Comments about General's Primo Euro Charcoal Pencils and Sets:

The charcoal pencils are almost identical in darkness and softness to Ritmo charcoal pencils. They seem to have perhaps made this set to compete with them directly. There is a new pencil in the large set: Primo Elite Grande. This carbon pencil is outstanding. I did some side-by-side comparisons of standard Generals, Ritmo, Primo as well as Wolff's and Conte Carbons. The Elite Grande pencil is the darkest pencil out of all the above listed brands. It also has no shine or reflective quality. Very flat, pitch black. If you already use Ritmo, these charcoal pencils are no different. Except for that Elite Grande pencil. Unfortunately, Blick doesn't sell the Elite Grande Separately. It can be bought at other stores by itself, though. The three compressed sticks are different than General's standard Charcoal compressed sticks. The Primo HB is almost Identical to the General's 2B. The Primo B is essentially a 6B. The Primo 3B is softer than B, but about the same darkness as the General' 6B. The 4B in General's doesn't have a comparable stick in the Primo. Nice pencils.

Comments about General's Primo Euro Charcoal Pencils and Sets:

These charcoal pencils are quite nice. They are actually my first charcoals, but I really like them. Good controllability and deep black color. They're quite fun to use.