First impression when I pulled it out of the packaging was it's even better looking in person, and smaller! My Art of Shaving brush towers over this brush. However the knot is where everything changes the knot on this bad boy makes my Art of Shaver pure badger look like a toy. I've also never experienced silver tip badger before, oh man this stuff is so soft. Come to think of it, I now realize that the Art of Shaving brush has the weirdest knot in the world...it's not dense, its got a huge 60mm+ loft, and it's fan shaped...so useless for me. Rudy knew exactly what I needed I am going to stop now, I could talk about it all day.