Chinese copy.. a noobs PoV

I still don't know how they compare to a Micron and may never but the brushes I have far exceed my current artistic ability.

I would really doubt they compare to a Micron. I have a lot of high end brushes and they all have a hard time sitting side by side with a Micron. All of them work really well, but the Micron is pretty much in a league of its own.

Can I do the same paintings with an H&S Evolution that I can with a Micron? I'd say yes, but the Micron is easier to control, and the atomization at low psi is unmatched.
 
I would really doubt they compare to a Micron. I have a lot of high end brushes and they all have a hard time sitting side by side with a Micron. All of them work really well, but the Micron is pretty much in a league of its own.

Can I do the same paintings with an H&S Evolution that I can with a Micron? I'd say yes, but the Micron is easier to control, and the atomization at low psi is unmatched.

Jeff I don't doubt you for a sec, when I said compared to a Micron I meant that I don't know if my knockoff is 1/10th as good or half as good or 90% as good.

All I know is the brush I have worked on is now far more capable than my artistic abilities :(.

Maybe one day, finger crossed, I'll be a good enough artist to warrant the best brush.

Jim
 
My impression from the testimonials I've seen has bee that quality on the Chinese cheapies is very unpredictable from one unit to the next .

Some people say they're OK, a few say they're great, and a few say they're unusable. That makes me think there's no consistency in the manufacturing: two "twins" of the exact same model made in same factory on the same day may have completely different quality.

With this in mind I feel like positive testimonials aren't meaningful, no matter how accurate on the individual level, because a single sample represents nothing when you're dealing with that kind of variability. The whole point of testimonials/reviews is as a predictor for prospective buyers, so if the aggregate is inconsistent, a few glowing reviews don't matter because those guys/gals only appear to have won the bell curve lottery.

From my own experiences as a newbie, I feel like what a newbie needs more than anything else is a brush that will "get in its own way" as little as possible so you can focus on pure learning without being bogged down. Something that's less fussy to use and clean is a way, waaaay bigger priority than cost cutting, or even performance. I learned that the hard way with a reputable brand name brush that was merely "not for me", so I shudder to think what my experience would have been if I'd tried to start on a bad-luck cheapie.

Brand name brushes have good, stable resale value, whereas the cheapies are pretty much 100% money down the drain if they don't work out, so the idea that they're a low-risk investment because they're cheaper doesn't seem to hold water to me. If I try a brand name brush and don't like it, provided it's not damaged I can probably recoup at minimum 3/4 what I paid for it, so unless it's a high-end model, it's actually less of a financial risk than a 40$ disposable cheapie. Way less if it's in the 1-200$ range like most of the models often recommended for beginners (i.e. Iwata HP-CS, Badger Krome, H&S Evo, etc.) And logically you don't try ABing unless you're hoping it'll work out, so I don't see the logic in buying low quality when your desired outcome going in is that you will continue ABing. That just means you'll be spending that same money to upgrade once you've cleared that "experimental" phase, meaning you end up spending more in the long run for having started on a cheapie even if it works out.

Unless you absolutely cannot afford anything more even if you save up, it appears to be a lose/lose proposition. It looks invitingly cheap, but on actually thinking it through, it appears to be a bigger financial risk for a reduced chance of success. You're not trading quality for cost: you're trading cost, quality, and odds of success for... I dunno, impatience and the "convenience" of not thinking about your budgeting?
 
You wouldn't go out and spend a fortune on Snap-on tools if you wanted to "mess about" with a car engine... However should you enjoy it, you will soon find that the Snap-on tools will make life easier and do a better job... Its ok if your in a good job or just dont need the money... but fot us unemployed guys looking to fill time.. Cheap is sometimes the only way!

I am not telling people to go and buy chinese guns for the hell of it. Its a start! not the best start. but it is a start!
 
You wouldn't go out and spend a fortune on Snap-on tools if you wanted to "mess about" with a car engine... However should you enjoy it, you will soon find that the Snap-on tools will make life easier and do a better job... Its ok if your in a good job or just dont need the money... but fot us unemployed guys looking to fill time.. Cheap is sometimes the only way!

I am not telling people to go and buy chinese guns for the hell of it. Its a start! not the best start. but it is a start!

That's not a fair comparison. A wrench is just a tool (okay it can break and strip) and the other a precision instrument. I would say you will not go and get a top of the range mill or lathe if you're just tinkering in the garage. It's still precision instrument but you get some that are more precise.
 
You wouldn't go out and spend a fortune on Snap-on tools if you wanted to "mess about" with a car engine...

Bad comparison. The difference is cheap AB's appears to be a crap shoot as to whether it's even usable at all, whereas a cheap Harbor Freight or Home Depot socket set will be fully usable, just slightly less smooth or long-lived. The risk is much greater and more acute with the AB.

