whew - busy week and I'm just getting back to reading all these responses now. Thanks very much for your input. I'm in the process of getting a 2nd shave ready blade just to do day-to-day comparisons and make sure I'm keeping my first blade fully sharp (and stropping correctly).

Sham, thanks for the offer to test it out. I'd take full advantage of your generosity but I hate shipping anything over the border. More often than not, I get dinged with customs charges and brokerage fees and all sorts of ridiculous tariffs. Just hoping there was some sort of standardised test I could do at home :-)