Your Favorite High End Adjustable? & Why?

[Phoenixkh]

This place is amazing to me in many ways. I thought I was being exorbitant when I paid $160 or so for my Claymore Evolution with its stand. I had never heard of most of the high end safety razors shown here and was a bit shocked at how much they cost. Some of them are beautiful... but I have to say... the straight razors are in a totally different class for me... exquisite in their simplicity and beauty. Some of them are thousands of dollars, as you all well know. I didn't, of course.

I am enjoying my time here a lot and will continue to experience the high end products vicariously. It's only taken me three weeks to figure out, the ROI on wet shaving is never.... but it's so much more fun than shaving with a cartridge razor with gel shaving "cream". I'm in about $750 at the moment but am loving it.

 

[JAHE]

In case you want to take out your (high end) adjustables for some rides, here's a proper opportunity to do so...

ADJUSTABLE APRIL (starts April,1st)

Hi everyone, I recently have neglected my adjustable razors quite a bit (and I have one in the mail coming which needs some extended testing 😉) so I thought why not do a group activity and get this thing started. Let's see if there is some interest from your end. As a start I'd limit this...

www.badgerandblade.com

Happy shaves, y'all!

 

[wlshephard]

Rex Konsul

I light the weight, balance, grip and it is not real bloodthirsty. Seems to make a shave feel almost effortless, almost to easy.

I wish the blade tabs were longer so loading the blade and putting the head on were not so fiddley. Not sure why that was not fixed in the beta testing phase.

 

[jason2]

I love adjustables. If I had to pick one and only one it would be the standard toggle.

My rack rotation setup for Adjustable April

But otherwise there's plenty I like about most of these. Here's my favorites from the pictures above.

1920 Old Type Big Fellow: Yes, I consider this an adjustable. It was advertised as an adjustable and I use it as an adjustable. I would almost say this is nearly my favorite adjustable. I absolutely love the handle and weight of the razor is about perfect for me. 3.5" handle, great knurling, and not to head heavy which in total weighs in at 80g. The Old Type big fellow is efficient already and turn back an 1/8 and a 1/4 turn and it's a beast. The adjustments are very sight turns to the bottom insert. The thin top cap and curve to it with the old type style makes it so very easy to get to tight spots easily like under the nose.

D1 or F4 Standard Toggle: with the toggle itself added to the length of the handle is a better length for me then the Fatboy or Slim. The grip is nice. It uses my favorite mechanics to make the adjustments by moving the safety bars up and down and not by bending the blade. I feel it helps maintain the same shaving angle while adjusting the blade gap primarily. This can adjust down to pretty mild and go pretty aggressive.

D1 Red Dot Fatboy. I wish it had the executive knurling but the standard Fatboy knurling is fine. I like the thickness better then the slim and length is barely noticeably longer then the standard Fatboy. But it's the mechanism that I love which uses the same method of adjusting the safety bars up and down like the standard toggle.

Parker Variant. High end? Nope. Going to last over a hundred years like the Big Fellow? Probably not. But I really like this razor. I like the handle at 3.5" and the knurling is nicely done. The handle is like the Big fellow's. The Variant can adjust from very mild to rather aggressive and it just feels nice at all levels to me. Probably due to the scalloped safety bars and bulbous top cap which does make it harder to get under the nose.

QShave Pantheon. Very affordable. Probably not high quality. I don't like the length of the handle which is the same length as the Super adjustable 109. But this is probably one of the milder adjustables I have yet still able to shave really well at its mildest settings.

PAA Copper Ascension Twist. It's got some heft, at 120g, due to being solid copper and mostly all in the handle which can be changed to any handle one desires. This is another one that takes a very little twist to adjust. The Ascension starts off more mild then the Big Fellow but gets to monster efficiency quickly. Which is good because you don't want to loosen up to much with this one as it doesn't have a fixed bottom plate. That could be dangerous. I do really like the double open comb and can see left over cream I use for a reverse pass quickly.

Yaqi Brass TFC. My gibs clone. I almost had a Pearl Flexi instead but even on v12 that I got it had alignment issues and sent it back. The TFC is excellent. I love the raw brass and gives it some weight. The handle is a good thickness and length. I painted the numbers black so I could read the dang thing though. The TFC seems to me more mid level to upper mild aggressiveness on the lowest setting and can get very aggressive. Progressively more blade feel which is there even on the lowest setting. I prefer a more neutral blade exposure.

The Muramasa. I love the engineering and mechanics behind this one. Very simple design and moves just the safety bars in and out with out altering the angle of the blade. I have a really hard time seeing what number it's in through the tiny window. I also haven't mastered the shave yet with this razor. I need to spend more time with it. RADD is my issue here. Razor Attention Deficit Disorder.

The eclipse red ring. It's another like the old type adjustable. It at least has a nice arrow and notches in the knob to help track how much has been twisted back. It's a beautiful razor and shaves really well. I had to give it back it's red ring as it was worn down to almost nothing.

I could talk about all of them but those would be what I pick as my favorites I guess.

I actually have a Rocnel Sailor 2022 I just bought but not in possession of yet and looking forward to that.

@Blackland Razors is prototyping out a new adjustable that I want to get. I've been looking at the Blackbird for a long time and really appreciate the videos they put out.

Otherwise, I don't have a great desire for much else that's out there right now in adjustable land that I don't already have or had.

 

[Inverted]

Rocnel Sailor. Best adjustable I have ever used.

 

[Hair Scraper]

A Parker Variant. Despite the high domed top cap, and lot’s of audible feedback, it works excellent for me.

It’s the high end one amongst the Fatboys, Slims, and Super Adjustable's I have.

 

[MartinKrpan]

Muramasa is my holy grail of adjustables. It looks like a piece of jewelry and shaves very comfortably.

Lately, I have been using it on the lowest settings (1,2) using sharp blades (Feather, Wizamet, Nacet). It's my only razor that makes Feather blades safe and very comfortable. If I want BBS, I set it to 5 and go very gently over my trouble spots on my correction pass.

It's so nice that I have completely stopped looking at other razors.

 

[garyg]

The Muramasa is a beautiful, well executed razor. Here though, it failed to generate any more "power" (aggressiveness or efficiency) than their equally beautiful, well made but substantially less expensive Masamune Nodachi OC. My most effective is probably the Gibbs replica from Heritage, my favorite though is the Fatboy, followed by a Schick Type M adjustable ..