By outside appearances, getting a decent cheapie AB means you gambled and won, not that cheapies are decent as a rule. Some people do have good experiences with them... but not enough people for it to look like anything but a gamble.

And again: good AB's have resale value. Unless the used goods depreciation is greater than 2X the cost of the cheapy, you're better off spending a little more for something you KNOW will at least be reliable (and warrantied to boot). Otherwise if the brush is bad, you end up both abandoning ABing when you other wise might not have, AND you're completely SOL on your "investment".

but fot us unemployed guys looking to fill time...

That's me, actually. I'm not mister moneybags: I'm in the same position financially as you. I decided to get a new AB last December, but didn't actually get my HP-CS until the end of this September. Took that time to carefully save up, research, and bargain hunt. When I did get one, I got a refurbished classroom unit at about 1/3 off the normal "new" price. I got a second AB this month, and again: careful planning, saving, and money management for months in advance, plus lying in wait for a deep discount price.

I chose those two brushes carefully: between them I could easily never have to buy another no matter what I choose to do with them.

So I know it's doable in that situation... because that's what I did. You only "need" to take a risk on a cheapie if you just woke up one day and decided you wanted an AB right away.
 
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I guess the waking up and deciding to airbrush is me... lol i'm kinda like that! Now I have a H&S evolution and have used it, I can understand the difference between the two.... But if i said to the wife i wanna spend £130 on just a ab... not a chance.... £80 on a full set-up with 3 ab's sounds better... foot in door... Then complain to wife that ab's are holding back your talent.... cry a little... sob even... New ab, all good!

LOL I got a lathe/milling machine in my shed!
 
Nessus I applaud your patience, I'm far too impatient to wait 9 or 10 months to start something I want to try straight away.

I feel that it helped me to have a brush that I worked on as I now understand what the parts do and how they relate to each other.

Knowing that makes troubleshooting the brush easier when it's not spraying correctly.

My 28.49$ dollar brush is now as good as a holbein or richpen that cost 5x as much.

Not everyone can find a deep discount on a brush, if you hadn't would you still be saving and not airbrushing?

Starting out I say find a cheap brush with good reviews, so you don't end up with one like Squishy got, and make it a great brush.

Just my opinion.

Jim
 
It did help that this was a long time coming for me anyway, rather than something I only just got interested in. I got my actual first AB back in the 90s (a Paasche VL), but always hated it and avoided using it. However I still had uses for an AB in my hobbies often enough, and I eventually got tired of trying to find ways around them just to avoid the VL, as well as pining after stuff it flat out couldn't do.

Back when I got the VL, the internet was still in it's infancy, and I was just a kid with a pocketful of Christmas money who'd decided he wanted an AB today. I pretty much walked into DickBlick's and asked the clerk what was a good AB out of the ones they had in stock, without knowing anything about the different types or brands or even how an AB really worked.

The VL was my (equivalent) "cheapie" intro experience. It put me off from ABing for a long, long time due to various issues it had, some of which I'd assumed were endemic to ABing in general rather than to the specific brush. Exactly the sort of experience others here have warned about with the cheapies: if I didn't have a hobby (modelling) that stood on it's own without ABing, but which sometimes encouraged ABing, I would have buried that thing in the garage and never looked back. So it's SUPER easy for me to see how folks who get a bad cheapie because they want to "just try out" auto graphics or shirt painting or some other thing that's fully AB dependent could get ruined by the experience right off and never come back at all.

That said, the VL is still a "reputable" brand/model, and if I were to sell it today I'd probably get half my money back (the VLs new price has dropped a lot since the 90s, other wise I could probably get most of it back). Several name brand companies now have brush lines in the 60$ range, so if you had to go super cheap, I'd still say go with one of those instead of a Chinese knock off. Similar price, but you get replacement part availability, warranty coverage, resale value, etc. that you don't with the knock offs. In some cases you can even upgrade cheaply over time by part swapping with higher end brushes.

You may have had a good experience with a knock off, but that good experience all sprung from being lucky enough in the first place to get an individual unit that was OK. Had you been unlucky, you would have had to either give up before starting, or double your expenditure by buying a second brush, at which point you might as well have gotten a low-end brand name brush to begin with.

That one lucky dice roll is both the foundation for and single point of failure in your recommendation. If that lucky roll isn't reliably repeatable for others (which is the picture painted by the review/testimonial aggregates), then the entire experience isn't repeatable, and therefore can't objectively be a good recommendation. Especially if one can just get an Anthem or a Neo for the combined cost of buying and replacing a cheapy, and have all the above listed bonuses that one wouldn't have even if one's second go at a cheapie worked out.

