King­ston Brass Faucets Review & Rating Updated: 08/05/22

Imported

Taiwan

China

King­ston Bass, Inc.
trading as
King­ston Kitchen & Bath
12775 Reservoir St.
Chino, California 91710
(877) 252-7277
(909) 548-6611

Rating

Business Type

Product Range

Kitchen, Bath, Prep and Bar Faucets

Certifications

Brands
King­ston Brass
Elements of Design
Fau­ce­ture
Gour­me­tier

Supplies Faucets To
House of Antique Hardware

Street Price

$25 - $1,000 USD

$32 - $1,293 CAD

Warranty Score

Cartridge

10 Years¹

Mechanical Parts

10 Years

Finishes

10 years

Living Finishes²

None

Proof of Purchase

Required

Transferable

No

Meets U.S. Warranty
Law Requirements

No

Warranty Footnotes:

1. The on-line warranty states: "All parts and finishes … are warranted … to be free from defects in material and workmanship as long as the original consumer owns it.." The warranties that comes in the boxes with the faucets, however, specify a 10-year warranty, and this is the warranty that Kingston Brass enforces.

2. The on-line warranty defines living finishes as Oil-Rubbed Bronze and Dark Bronze. So far as we can tell, however, Dark Bronze is no longer offered as a finish.

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Download, Read, and Print the various Kingston Brass warranties.

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Learn more about faucet warranties.

This Company In Brief

King­ston Brass is an importer of Asian-made bathroom and kitchen products that are sold under several brands including King­ston Brass, Gour­me­tier, and Fau­ce­ture.

It is one of the oldest of the Asia-Marketeers, importing Taiwanese faucets, showers, and accessories long before China became a manufacturing powerhouse. The faucets are sold in the U.S. and Canada primarily through internet venues.

Historically the company has had major issues with its post-sale customer support. While service has greatly improved over the past ten years, problems are not entirely gone.

Its warranty is poorly written, and below the standard for North American faucet warranties, leading to the conclusion that Kingston Brass does not yet have full confidence in the durability and longevity of its faucets.

Founded by current CEO Erik T. Chen in 1998, Kingston Brass is an importer of Asian-made sanitary wares that are sold under several brands including King­ston Brass, Gour­me­tier, and Fau­ce­ture. It is located in a 72,000-square-foot office/warehouse in Chino, California. It maintains buying offices in Shanghai, China, and Taipei, Taiwan through affiliated corporations.

It is one of the oldest of the Asia-Marketeers, importing Taiwanese faucets, showers, and accessories from Taiwan long before China became a manufacturing powerhouse. Its primary suppliers are still in Taiwan. Other old-time Asia-Marketeers include Afeel Corporation which sells faucets under the It has spread widely across the internet and into home stores and discount centers primarily due to relatively low prices, good overall quality, and good styling.

We judge the faucets to be reasonably good value overall and woth a look by anyone shopping for a mid-priced faucet.

The faucets are sold primarily through internet venues such as Amazon and are well-represented at discount sites such as Wayfair

They are also widely available at plumbing e-tailers like Fau­cets.com, Fau­cet Di­rect, and e-Faucets as well as at big box lumber stores such as Home De­pot, Lowes and Men­ards stores, and at general building supply outlets such as Ferguson's Build.com.

Export/import businesses like King­ston Brass are often family affairs. One part of the family, located in Asia, handles the purchasing and export end of the business, while another group located in the U.S., takes care of the importing and selling in North America.

King­ston Brass, Inc. imports its products almost exclusively from Tai­wan Designer Plumbing & Hardware Corp. ("TDP&H"), a Tai­wan-re­gis­tered import/export business that shares its address with Kingston Brass (Taiwan), Corp.

The company also maintains a buying office in China in Shanghai through which it buys products made in China, primarily kitchen and bath accessories, but also some faucets.

