Useless post about brushes

Kim writes:

[D]o you have any bris­tle brushes that you favor? I am very frus­trated try­ing to find good bris­tles anymore…even so-called high-end brushes can have prob­lems quickly with stray hairs or not cupped properly..not hold­ing their shape…hard to con­trol. Per­haps I should be switch­ing to softer brushes toward the finish…but I like using the strength of a bristle.

I’m not a great source on bris­tle brushes. Peo­ple who seem to know what they are talk­ing about usu­ally agree only that it’s really hard to find good bris­tles these days, and that a good batch from one man­u­fac­turer doesn’t have much to do with the whether the next batch will be any good.

I wish I had a bet­ter answer for you, but I really just have the same frus­tra­tions that you do. That’s why I haven’t writ­ten any posts on the sub­ject at my blog. I do tend to use syn­thetic sables for the later stages of most work.

So do any read­ers know of any reli­ably good brands of bris­tle brushes?