I don't see how helping one lean how a brush works is a point for the cheapies. You'll learn the exact same on a brand name brush, and if you damage it in the process, you'll have warranty coverage instead of having to spend again.

In order to recommend a cheapie, you'd have to establish advantages that are exclusive to cheapies. They don't have a quality advantage, they don't have an exclusive learning advantage, and the alleged cost advantage seems to work out to smoke and mirrors no matter what angle one comes at it from. So to me it still looks like they're mostly about exploiting people who prefer to leap without looking/thinking.
 
I suppose it all just comes down to a difference of opinion but I will address a few points.

I read that the VL is a very good brush, I'm going to guess that the problems you had stemmed from the fact that you were unfamiliar with how airbrushes worked and were unable to correct the issues you experienced.

My brush being good was not a lucky roll of the dice, I did a lot of research on airbrushes.

My brush had great reviews, I contacted the company and made sure replacement parts were available from them and the manufacturer, while there was no warranty explicitly stated the company stood behind their product.

I had the trigger break on mine after a few days (the brass pin sheared) I contacted the company and asked if they had any replacements for sale, they said they usually did but not on hand and they would send me an entire new brush at no charge and to keep the first one.

I like working on things so I took it apart, drilled out the broken pin, turned a new one and it functions perfectly, as well as the second brush they sent me, neither of which has has any issues since then other than replacing an o-ring.

You stated "I don't see how helping one learn how a brush works is a point for the cheapies. You'll learn the exact same on a brand name brush, and if you damage it in the process, you'll have warranty coverage instead of having to spend again."

So your saying if YOU damaged the brush you expect the company to fix it instead of accepting responsibility and paying for the damage you caused?

The advantages to a cheap airbrush is they do work, it gives you a chance to learn and if it's not for you then you can just give it to a kid to try or even throw it away if it is a headache and would turn someone away from airbrushing.

I'm curious are you going to sell your "problem" VL to someone else just to recoup some money while potentially causing them the same grief you experienced with the brush?

I've read posts of folks with Neo's and Anthems having problems as well, none are immune from manufacturing defects, not even the microns, just ask Melbee.

Like I stated in my previous post, do the research, get a cheap brush with good/great reviews, learn how it works, do the finish work to make a great brush.

Jim
 
Hey guys....Chill... It was just a thread about my own personal issues with a cheap airbrush... Its done me ok... its still working and it made me buy a evolution to progress.. Had I got a expensive brush to start with i would probably be on my second set of needles and nozzles as I had no idea on how to look after one... My cheap chinese ones were stripped and examined without a care if they broke... I would cry if I did that to my evolution.

Yes branded is best, by a long shot. I would advise anybody to get a good airbrush... but dont strip it down or mess with it until you know what ALL the parts are for and have a good idea on how they work. Get a cheapo and rip it to bits... learn lots!
 
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It's kind of a double edged sword. I understand that you don't want to plop down a ton of money on something you may not enjoy or be good at. The problem is though often times people will give up because airbrushing just seems impossible, when the fault lies in the cheap airbrush usually. It's a bit of a shame that you have to go higher quality just to be able to perform. Then the funny part is once you master it, you can modify those cheap ones to work pretty good usually lol.

Immortal, it is funny you said that, but true. When you are learning, it is almost impossible to make a cheap airbrush work and you get frustrated and often times quite. but once you learn on a good airbrush, it is amazing what you can do with the cheap ones. I have been using the cheap ones and have completely stopped painting because of it. Not for good. Just until I had the time to order an Iwata and put some serious practice into it. That time has come and I'm getting ready to order today. You really do get what you pay for when it comes to airbrushing. If people look at what they spent on a few cheap airbrushes, they could have gotten a good entry AB from Iwata or Badger that won't leave them frustrated from not working. LOL I actually bought multiple cheap airbrushes so that when they stopped working I could switch ABs and keep painting. I could have just bought 1 Iwata and done better.
 
Some of the cheaper airbrushes are quite OK, even compared to more expensive brands. Usually the real problem comes when they introduce things like o-rings where the original hasn't any. Fengda and a few other Chinese brands have copied the standard HP airbrush for decades, and usually you'll find an o-ring between the nozzle and the body. These versions are usually complete crap, since they will not give consistent results. But sometimes you can find other Chinese brands, who have been a bit more thorough in their copying, and those can usually perform quite OK. Add to that, that the Chinese manufacturers are getting better, and start to have better quality control and tighter tolerances, and soon we will see decent airbrushes from China. They will probably still be copies, but better ones. This will probably be both good and bad, since they will be harder contenders to the established brands, but it will also mean less expensive airbrushes available to beginners and people less picky.
 
