I think the problem that I have is in the way that I'm cleaning them. I clean them with brush soap in between colors and that tends to shorten the brush life. I also try to clean deep in the ferrule so the brush retains its snap. All that cleaning tends to make the bristles brittle and they tend to break at the ferrule after a while (thus a 1 becomes an 0, an 0 becomes an 00, etc.).