Or more likely, the difference a new strop made in my stropping technique.

I have been learning on the 2" wide Dovo hanging strops for the past few months. Whacked one in half, nicked up the other one pretty bad. I promised myself that I wouldn't buy a nicer strop until I went a month without nicking the Dovo one.

Finally ordered a 3" wide SRD hanging strop late last Friday night. It was waiting on my doorstop Monday afternoon. Awesome turn around time.

Obviously I stropped with it last night and started shaving. It was one of my best shaves in 3 months. Very smooth with a just a touch of razor burn in one small spot.
While I would like to say it was all because of an SRD strop, I think the biggest improvement was because I had to change my stropping motion for the wider strop. This made the toe of the razor considerably smoother than with the 2" strop. I thought I was stropping correctly before, obviously I wasn't giving the toe enough love.

So from one noob to the others, the experienced members are correct - stropping correctly is the most important thing to learn and how well you do it greatly affects your shave results

P.S. That SRD premium strop is really nice.