade with vise like strength that offer superior rigidity with zero blade deflection. However, I think that the Heritage Gibbs Replica will work quite well with the majority of shavers except perhaps those with the densest and thickest of beards. Not saying that those with hair growth that is thicker can't achieve a good quality shave with this razor, it just might require a bit more work to achieve those desired results.
All in all, it's an excellent razor with very near identical attributes to the legendary original French creation at an affordable price. Build quality is good and one does not need to modify a blade as with the OG to enjoy a comparably good shave that is near if not identical to the Iconic Gibbs Reglable.
Great shaves to all....
All in all, it's an excellent razor with very near identical attributes to the legendary original French creation at an affordable price. Build quality is good and one does not need to modify a blade as with the OG to enjoy a comparably good shave that is near if not identical to the Iconic Gibbs Reglable.
Great shaves to all....
First shave with the Heritage, Kai blade
Having never owned a Gibbs style razor before, I am coming at this without any pre-conceived ideas. I am just going to evaluate it compared to some razors I have and make some judgements.
As mentioned above, I reset the razor to zero on six and dialled up to 4. With a Kai! I like blade feel and Kais are gentle on my face. I have seen some comments about the spring being sub-par and the blade clamping being the same. The thing that I didn't know about these is that the cap and the mid plate are sandwiching the blade tight, it's the safety bar that moves down and is the only thing affected by this spring. I am not going to pretend that it clamps like modern high end razors, but it seems surprisingly sufficient. There is some blade bend, maybe not as much as I like, but enough to help with rigidity. Weight is right in the sweet spot for me at 75 grams on my scale.
Laying the razor on my face, the angle feels natural. I would say it's a neural angle where it lands and there is room on either side of that to work with. This doesn't feel like my Timeless where I put the safety bar down first and lift until the blade contacts, it's probably closest to my Tatara with both having a similarly domed cap. With the grain is natural without any surprises and little chance for mistakes, blade feel is there considering my blade and number choice. Dialling up to five, because I already feel comfortable, there is a small, but noticeable increase in blade feel. This isn't really comfortable as I am really just hovering the razor, but I ended up shaving my whole neck at this setting without any accidents. It definitely produced more irritation there than my Blackbird while not being able to get as close in the end.
I also used five on the against the grain on my neck and it didn't feel any worse than with the grain. I will probably keep the razor at four or less with Kais in the future. So that I had something to compare with and because this wasn't really comfortable, I went down to four for the against the grain on my face. About half way, I discovered that the safety bar wasn't at all in contact with my skin! This means that it does work shallow, but I should be aiming steeper to engage the safety bar. I did try dialling it down, but even three wasn't contacting so basically the setting is meaningless for me on parts of my face. If I was using a normal width blade, I am sure this wouldn't have been so evident. But then I would have had to use setting five or six for my whole shave! Yes, I think it's fair to call this a smooth shaver.
I finished up by shaving my goatee area which is the hardest, most troublesome area for me and luckily I didn't open anything up. It felt safe and competent. Efficiency is just not as high as some modern razor designs and I am not going to "fix" that by using a sharper blade that will open up all my facial irregularities. I ended up with what I would call a DFS+ and that's fine. I had some irritation that I alluded to above, but it went away shortly after the shave. I would still say that this is one step above my Blackbird on my facial disruption scale, but the next shave should be closer to equal with my experience on the first shave.
This experience, so far, leads me to believe that I would probably enjoy a Rex Konsul if I can ever justify the cost since I want a premium finish. I will continue to use this razor this week and anticipate choosing it for traveling as I don't have many razors that I can afford to loose.
Having never owned a Gibbs style razor before, I am coming at this without any pre-conceived ideas. I am just going to evaluate it compared to some razors I have and make some judgements.
As mentioned above, I reset the razor to zero on six and dialled up to 4. With a Kai! I like blade feel and Kais are gentle on my face. I have seen some comments about the spring being sub-par and the blade clamping being the same. The thing that I didn't know about these is that the cap and the mid plate are sandwiching the blade tight, it's the safety bar that moves down and is the only thing affected by this spring. I am not going to pretend that it clamps like modern high end razors, but it seems surprisingly sufficient. There is some blade bend, maybe not as much as I like, but enough to help with rigidity. Weight is right in the sweet spot for me at 75 grams on my scale.
Laying the razor on my face, the angle feels natural. I would say it's a neural angle where it lands and there is room on either side of that to work with. This doesn't feel like my Timeless where I put the safety bar down first and lift until the blade contacts, it's probably closest to my Tatara with both having a similarly domed cap. With the grain is natural without any surprises and little chance for mistakes, blade feel is there considering my blade and number choice. Dialling up to five, because I already feel comfortable, there is a small, but noticeable increase in blade feel. This isn't really comfortable as I am really just hovering the razor, but I ended up shaving my whole neck at this setting without any accidents. It definitely produced more irritation there than my Blackbird while not being able to get as close in the end.
I also used five on the against the grain on my neck and it didn't feel any worse than with the grain. I will probably keep the razor at four or less with Kais in the future. So that I had something to compare with and because this wasn't really comfortable, I went down to four for the against the grain on my face. About half way, I discovered that the safety bar wasn't at all in contact with my skin! This means that it does work shallow, but I should be aiming steeper to engage the safety bar. I did try dialling it down, but even three wasn't contacting so basically the setting is meaningless for me on parts of my face. If I was using a normal width blade, I am sure this wouldn't have been so evident. But then I would have had to use setting five or six for my whole shave! Yes, I think it's fair to call this a smooth shaver.