TDP&H is not a manufacturer in its own right, which means it buys its products from other companies. A company spokes­man estimated that 80% of its faucets are imported from Tai­wan where they are manufactured by several factories located in or near Lukang (or Lugang) City. The remaining faucets are sourced from China.

Known manufacturers of King­ston Brass sink faucets include the following:

Taiwan Manufacturers

• Chiing Hann Souvenir Co., Ltd. trading as CHA Faucet manufactures some of the more stylish faucets and tub fillers sold by Kingston Brass.
• Falali Bath Boutique Co., Ltd. (formerly Yi Long Copper Ware Co., Ltd.), sells its own brand of modestly upscale, water-saving faucets under the Ferrari and Falali brands in Asia.
• Hsien Chang Metals Co., Ltd., makes escutcheons (base and wall plates), faucet handles, and many of Kingston Brass' ceramic and washerless faucet cartridges. The company also manufactures for
• Rin Shing Metal Co., Ltd. was established in 1987. In addition to Kingston Brass, Rin Shing manufactures for
• Tai­wan Shin Jhin Lih Sanitation Co., Ltd. makes faucets for Wax­man Con­sum­er Pro­ducts Group as well as for King­ston Brass.
• Yuh Chang Hardware Co., Ltd. that at one time supplied faucets to the now defunct
• Toya Valves & Metals Co., Ltd. located in central Taiwan also manufactures faucets for .

China Manufacturers

• Xiamen Weco Kitchen and Bath Industry Co., Ltd. . Weco currently manufactures faucets for
• is one of China's major faucet manufacturers. Its LSH brand faucets are sold throughout the world including in the U.S. and Canada through through internet venues including Home Depot, Menards, Britt & Jules, Overstock and Amazon. A limited selection of models is available at some Home Depot stores.

All of these companies are manufacturers, meaning that they will design and manufacture faucets for other faucet companies.

Most are after meeting the rather rigorous requirements established by the Inter­national Stand­ards Or­gan­ization for in-process quality controls.

ISO-9001 qualification has become a basic credential for companies wishing to manufacture for an international market.

The company estimates that 40% of the faucets imported from Asia are in component form — unassembled but fully finished. These components are then assembled by U.S. workers at King­ston Brass's facilities in Chino, California.

This limited form of assembly is called It is not considered sufficiently "transformational" to quality for Assembled in U.S.A. status.^[1]

Kitting in the U.S. rather than buying faucets already kitted helps the company reduce its inventory.

By keeping the parts necessary to assemble kits, rather than the kits themselves, a few dozen components can then be assembled into several hundred faucets on an "as needed" basis.

The company offers an impressive number and variety of faucets in every design class: traditional, transitional, and contemporary.

Many are variations on a basic faucet (different handles, different finishes), but even with that consideration, the Kingston Brass lineup of faucets is impressive.

King­ston Brass faucets are well-styled but not high-style. The vast majority of its faucets are to be more or less generic designs as interpreted by Asian factories — pleasant but conservative.

There are very few styling adventures in Asia.

Asian manufacturers generally sell mass-market faucets, and to reach the widest possible market, tend to stay well within safe styling boundaries.

A design that does well in European and North American markets will eventually show up in Asian faucets in slightly modified form (to avoid patent infringement lawsuits) but it takes three to five years. So, although there are exceptions, don't expect any original designs from most Asian-sourced faucet lines.

Although the company has been slowly introducing more cutting-edge designs, such as the modern industrial-chic styles manufactured by CHA Faucet in China, its stock in trade still is, as it always has been, mainline faucets, modestly priced, aimed at the vast majority of faucet buyers who want a reliable, long-lasting faucet and are not particularly interested in cutting-edge high style in a faucet.

The wide variety of styles and finishes and broad range of prices ensure that there is at least one faucet in the Kingston Brass lineup that will suit every preference from fussy Victorian to modern urban chic, and fits the budget of just about every faucet buyer.

