****** - Verified Buyer
4.5
This brush is my first "nice" shaving brush, and it's an absolute joy to use everyday. I lather directly off the puck, as opposed to face or bowl lathering, and this brush seems to be designed exactly for that purpose. It's luxuriously soft, but retains a huge amount of backbone without any scratchiness. The Duke works extremely well with soft soaps and reasonably well with hard soaps. I found that it performed extremely well right out of the box, but there was some unpleasant badger smell for the first 2-3 shaves. The brush seems very well constructed, and it has lost very few hairs so far. After owning this brush for a month, I really like it. It's a good size, even for a person with larger hands.As a bonus, I learned that Simpson brushes can be dried standing on their base. That's right, you don't need to hang them on a brush stand. Just dry them as indicated in the included instruction manual and stand them up.