.... and maybe bigger brands will have to start to compete and drop prices... I can understand the precision involved in a good airbrush, but in reality the material cost is very small. The cost is more about the time spent making sure the thing works right before you buy it. I'm all for good quality, but its finding a good balance. People slate the cheapo's, and for a good artist, I can see why. If I never got a crazy idea to have a go at airbrushing... I wouldn't have got my cheap chinese starter set... I wouldn't have had my Veda 180... I wouldn't then have my Evolution, which is sexy without painting.... and more important than all else... i wouldn't be here drooling at the pictures you guys produce, thinking... I wanna do that!
 
The sad thing is that it will kill off all the small, high quality, hand crafted stuff, and in the end we will only have a couple of large brands left.
 
JCD said:
I read that the VL is a very good brush, I'm going to guess that the problems you had stemmed from the fact that you were unfamiliar with how airbrushes worked and were unable to correct the issues you experienced.

It was 2 things. One was that for the stuff I was doing, I needed low pressure, which the VL, being bottom feed, can't do. That's as you said: my own lack of knowledge biting me in the bum when choosing what brush to buy. The other was that it was (and still is) a pig to clean. I had to tear it down every time I used it, and between color changes as well, because the insides just would not flush clear no matter what (the siphon cup connection was a big part of that too, actually). The cleaning issue was exacerbated by the fact that at the time Paasche was using a REALLY soft metal for their needles, so disassembling/reassembling the brush and cleaning the needles was an exercise in anxiety. The slightest of touches could ruin the needle, so doing a tear down felt like this. This all added up to it being more trouble than it was worth for a beginner.

JCD said:
My brush had great reviews, I contacted the company and made sure replacement parts were available from them and the manufacturer, while there was no warranty explicitly stated the company stood behind their product...

Don't be shy with the name :) ! If there's a cheapie company out there that has good reliability, then that's a company to openly recommend. I'm not biased against cheapies on principle: if there's good cheapie brands, then that's EXACTLY the sort of info that should be spread in threads/boards like these. Help others looking for a good cheapie get a good cheapie.

JCD said:
So your saying if YOU damaged the brush you expect the company to fix it instead of accepting responsibility and paying for the damage you caused?

If they choose to cover it, then yes. I wouldn't lie to them about it, nor would I demand services they don't offer, nor would I be careless because I know damage is covered, but I don't see how it would otherwise be exploitative to use a service they themselves both offer and advertise freely as incentive to use their product. It's not about responsibility: that coverage is part of the value they offered and I payed extra for.

JCD said:
The advantages to a cheap airbrush is they do work, it gives you a chance to learn and if it's not for you then you can just give it to a kid to try or even throw it away if it is a headache and would turn someone away from airbrushing.

I'm curious are you going to sell your "problem" VL to someone else just to recoup some money while potentially causing them the same grief you experienced with the brush?

As long as it wasn't damaged or defective, then yes. It has a reputation in its own areas of use, so if me getting rid of mine means some T-shirt artist somewhere gets to add another color to his/her linup, then everybody wins. It's only in bad faith to sell if the brush is damaged, defective, or an objectively terrible design regardless.

Are you saying you'd have given your brush to an unsuspecting kid if you didn't take to it? Same logic with the VL: just because I didn't like it doesn't by itself mean it's objectively bad, or that it won't have good use to others.

Again: this isn't an advantage for the cheapies, because the name brands provide the same, plus the option to recoup your money if it does't work out. With a cheapy it either chuck it if it's defective/broken, or give it away if it's "good", but your initial expenditure is a straight loss. Unless you can resell the cheapie, it only works out in the cheapies' favor if the depreciation on the name brand model is greater than the cost of the cheapie. That's just math.

JCD said:
I've read posts of folks with Neo's and Anthems having problems as well, none are immune from manufacturing defects, not even the microns, just ask Melbee.

Oh definitely. In fact it's why I skipped over the Neo myself, and why I'd advise a newbie to avoid those as well. But if you gotta buy cheap, buy something from a company that stands by their product and will try to fix it. But you say your cheapie company offered similar service, so again: that's a big deal, and IMO you should definitely recommend that company by name to people considering cheapies, rather than just cheapies in general.
 
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@Nessus considering littlerick asked us to chill and a moderator agreed I'll leave it as you have your opinions and I have mine.

I have made several posts in different threads about the brand I bought, it is a Point Zero 360xs from Mix Wholesale.

It's an Iwata copy but I have no illusions that it is as good but for someone starting out it was an excellent buy for me as I have the tools to improve an already (imo) very good brush for the money.

You should buy one and try it, the only thing I dislike about them is the tiny o-ring on the nozzle. I removed them and even though Rebelair doesn't recommend teflon tape, I prefer it and (knock on wood) have not cross threaded or stripped threads.

Have a good one, Jim
 
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