Kingston Brass lists 18 finishes in which its faucets can be ordered. Thirteen of the finishes can be ordered from Kingston Brass as a swatch kit for a modest $2.00 (USD). The finishes can be combined to make in which a base finish is complemented with a trim or accent finish. The company identifies eight split finish combinations on its website.

Kingston Brass does not do its own faucet finishing, so the finishes available are limited to what its manufacturers can produce. They vary from time to time. At present, for example, Dark Bronze, a mainstay of Kingston Brass faucet finishes in past years is no longer available.

Polished chrome is the standard but two shades of nickel and tarnish-free PVD brass are available on most faucets.

Some of the finishes are truly impressive. Falali Bath Boutique Co., Ltd., for example, offers a mirror chrome finish that is as good as any we have seen from the European craft shops

Kingston Brass offers several special finishes that fall into two main groups: antiqued/distressed and living finishes. Its antique/distressed finishes are Antique Brass, Antique Copper, Naples Bronze, and Black Stainless Steel. These have had what the company calls a "darkener" applied to create the appearance of patina and age.

Its sole remaining living finish is Oil Rubbed Bronze. Most faucet companies have converted or are converting to oil-rubbed bronze, but Kingston Brass still uses the older, less durable, powder coating technology.

The finishes available for each faucet are indicated on the Kingston Brass website but, unfortunately, the website does not identify the type of finish.

Several different processes are usually used to finish faucets, and the process used makes a very big difference to the durability of the finish and the amount and nature of the care and maintenance required.

The old standard process, having served the industry well since faucets were invented is .

Plating involves immersing the faucet and the metal to be used as plating in an acid bath, then applying an electrical charge to both objects so metallic ions are drawn from the plating metal to the faucet.

Electroplating is generally considered a durable finish, but it very much depends on the metal used as the plating material.

Chrome is moderately resistant to damage. Nickel is a softer metal and scratches more easily. It also wears off in normal handling after many years, exposing the brass beneath, which is why it has been replaced by chrome as the most popular faucet finish. Fully half of the faucets sold in North America are finished in chrome.

is the most common method used to finish a faucet with color. It is essentially a paint applied in a powdered form and then baked to cure the coating.

The technology was developed over 80 years ago during the Second World War as an alternative to slow-drying liquid paint to speed up wartime production of the masses of equipment needed by the military.

It is popular with faucet manufacturers because it can produce finish effects not possible with other technologies, including antique and vintage looks. Some companies such as use the technology almost exclusively.

Powder coating is considered semi-durable.

It produces a finish similar to the paint on your car, tough but not nearly as robust as most metal finishes. The coating does not bond to the underlying metal like metallic finishes which means it can chip if not handled carefully. It also requires more care in cleaning.

A newer technology, (PVD), by contrast, produces a nearly indestructible finish.

PVD finishes are applied in a very thin layer in a vacuum chamber loaded with unfinished faucet parts. All the air is replaced with a carefully calculated mix of inert and reactive gases. A rod of the metal used for the coating is heated to a temperature so high that it dissolves into individual atoms creating a plasma that is bombarded onto the faucet parts.

PVD is commonly used to simulate metals that tarnish using metals that do not tarnish. This is done by varying the mix of reactive gases in the chamber. PVD brass or gold can be created, for example, using a very hard and tarnish-resistant titanium alloy as the coating metal with nitrogen gas.

The PVD brass finishes used on Kingston Brass faucets are almost certainly produced using this or a similar technique. Adding methane to the mix reddens the color, producing a redder gold or brass finish, and adding a dash of acetylene darkens the finish for an antique or vintage brass effect.

The resulting "brass" not only does not tarnish, but it is also very hard to damage. In abrasion tests, PVD finishes are regularly found to be 10 to 20 times more scratch-resistant than the old standard, electroplated chrome. It is also impervious to most chemicals.

In our tests, a Scotch Brite^® heavy-duty scouring pad was able to damage a Kingston Brass PVD finish slightly, and it still took considerable effort.

