For years Simpsons has been known as one of the premier producer of Badger hair shaving brushes. Their history dates back using the current name almost 100 years. Time marches on and the Traditional Shaving community has seen a major change, especially in the past five years, with a new option in knots. Synthetic knots have taken off in user popularity, with manufacturers such as Mühle, Frank Shaving, Kent, Omega and others, vying for the revenue potential of the latest Generation 3, and especially Generation 4 Synthetic Fibers. Up until now, there have been three manufacturers that have been able to utilize Generation 4 Synthetic Fibers. The first was H.I.S. whose brush was in existence before 2010 according to the manufacturer, but became popular in early 2012. The next manufacturer to come on board was Mühle in the winter of 2012. The last of the three was Frank Shaving with their Pur-Tech line in the summer of 2013. So that made three companies that were perched upon the Generation 4 mountaintop, but now all that has changed. Simpsons has decided to release a brush using Generation 4 Synthetic Fibers and here is a detailed view of that brush with a review in the second thread to follow.

The new brush uses the Chubby 2 handle and is the most compact of three Generation 4 brushes that use a 28 mm knot (the largest STF Mühle sells is a 25 mm at the time of this posting). Simpsons calls the fibers "Synthetic Badger" as seen in the image. The handle is, of course, a classic Simpsons Chubby design, which is hand made and easy to grip even for a knot this size. This is a pre-release model, which has been graciously supplied by Mark Watterson of Simpsons for this review. The next picture compares the now four Generation 4 offerings both in side by side shots and down shots of the knots.

One thing that strikes me about the Simpsons brush is the knot itself. It is much more dense than any of the other offerings. The tips are just as soft to the touch as the other three offerings and they feel the same to my skin when they are dry (which is an excellent method to tell the differences between synthetic fibers). The denser knot makes for a firmer cushion than the other three and time and testing will tell how it compares against the other three models. That testing, which will commence tomorrow, will be discussed in part two of this series when completed.