Soaking in my favorite "Ramada Inn" brush soaking glass.
I face lather. I've never really caught on to how to make those big mounds of lather in a bowl. I've never really practiced at that either. So this was a test lather with Speick cream done for just a tiny bit in my palm then squeezed out of the brush.
My amateur impressions:
This brush is a similar size and loft to my Panchetta brush(silver tip TGN knot). The BG2012LE is much less floppy than the Panchetta (I believe this is called backbone?) but is still quite soft to my face. I was quite comfortable face lathering with it. My experience is limited to a small number of brushes so I'll leave the "scritch" metering to someone else who knows what they are talking about.
Hair performance. I have to confess that at first I got too much water into it and then not enough but after 2 test lathers I used it to shave and on the 3rd pass after a tiny dip in the sink I had it just perfect. I didn't shave a 4th pass but I did lather up my face for it and it performed just as well as any of my other brushes on the 4th pass as well.
Smell. Out of the box it smells just like a well groomed horse. Not offensive to me. I had a Mahogany Bay as a child and quite frankly that is what I was thinking of while checking this thing out. Once I had it lathered up and throughout my 1st shave I couldn't smell anything but the shave soap.
Hair fallout. My Panchetta and my Simpsons CH1 were both purchased slightly used so I've not had a new brush to really compare it to. I think it lost 5 or 6 hairs on the 1st test lather but nothing that made me worry.
Handle size and shape. Wow! I like it. I've got larger hands and they fit this thing great. My CH1 gives me fits every once in a while but I didn't feel any danger of this thing slipping out of my hands. IMNSHO it looks pretty nifty too.
To wrap up my 1st impressions I really like the handle size and shape. The brush worked well for face lathering for me once I got the water content figured out. It didn't feel scratchy to me at all during face lathering. I rather like adding yet another kind of hair / fiber to the shave den.
-Andrew
