Just got one of these. I'm a noob. I've been practicing with my HP-CS for a few months, but even though I have two needle/tip sizes for it, I wanted to have two separate brushes, one for big/medium, and one for fine. Knew from reading the boards here that Amazon had been doing a yearly promo sale on the SOTAR around the holidays, so I started saving a few months ago in anticipation. Got one chambered in the .2 "fine" needle/tip for about $100 USD.
OOB impressions:
Ergonomics are great. Feels extremely light, the barrel is much thinner than the HP-CS's, and the trigger/grip is closer to the tip. This gives it a very casual, pen-like feel in the hand. The balance point (unloaded) is a little under 1cm behind the trigger/valve stem (on the HP-CS it is right at the front edge of the valve stem). When holding the SOTAR, the weight ends up distributed 50/50 between the fingertips and the handle's contact point at/near the "crotch" of the thumb & forefinger, whereas the HP-CS feels very tip heavy with most of the weight resting on the tip of the middle finger. The main difference this makes, I find, is that the SOTAR encourages you to move the brush with your arm more than your fingers or hand. That's the way one should move a brush (or a pen) anyway, so that's kinda cool IMO.
The trigger button, though of a very similar design to that of the CS, is much more grippy due to the patina'd rather than chrome finish. I had to make a trigger pad for the CS to make it comfortable and non-slippery, but the SOTAR's trigger button feels perfectly fine as-is. The needle spring has a much, much better tension adjustment range than the CS. It can be either very very stiff, or so light you can move it literally just by touching it.
On the flip side, mine did not exhibit the smooth trigger action I'd often seen cited as a strength of Badger brushes (this is my first Badger brush). OOB there was a distinct metal-on-metal scraping sensation while pulling the trigger back. At first I thought the rocker was the culprit: on the CS and other brushes I've seen, the contact point between the rocker and the trigger is on the smooth recurved face of the rocker's "tongue", but on the SOTAR, the contact point appears to be the sharp die-cut edge of the rocker top. Troubling, as it made me think the much touted anti-friction coating would get scraped off by the rocker almost immediately, rendering it pointless. However this would've been a design flaw, not a manufacturing defect, and I hadn't heard anything about this in other reviews, so I kept an open mind and looked deeper.
On disassembling the brush, I found a burred edge on the inner lip of the spring tube housing, where it could scrape the side of the needle collet as the collet moves back and forth within the housing. With some additional testing, I believe that is the culprit. It would be easy-peasy to polish the burrs off with a couple strokes of a needle file, but I'm not sure if I should go ahead and do that, or contact Badger first.
I agree with other reviewers that the protruding needle at the back of the handle is a liability. It would not take much of a bump to destructively mash the needle into the nozzle. I briefly considered making some kind of slip-on pronged protector that would protect the needle and preserve the original design... but ultimately the original purpose of the exposed needle (to allow the needle stop to work in two different ways) just wasn't important enough to justify that. I was not planning on using the needle stop regardless, and I didn't like how the plastic bulb on the end of the needle forces you to take out the needle in order to remove the handle, nor how removing/replacing the needle requires you to thread the tip through extra layers of stuff before it's safely in the collet. So I just took the advice of other members here in a previous review, and chopped enough off the back of the needle for it to remain fully protected within the handle at all times (about 15mm or so from the tip of the plastic bulb).
The brush overall doesn't feel as sturdy as my HP-CS, but the HP-CS is sorta built like a tank, so that's not really saying much. Most of the threaded parts turn with a gritty feel, like the machining of the threads is imprecise or rough. The whole needle spring assembly is coated in machine oil of some sort. I assume that's lubed for a reason, so I think I'll replace the oil with graphite to avoid any possibility of needle contamination.
Painting first impressions:
Holy crocodiles! This thing paints really, REALLY nice! Doesn't spray as much paint volume as the CS, but that's expectable with a smaller needle/nozzle, so I can't say if that's relevant to the SOTAR specifically or not. Atomization, however, is visibly both superior to and more consistent than that of the CS, and I can push the pressure much lower (CS bottoms out around 10psi, but I can get the SOTAR below 5). I can pull lines just as fine with the CS as with the SOTAR, but with the SOTAR it's easier and the lines are cleaner looking.
It takes half as much solvent to flush clean the SOTAR as it does the CS. I think the needle packing is the difference: The SOTAR's needle packing is pressure fitted from the front instead of screw fitted from the back, so there's less space and crevices in the needle channel for pigment to linger in.
The coolest thing is the trigger's response curve. Practicing dagger strokes with the CS felt a bit like learning to operate the clutch on a manual transmission car for the first time: there's an element of sliding-scale timing that you have to learn and train into muscle memory through extensive practice. From the way it's talked about, this is appears to be fairly normal for many brush makes/models. With the SOTAR, the response curve is so perfect it's like you don't even have to learn at all. Control is almost completely intuitive right from the start. It's brilliant.
Summation:
General vibe is that of a Kalashnikov rifle: precise only where it needs to be, dirty wherever it can afford to be. That bit of precision appears to be very well engineered though. It's the only detail brush I've ever owned, and like I say: I'm a noob, so I can't say how it stacks against other high-end models. However I feel very confident in saying a great brush in its own right.
I don't think it earns its high MSRP. For $400 I'd expect more consistent build quality all around. My HP-CS is a more precisely machined and durable tool, and it only MSRPs at around $140. Performance wise however the SOTAR is clearly much superior to the HP-CS, so I'd guess it's maybe worth something in the 200-250 range? Buy it at full price and you might be a dissapointed, but at a deep-cut price like the annual Amazon promo, it's like finding a Krugerrand under the couch cushions.