I finished up by shaving my goatee area which is the hardest, most troublesome area for me and luckily I didn't open anything up. It felt safe and competent. Efficiency is just not as high as some modern razor designs and I am not going to "fix" that by using a sharper blade that will open up all my facial irregularities. I ended up with what I would call a DFS+ and that's fine. I had some irritation that I alluded to above, but it went away shortly after the shave. I would still say that this is one step above my Blackbird on my facial disruption scale, but the next shave should be closer to equal with my experience on the first shave.
This experience, so far, leads me to believe that I would probably enjoy a Rex Konsul if I can ever justify the cost since I want a premium finish. I will continue to use this razor this week and anticipate choosing it for traveling as I don't have many razors that I can afford to loose.
Excellent first run...I imagine as muscle memory takes root, the shaves will get better
and better.
and better.
First shave with the Heritage, Kai blade
Having never owned a Gibbs style razor before, I am coming at this without any pre-conceived ideas. I am just going to evaluate it compared to some razors I have and make some judgements.
As mentioned above, I reset the razor to zero on six and dialled up to 4. With a Kai! I like blade feel and Kais are gentle on my face. I have seen some comments about the spring being sub-par and the blade clamping being the same. The thing that I didn't know about these is that the cap and the mid plate are sandwiching the blade tight, it's the safety bar that moves down and is the only thing affected by this spring. I am not going to pretend that it clamps like modern high end razors, but it seems surprisingly sufficient. There is some blade bend, maybe not as much as I like, but enough to help with rigidity. Weight is right in the sweet spot for me at 75 grams on my scale.
Laying the razor on my face, the angle feels natural. I would say it's a neural angle where it lands and there is room on either side of that to work with. This doesn't feel like my Timeless where I put the safety bar down first and lift until the blade contacts, it's probably closest to my Tatara with both having a similarly domed cap. With the grain is natural without any surprises and little chance for mistakes, blade feel is there considering my blade and number choice. Dialling up to five, because I already feel comfortable, there is a small, but noticeable increase in blade feel. This isn't really comfortable as I am really just hovering the razor, but I ended up shaving my whole neck at this setting without any accidents. It definitely produced more irritation there than my Blackbird while not being able to get as close in the end.
I also used five on the against the grain on my neck and it didn't feel any worse than with the grain. I will probably keep the razor at four or less with Kais in the future. So that I had something to compare with and because this wasn't really comfortable, I went down to four for the against the grain on my face. About half way, I discovered that the safety bar wasn't at all in contact with my skin! This means that it does work shallow, but I should be aiming steeper to engage the safety bar. I did try dialling it down, but even three wasn't contacting so basically the setting is meaningless for me on parts of my face. If I was using a normal width blade, I am sure this wouldn't have been so evident. But then I would have had to use setting five or six for my whole shave! Yes, I think it's fair to call this a smooth shaver.
I finished up by shaving my goatee area which is the hardest, most troublesome area for me and luckily I didn't open anything up. It felt safe and competent. Efficiency is just not as high as some modern razor designs and I am not going to "fix" that by using a sharper blade that will open up all my facial irregularities. I ended up with what I would call a DFS+ and that's fine. I had some irritation that I alluded to above, but it went away shortly after the shave. I would still say that this is one step above my Blackbird on my facial disruption scale, but the next shave should be closer to equal with my experience on the first shave.
This experience, so far, leads me to believe that I would probably enjoy a Rex Konsul if I can ever justify the cost since I want a premium finish. I will continue to use this razor this week and anticipate choosing it for traveling as I don't have many razors that I can afford to loose.
Great review and excellently written.
Thank you very much! That means a lot coming from you.Great review and excellently written.
@APBinNCA I'm not sure if you like it or dont. You dont sound overly enthousiastic? I love reading your feedback, guys. I am still waiting on mine. Aparently it landed in Brussels yesterday. With two holidays infront of us I'm hoping to have it in my hands by Friday. Which would mean it took as long to ship across the Atlantic as it will to travel those final 50 kms... 
You must have paid a fair bit for shipping. A friend outside the US
wanted to order one and mentioned that the shipping cost was a few
cents more less than the razor.
wanted to order one and mentioned that the shipping cost was a few
cents more less than the razor.
Thank you very much! That means a lot coming from you.
Much appreciated and your too kind. Honestly, there are many excellent reviewers here that dance circles around my thoughts and write ups and I'm not exaggerating in the least. We just don't see them enough but, some of these gents are literary shave savants in their command of articulated and we'll written shave expressions. Yours was just as good as those and right on par with some of the best I've read across multiple forums. Well done.
And again, thank you.
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A romance blooms before our very eyes 
Yes, I paid about as much or maybe a tad more on shipment than the razor itself.
I have been waiting for this razor for quite some time and I feared they would never end up selling them in Europe, which is why I decided to cough up the shipping fee.
A while ago they announced they would be selling them through a European vendor as well...so I was a bit annoyed.
Anyway, they're not on on their website yet and it's a pretty expensive webstore anyway so I'm guessing price will be at or around what I paid for mine.
Well, I wouldn't put this in my top 10. It's a very good razor, but the mildest setting is probably what I'd use most often. I'm not as into aggressive razors as I used to be.
