Last week, I was debating about buying a new brush. I had a Conk badger brush, which is apparently made by Vulfix, which seemed to work pretty well for my purposes. It created lather without too much trouble and applied it, which is what these brushes are supposed to do. 
I ended up settling on a Vie-Long El Toro Ganso from BullGoose.
The ETG has a 22mm knot with 50mm of loft in two-band white badger. For reference, I believe the Conk brush I'll be comparing it to has a 22mm knot, 50mm loft in pure badger.
I had heard that the badger scent from Vie-Long brushes was stronger than others, which I can confirm. However, I think the smell was more like one part badger and two parts epoxy. The smell at first was such that it would have been unpleasant to shave with right out of the box. After drying in a couple lathers over a period of ~15 hours, the scent had mostly abated and the brush was good to shave with.
The first thing I noticed when looking at the brush was that it seemed less 'full' than my original cheapie. This turned out not to be true. The Vie-Long has at least as much hair as the Conk, but the hair in the VL stands up uniformly while the Conk hairs go a little wild. This brings me to the next observation, in that the Vie-Long brush has quite a lot of backbone. That's not to say the hairs are 'hard,' but rather that they're quite springy. This was in direct opposition to the Conk brush, where the hairs bent quite easily. The Vie-Long brush is surprisingly soft, given that the hairs are so springy. The VL is far softer than the cheap brush, as in the Conk brush the hairs are trimmed at the top in order to shape it.
El Toro Ganso performs quite well. It holds a whole lot of water, enough so that I only had to add a couple drops to get my TOBS creme to the correct consistency this morning. Because of its water-retaining qualities, the ETG lathered far quicker than my Conk brush. Due to the springiness of the hairs, applying the lather occurs with almost surgical precision compared to my pure badger brush. The pure badger takes very little pressure to splay the hairs everywhere, and more often than not got lather everywhere.
So far, I really love this brush. I would absolutely recommend it as an all-around great brush. I don't yet have a Simpson to compare it to, but I am relatively confident that it would compare favorably.
I ended up settling on a Vie-Long El Toro Ganso from BullGoose.The ETG has a 22mm knot with 50mm of loft in two-band white badger. For reference, I believe the Conk brush I'll be comparing it to has a 22mm knot, 50mm loft in pure badger.
I had heard that the badger scent from Vie-Long brushes was stronger than others, which I can confirm. However, I think the smell was more like one part badger and two parts epoxy. The smell at first was such that it would have been unpleasant to shave with right out of the box. After drying in a couple lathers over a period of ~15 hours, the scent had mostly abated and the brush was good to shave with.
The first thing I noticed when looking at the brush was that it seemed less 'full' than my original cheapie. This turned out not to be true. The Vie-Long has at least as much hair as the Conk, but the hair in the VL stands up uniformly while the Conk hairs go a little wild. This brings me to the next observation, in that the Vie-Long brush has quite a lot of backbone. That's not to say the hairs are 'hard,' but rather that they're quite springy. This was in direct opposition to the Conk brush, where the hairs bent quite easily. The Vie-Long brush is surprisingly soft, given that the hairs are so springy. The VL is far softer than the cheap brush, as in the Conk brush the hairs are trimmed at the top in order to shape it.
El Toro Ganso performs quite well. It holds a whole lot of water, enough so that I only had to add a couple drops to get my TOBS creme to the correct consistency this morning. Because of its water-retaining qualities, the ETG lathered far quicker than my Conk brush. Due to the springiness of the hairs, applying the lather occurs with almost surgical precision compared to my pure badger brush. The pure badger takes very little pressure to splay the hairs everywhere, and more often than not got lather everywhere.
So far, I really love this brush. I would absolutely recommend it as an all-around great brush. I don't yet have a Simpson to compare it to, but I am relatively confident that it would compare favorably.