The Kingston Brass chromes and possibly nickel are electroplated finishes. Oil-rubbed bronze is likely a powder coating – most living finishes are powder coatings. There are several ways the antiqued/distressed finishes could be produced, so their type is unknown. Most of the other finishes, including Matte Black, are probably PVD coatings, but we don't know for sure because Kingston Brass does not identify its finishes by type.

Unlike most faucet companies that simplify replacement parts inventory by using just two or three cartridges in their faucets, Kingston Brass uses a cross-section of Asian cartridges from a variety of suppliers. We identified over 35 different sink faucet cartridges in the Kingston Brass online inventory and another dozen or so for shower valves and tub fillers.

Some of these are stocked as replacement cartridges for discontinued faucets no longer sold by Kingston Brass. Others, however, are cartridges for its existing inventory of faucets.

A few of these are the old-style washerless cartridges – a technology first invented over 80 years ago. These cartridges are reliable but woefully outdaged nd completely dependent on rubber o-rings to control water flow. The o-rings wear out over time and need to be replaced. Replacement is not an onerous task – well within the capability of a reasonably capable DIY-er – and o-rings can be found in almost any hardware store, but replacement is a nuisance.

We suggest that faucets with these cartridges be installed only where their use is infrequent – a little-used guest bath, for example – or where water pressure is low, as in an RV.

The few Kingston Brass faucets that are still equipped with a washerless cartridge are clearly identified on the website.

The vast majority of Kingston Brass faucets are built around modern ceramic cartridges, invented by the old American Standard Companies in the 1970s, in which water flow is controlled by a durable ceramic disc.

We have identified some of the ceramic cartridges as made by Kuching International, Ltd., the manufacturer of the widely used KCG cartridge, but most, particularly the stem cartridges for two-handle faucets, remain unknown due to the absence of any identifying marks.

The company website identifies most of these as made in Taiwan and a few in China, but all of them in Asia.

Some excellent ceramic cartridges are made in Asia, but also some mediocre cartridges. The only way to tell the good from the not-so-good is by manufacturer. Since Kingston Brass does not disclose the manufacturers of the cartridges used in its faucets, buying a faucet from the company is a game of cartridge roulette: it may be an excellent cartridge that lasts a lifetime or one that leaks after a few years. There is no way to know.

Replacements for most cartridges are available from Kingston Brass, but not all, especially if the faucet is older than ten years.

The company has inaugurated two new brand names since 2007: Gour­me­tier, which sells faucets, sinks, and accessories for the kitchen, and Fau­ce­ture which does the same for the bathroom. These appear to be an effort to reach a more upscale clientele with the company's better products.

Elements of Design is an older trade name, first registered in 2005. It was meant to be the line of products sold through showrooms but the line has spilled over so that the company now also sells Elements of Design products at retail through its own website, at Lowes, and on internet venues.

Kingston Brass also provides faucets to other retailers that sell the faucets under their own brand names. For example, most if not all of the faucets sold by House of Antique Hardware are supplied by Kingston Brass. Many of the same faucets are also sold by Kingston Brass but under different model names.

We have been reviewing Kingston Brass almost since we started these reports years ago. And we have been impressed by the company from the outset.

It was one of the first major importers of Asian-made sanitary products and has always been a stickler for following the laws and rules that govern the standards and certification of its sanitary wares. Our associated business, StarCraft Custom Builders, has bought many of its faucets, showers, sinks, tubs, and accessories for its customers over the years with not a single problem.

All of which makes us wonder all the more why the company has never been able to write a product warranty that complies with U. S. warranty law.

We have pointed out the problems with the warranty in several past reports, and even identified the exact issues that need to be addressed. Yet, over the last ten years, its warranty has remained substantially unchanged, and very deficient.

It is a morass of ambiguous and contradictory terms. If it was written by a lawyer, he or she should have stayed awake during warranty class and should absolutely become reacquainted with federal warranty law to find out what a consumer product warranty must include.

