Generally, I "marry" a steel & hone only at the finishing level. Other than that my Norton 4/8 have proven themselves to be dominant over most razor steels. For edge restoration/initial bevel setting I have settled on 1K wet/dry sandpaper because it works so fast.

FWIW, I recently had the opportunity, at Utopians razor meet, to try the Norton 1K, Shapton Glass 1k, Naniwa 1K and sandpaper 1K, one after the other on the same razor. The sandpaper was still the most aggressive, then the Naniwa, then Shapton with Norton coming in last ( which did not surprise me). The downside to the sandpaper is that occasionally it is a PITA and takes longer to set up for use.

Just my $.02,