I'm glad I had the HP-CS first. Although the SOTAR outperforms the CS at detail, I think the CS is still a much better starter brush due to its forgiving build quality and wider versatility. As a "step up" second brush, though, particularly at the sale price, I'm loving the SOTAR so far.
OOB impressions:
Ergonomics are great. Feels extremely light, the barrel is much thinner than the HP-CS's, and the trigger/grip is closer to the tip. This gives it a very casual, pen-like feel in the hand. The balance point (unloaded) is a little under 1cm behind the trigger/valve stem (on the HP-CS it is right at the front edge of the valve stem). When holding the SOTAR, the weight ends up distributed 50/50 between the fingertips and the handle's contact point at/near the "crotch" of the thumb & forefinger, whereas the HP-CS feels very tip heavy with most of the weight resting on the tip of the middle finger. The main difference this makes, I find, is that the SOTAR encourages you to move the brush with your arm more than your fingers or hand. That's the way one should move a brush (or a pen) anyway, so that's kinda cool IMO.
The trigger button, though of a very similar design to that of the CS, is much more grippy due to the patina'd rather than chrome finish. I had to make a trigger pad for the CS to make it comfortable and non-slippery, but the SOTAR's trigger button feels perfectly fine as-is. The needle spring has a much, much better tension adjustment range than the CS. It can be either very very stiff, or so light you can move it literally just by touching it.
On the flip side, mine did not exhibit the smooth trigger action I'd often seen cited as a strength of Badger brushes (this is my first Badger brush). OOB there was a distinct metal-on-metal scraping sensation while pulling the trigger back. At first I thought the rocker was the culprit: on the CS and other brushes I've seen, the contact point between the rocker and the trigger is on the smooth recurved face of the rocker's "tongue", but on the SOTAR, the contact point appears to be the sharp die-cut edge of the rocker top. Troubling, as it made me think the much touted anti-friction coating would get scraped off by the rocker almost immediately, rendering it pointless. However this would've been a design flaw, not a manufacturing defect, and I hadn't heard anything about this in other reviews, so I kept an open mind and looked deeper.
On disassembling the brush, I found a burred edge on the inner lip of the spring tube housing, where it could scrape the side of the needle collet as the collet moves back and forth within the housing. With some additional testing, I believe that is the culprit. It would be easy-peasy to polish the burrs off with a couple strokes of a needle file, but I'm not sure if I should go ahead and do that, or contact Badger first.
I agree with other reviewers that the protruding needle at the back of the handle is a liability. It would not take much of a bump to destructively mash the needle into the nozzle. I briefly considered making some kind of slip-on pronged protector that would protect the needle and preserve the original design... but ultimately the original purpose of the exposed needle (to allow the needle stop to work in two different ways) just wasn't important enough to justify that. I was not planning on using the needle stop regardless, and I didn't like how the plastic bulb on the end of the needle forces you to take out the needle in order to remove the handle, nor how removing/replacing the needle requires you to thread the tip through extra layers of stuff before it's safely in the collet. So I just took the advice of other members here in a previous review, and chopped enough off the back of the needle for it to remain fully protected within the handle at all times (about 15mm or so from the tip of the plastic bulb).
The brush overall doesn't feel as sturdy as my HP-CS, but the HP-CS is sorta built like a tank, so that's not really saying much. Most of the threaded parts turn with a gritty feel, like the machining of the threads is imprecise or rough. The whole needle spring assembly is coated in machine oil of some sort. I assume that's lubed for a reason, so I think I'll replace the oil with graphite to avoid any possibility of needle contamination.
Painting first impressions:
Holy crocodiles! This thing paints really, REALLY nice! Doesn't spray as much paint volume as the CS, but that's expectable with a smaller needle/nozzle, so I can't say if that's relevant to the SOTAR specifically or not. Atomization, however, is visibly both superior to and more consistent than that of the CS, and I can push the pressure much lower (CS bottoms out around 10psi, but I can get the SOTAR below 5). I can pull lines just as fine with the CS as with the SOTAR, but with the SOTAR it's easier and the lines are cleaner looking.
It takes half as much solvent to flush clean the SOTAR as it does the CS. I think the needle packing is the difference: The SOTAR's needle packing is pressure fitted from the front instead of screw fitted from the back, so there's less space and crevices in the needle channel for pigment to linger in.
The coolest thing is the trigger's response curve. Practicing dagger strokes with the CS felt a bit like learning to operate the clutch on a manual transmission car for the first time: there's an element of sliding-scale timing that you have to learn and train into muscle memory through extensive practice. From the way it's talked about, this is appears to be fairly normal for many brush makes/models. With the SOTAR, the response curve is so perfect it's like you don't even have to learn at all. Control is almost completely intuitive right from the start. It's brilliant.
Summation:
General vibe is that of a Kalashnikov rifle: precise only where it needs to be, dirty wherever it can afford to be. That bit of precision appears to be very well engineered though. It's the only detail brush I've ever owned, and like I say: I'm a noob, so I can't say how it stacks against other high-end models. However I feel very confident in saying a great brush in its own right.
I don't think it earns its high MSRP. For $400 I'd expect more consistent build quality all around. My HP-CS is a more precisely machined and durable tool, and it only MSRPs at around $140. Performance wise however the SOTAR is clearly much superior to the HP-CS, so I'd guess it's maybe worth something in the 200-250 range? Buy it at full price and you might be a dissapointed, but at a deep-cut price like the annual Amazon promo, it's like finding a Krugerrand under the couch cushions.
I'm glad I had the HP-CS first. Although the SOTAR outperforms the CS at detail, I think the CS is still a much better starter brush due to its forgiving build quality and wider versatility. As a "step up" second brush, though, particularly at the sale price, I'm loving the SOTAR so far.
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