More likely, however, it is a cut-and-paste warranty assembled by someone without a legal background from bits and pieces taken from other warranties then added to piecemeal over the years without regard to whether the various provisions are consistent and legal.

As a consumer product warranty, it does not even begin to meet the minimum requirements mandated by the Mag­nu­son-Moss War­ranty Act (15 U.S.C. §2308), the federal law that dictates the minimum content of and sets the rules for consumer warranties in the United States.

The online warranty starts off declaring that:

"All parts and finishes of the Kingston Brass faucet are warranted to the original consumer to be free from defects in material and workmanship as long as the original consumer owns it." (Emphasis supplied)

This sounds very much like a standard North American lifetime warranty.

A few lines down the page, however, we find that the company

" [Kingston Brass] … warrants all other aspects of the faucet or accessories including finish, to be free of defects in material and workmanship during normal residential use within (10) ten years from the date of purchase to its original owner …" (Emphasis supplied)

If all parts and finishes of a faucet are guaranteed for as long as the original consumer owns it, what "other aspects" of the faucet are left to be guaranteed for ten years?

In addition to the confusing ambiguity of the online warranty, there is another problem. The warranties packaged with the faucets differ from and are substantially more restrictive than the online warranty.

Our test faucets came with three different in-box warranties, making a total of four warranties that apply to Kingston Brass faucets.

Here is the warranty-in-the-box:

"All parts of a Kingston Brass faucet are warranted to the original retail purchaser to be free from defects in material and workmanship for a period of Ten (10) years from the date of purchase as shown on the purchaser's receipt."

The online warranty excludes from coverage. The in-box warranty does not.

So, which is the actual warranty?

According to Kingston Brass customer support, it is the ten-year in-the-box warranty, but with living finishes excluded from coverage.

When we pointed out the inconsistent terms in the online warranty as a part of researching an earlier report, a customer support agent dismissed them with the observation that the Kingston Brass ten-year warranty "is already three years longer than than the seven-year minimum" that California law requires of a lifetime warranty – evidently unaware that California law is not the law of the land. It applies to just one of the fifty states, five inhabited territories, and the District of Columbia that comprise the United States.^[2]

Using an apparently generous warranty to encourage a consumer to buy a product, then replacing it with a much more restrictive warranty once the consumer has bought the product is called a "warranty switch" – a form of bait and switch that is completely illegal.

The warranty switch was common abuse of consumer warranties in the days before Mag­nu­son-Moss was enacted in 1975, and one of the abuses that the law was specifically intended to stamp out. A warranty presented to a buyer before a sale may not differ from the warranty that is packaged with the faucet and delivered after the sale.

The company's practice is to cherry pick among the various warranties, adopting the provisions most favorable to iteself as the "official" warranty. The law, however, requires exactly the opposite. When a company covers the same product with two or more inconsistent warranties, the buyer, not the company, gets the benefit of the most favorable provisions from each warranty.

Combining all the Kingston Brass warranties and selecting out the terms most favorable to the buyer, he or she would get

• a warranty for as "long as the original consumer owns" the faucet,
• on "all parts and finishes" of the faucet (including living finishes) under which
• Kingston Brass will, free of charge, "repair, provide a replacement part or product, or make an appropriate adjustment."
• not to exceed the original purchase price of the faucet.

Moreover, although Kingston Brass believes it is providing a "limited" warranty, its warranty is legally a full, unlimited, warranty.

Mag­nu­son-Moss defines the default product warranty as a "full warranty" providing complete protection against a faulty consumer product. It allows, but does not encourage, a less-than-full warranty – a "limited" warranty – if and only if the requirements for offering a limited warranty are strictly adhered to. These requirements are a major part of the law's goal of preventing deception in consumer warranties.

The most important of these requirements is the Captioning Rule.

To qualify as a limited warranty, Mag­nu­son-Moss requires Kingston Brass to clearly designate its warranty as limited by including the word "Limited" in its caption or title (not a sub-caption or sub-title, and certainly not buried in the text of the warranty).

