I don't think you will get the prickliness out of a pure...that's just the way the hair is...
The "breaking in" of a badger is usually just the loosening up of the knot...the top of the hair doesn't get any softer...
And also please bear in mind, that not every "pure", "silvertip", "2-band", "high mountain", "manchurian", etc is the same...
But generally a pure is prickly, but has a decent amount of backbone.
A (3-band) silvertip is super luxurious an soft. It usually has very fine hair and any backbone is derived from the density of the the knot.
A 2-band has usually much thicker hair and a good 2-band can also be very soft and luxurious at the top. But the backbone is derived both from the thick hair and the density of the knot...
An extreme example would be the Declaration knots, that have very soft tops with a very densely packed knot consisting of thick hair.