This may be old news to you pros, but I'm doing my first playfield touch-up and was bewildered by the tremendous range of paint brush types available at the hobby stores. Even more frustrating, there was very little, if any, information as to the difference between the many bristle types. I even went to several of the manufactures' web sites and couldn't find anything.
So I emailed the good folks at Royal Brush (distributors of Royal and Langnickel brushes available at Hobby Lobby) and they immediately responded with the following:
Black Taklon = soft
Gold Taklon = firm
White Taklon = stiff
In addition, I found on the back of another brand's brushes that, while all Taklon brushes work well with acrylics, "soft" is best for detail work and leaves fewer brush strokes, while "stiff" is better suited for covering larger areas and leaves more brush strokes.
Of course everybody's going to have their own preference, and I'm sure some will say it really doesn't make that much difference, but I sure wish I had this info before I spent 20 minutes standing in the aisles at Hobby Lobby and A.C. Moore gawking at literally hundreds of different brushes.
Hope this helps somebody.