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Just tried vintage Williams

So at an antiques shop last week, I picked up a little set they had... an Old Spice shaving mug (not the best of shape, the ribbon under the ship was faded away), a pretty nice Slim and an old puck of Williams all for $12.50. Tonight I decided to give the soap a try. Let me preface this by saying that I haven't tried either modern or vintage Williams so I was going in with very few expectations. All I knew is that there are a lot of modern Williams haters and that many say the vintage was much better. The only thing I was really thinking was that the box smelled super musty but thank goodness the soap just didn't smell at all. So I loaded this stuff up and whipped a really nice, rich lather. Boy did it lather easily! How did the shave go you ask? There was tons of cushion and even more glide. I'm seriously impressed by this stuff. Now I think I'm going to have to pick up a puck of the new stuff so I can compare. May have to order it though because I haven't seen it at any of the stores here. I'm also going to be adding vintage Williams to my antiques store list!
 
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Vintage Williams

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Modern Williams

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VDH


Hey, they'll all get you there. :w00t:
 
Let the modern Williams puck "break in" for a few shaves before you judge it totally. A lot of "experienced" wet shavers who think their bottoms don't stink, for the life of them can't figure out how to lather it. It's beyond easy!!! I've never had the itch to try the vintage because the modern works so well for me, I've posted pictures on the international thread as proof. It doesn't take any longer to lather Williams than any other soap I own......ok, maybe not cella, but every other one. I have a gut feeling you will be ok though
 
back when I was a regular Williams user (which I was for many years), it was my experience that it would always take several days to "break in" a new puck.
 
Let the modern Williams puck "break in" for a few shaves before you judge it totally. A lot of "experienced" wet shavers who think their bottoms don't stink, for the life of them can't figure out how to lather it. It's beyond easy!!! I've never had the itch to try the vintage because the modern works so well for me, I've posted pictures on the international thread as proof. It doesn't take any longer to lather Williams than any other soap I own......ok, maybe not cella, but every other one. I have a gut feeling you will be ok though

I used a half puck before I decided other products worked better. Yes, you can get a passable lather from modern Williams, I found a good long soak of the puck before attempting to lather it allowed a better lather. As a hand soap, modern Williams is great but for shaving I would rather have some Arko (which is as common in Turkey as Williams is in the US).
 
I used a half puck before I decided other products worked better. Yes, you can get a passable lather from modern Williams, I found a good long soak of the puck before attempting to lather it allowed a better lather. As a hand soap, modern Williams is great but for shaving I would rather have some Arko (which is as common in Turkey as Williams is in the US).
Ummm, yeah, who wouldnt take arko over Williams? ;)
 
Vintage Williams is great stuff, no doubt. It amazes me that this was drugstore stuff, a common everyday product.
I used to stop at a local discount drug store from time to time, to stock up on Atra refills, or Wilkinson Colours, a great and cheap single-blade disposable, and a can of Wilkinson or Colgate shave cream. I remember seeing tubes of Palmolive shave cream on the shelf and didn't have a clue how it was used. The couple who ran the store and advertised on local radio eventually decided they were old enough to retire and moved to Florida. Never did take the time to check out what DE offerings they had, but it was a popular store.

As for people claiming people who can't use current Williams "aren't doing the lather right," that's the point. Getting good lather from vintage Williams is almost effortless.

It's something like the domestic auto makers, the Detroit3, claiming their customers aren't maintaining their products right, and that's the source of all the quality problems and recalls. Many of the pro-Detroit motorists are shade tree mechanic types who look on DIY auto repair and maintenance as a hobby. In the meantime hundreds of thousands of motorists were giving the Japanese products a try, and taking them well over 100,000 miles with far fewer repair and maintenance problems. That kind of experience built in the customers' memory so that the Detroit3 market share shrank to a shadow of its former self. The quality gap has been closing in recent years, but only after decades of market share and job loss.

In the meantime, when my current stick of Arko and the vintage Williams puck are gone there will be more Arko to stock up on, far easier to get a far better lather from than current Williams.
 
Some great replies here! It really is amazing how Williams was such a so so product back in the day but now the same vintage stuff can't hear enough praise. I'll definitely be finding some of the new stuff just to try for science but my hopes definitely aren't up!
 
Just for the heck of it, I've been lathering with modern Williams for the past week. No problems here. If there's anything I would consider a little tricky though, it might be loading enough soap into the brush. With potassium stearate (adds slickness) being the first ingredient in the modern formula, the brush can fail to pick up enough soap and create a thin airy foam that won't last, if the brush is too wet. Sure, there are better soaps out there, but an old goat like me likes the nostalgia once in a while.
 
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