The words can be arranged to make a variety of acceptable captions: "Limited Warranty", "Limited Faucet Warranty", "Limited Lifetime Warranty", "Kingston Brass Limited Lifetime Faucet Warranty for Residential Buyers Only", and so on. So long as the word "limited" is included in the caption, the warranty gives an immediate warning to a potential buyer that the company intends its warranty protection to be less than complete.

The caption in the Kingston Brass online warranty is "Kings­ton Brass, Inc. War­ranty Infor­ma­tion".

Although some of the text of the online document refers to a limited warranty, that reference has no effect. The word "Limited" is not in the caption, so the warranty under federal law is not a limited warranty. Under Mag­nu­son-Moss, it is a full warranty. (15 U.S.C. §2303(a) and 16 CFR §700.6)

A full warranty gives the buyer many more rights. Among these are restrictions on what the company can exclude from its warranty. It cannot, for example, exclude the "labor charges [or] installation".

Where the repair or replacement of a product (like a faucet) requires the product to be uninstalled and reinstalled, a full warranty requires installation labor to be free to the consumer. (16 CFR § 700.9) The company has to pay these costs.

The same is true of the labor required to remove and replace defective parts.

The warranty also attempts to exclude liability for "incidental or consequential" ^[3] damages, but omits the qualifying language required by Mag­nu­son-Moss (16 CFR § 701.3(8)):

"Some States do not allow the exclusion or limitation of incidental or consequential damages, so the above limitation or exclusion may not apply to you."

Without this required language, the attempted exclusion is void and without effect.

Mag­nu­son-Moss requires every consumer products warranty to include a general disclaimer. This is the mandated language: (16 CFR § 701.3(9))

"This warranty gives you specific legal rights, and you may also have other rights which vary from State to State"

None of the Kingston Brass warranties include the disclaimer.

Despite the clear language in its online warranty that guarantees a faucet for as long as the original buyer owns the faucet, Kingston Brass treats it as a 10-year warranty. We rate the warranty as sub-standard on that basis.

Customer service has been a problem in the past for Kingston Brass. But, according to a company source, the company has hired more agents and implemented a tracking system for more effective handling of customer requests.

It has also been accredited by the BBB since 2014 and pledged to uphold the very high standards of that organization including a duty to treat customers honestly and fairly.

These efforts have had a good effect. We can confirm that we have seen a major drop off in complaints about the company's after-sale and warranty service and the company has moved its Better Business Bureau from an F on a scale of A+ to F, to a B, a rating that has been consistent for over two years.

Hopefully, its continuing improvement will result in an A+ rating in due course.

We like the company's website.

It is well designed, well organized, and easy to navigate. The search function is very powerful, producing accurate results in our standard search texts even with complicated requests such as "single hole lavatory faucet." There is no "fuzzy search" capability as with Google searches where misspelling a word like "kitchen" is automatically corrected to "kitchen". Any misspellings usually result in nothing found.

The ability to search on finishes is very helpful in finding all of the products in a matching finish such as "antique copper". It even works when looking for split finishes.

The information provided about the company's faucets is extensive including .pdf downloads of specification sheets, installation instructions, and a parts diagram. Faucets can be displayed in all of their available finishes, a feature you don't see on many faucet websites, and a boon to visualizing the faucet in the customer's finish choice.

But, while extensive, the information about each faucet was not sufficient for a well-informed buying decision.

The listing usually discloses the faucet's flow rate, basic dimensions, primary material (usually brass), type (but not source) of its cartridge, and whether it meets American With Disabilities Act (ADA) guidelines and is suitable for use by persons with physical limitations.

Visualization is excellent. The listing shows the faucet in a 3/4 primary view. If the user chooses a finish other than the default finish, the primary view changes to illustrate the selected finish. This feature is very helpful in visualizing the faucet in the user's preferred finish. Supplementing the primary view are several additional images, some showing the faucet installed.

The .pdf specifications sheets are not, however, actual specification sheets. They are usually nothing more than a dimensioned drawing — useful but not a substitute for actual detailed specifications that expand on and amplify the basic information displayed in the listing.

Some critical information is missing entirely, including:

• Cartridge manufacturer. Most listings identify the type of cartridge (washerless or ceramic), but not the source or manufacturer of the cartridge.

• Certifications: King­ston Brass is very careful to certify all of its faucets to North American standards. But it would be helpful to a buyer's decision to list the certifications received by the listed faucet.

• Parts legend: Parts diagrams show all of the parts of a faucet, keyed to a number identifying each part, but the legend which turns the part numbers into a part description is missing. There is no way to find out that part 12 is an o-ring and part 21 is a faucet cartridge — making the list not nearly as helpful as it could be.

• Warranty Link: A link to the faucet's warranty is not provided as part of the faucet's listing. This link is a requirement of federal warranty law and is particularly mandated where faucets may have differing warranties.

• Finish Type: The process used to finish the faucet (electroplating, PVD, powder coating, etc.) is not identified. The process makes a huge difference to a finish's durability and resistance to damage. It is something a savvy faucet buyer would want to know.

• Secondary Material(s): Very few brass faucets are all brass. Most include secondary materials. The most common are zinc or a zinc-aluminum alloy.

• Zinc, which is considerably cheaper than lead-free brass, is typically used for parts not subject to water pressure: handles, base and wall plates (escutcheons), trim, and shrouds. Zinc in these components does no harm to the quality of the faucet.

• Plastic is anoter matter.

• Often described as ABS (because faucet companies do not like to use the word plastic), plastic is common in aerators and cartridges where the material seems to work well.

• But, it is also used in spray heads where it does not work as well.Even upscale faucet companies like have turned to plastic spray heads (the industry terms is "wands") because it is a lot cheaper than brass, even less expensive than zinc, and does not get hot in use like some metal wands. But, plastic also has many more problems than metal in spray wands and fails much more often.

• Kingston Brass identifies most of its kitchen faucet side sprays as a "brass spray" or "brass sprayer." Likewise, many of the wands used in pull-down and pullout faucets are identified as "brass" or "solid brass. Others are specified as "ABS" or "solid ABS", a type of plastic. In the great majority of listings, however, the material used in a faucet's wand is not identified at all. We assume that these are plastic. If they were brass, the company would almost certainly have identified them as such.

The company needs to clarify and greatly improve its warranty so that it complies with the Mag­nu­son-Moss Warranty Act. It continues to lose serious points in our scoring for its warranty. We think that ten years of warranty support for what is supposed to be a lifetime product is not nearly enough, and is a decision that management ought to reconsider.

One of King­ston's chief competitors,

We interpret the King­ston Brass warranty as evidence that the company still lacks complete faith in the durability and longevity of its faucets — and if the company lacks complete faith, then so do we.

Taiwanese- and Chinese-made faucets that are of similar quality to those sold by King­ston Brass with a comparable or better warranty and fully certified to comply with U.S. and Canadian law include:

Kingston Brass faucets are usually a good value and some are a truly great value. You may not get the quality of a $3,000 faucet but you will also not pay anywhere near $3,000, and the quality you do get is, for the most part, good to very good.

We would probably not hesitate to install most Kingston Brass faucets in even a busy kitchen or main bath but before we committed to a purchase we would want to know

• The name of the company that made the cartridge,
• Whether the hand spray (if any) is plastic or metal, and
• The type of process used to finish the faucet (Electroplated, PVD, powder coating, etc.).

Be aware of the company's sub-par warranty. Buy a Kingston Brass faucet only if you are comfortable with the thought that if something goes wrong with your faucet you are completely on your own after ten years.

We are continuing to research the company. If you have experience with King­ston Brass faucets, good, bad, or indifferent, we would like to hear about it, so please contact us or post a comment below.

Footnotes: