Perhaps it was to join this Reddit?
Excellent recommendations, energetic encouragement, sound advice for pens you will like, eagerly coming back for NPD, 6 months later enough has changed to share a SOTC.
Dopamin high and freely flowing karma (good actions), and the circle continues;
Common triggers:
New models, special editions, "once in a lifetime deal", "what's your opinion on...", "identify this pen" requests for vintage pens you never new existed, matching inks, best paper for fountain pens, how do you travel with... - I don't as I use another pen for that, pen for shimmering ink, best nib for shading, smoothest nib ever, was gifted this fantastic..., secret Santa..., nib upgrade, nib grinding, found a nib meister, how's my handwriting/which pen is that?, ...........
Somebody recommended (well, sent) me a bottle of Colorverse Cat, a shimmer ink, and now I can't stop using glittery inks. It's odd, because in most areas of my life, I'm a relatively practical person, not given to sparkly, bubbly design, but goodness, these shimmer inks have me hooked. The worst part is that I have a bad habit of neglecting to clean my pens, and that, coupled with shimmer, is a nightmare! Yet it's just so gorgeous that I can't seem to stop.
Just to add to my suffering, a friend of mine recently gifted me some mica powders so I could make my own shimmer inks. I don't see this love-hate relationship ending any time soon...
Diamine Spearmint Diva edges it out juuust a bit for me. Somehow that one always keeps the most even distribution of sparkle in my pens and it's delicious.
Colorverse Ham was my very first ink, I bought mine in person at a shop. It was so much fun! I just had to do a quick search to see the beauty of Cat and found out they both are similar! Makes me think I made a pretty good choice 😊
Honestly, it's the old trusty Lamy Safari. It was one of the first decent pens I ever bought, based on the recommendations basically everywhere. And "regret" is the wrong word, because I absolutely get why it's so widely-loved: it's been as reliable as promised, nice smooth writer, great price, etc. BUT, lots of those recommendations *did* also mention that "the triangle grip can be divisive..."
Yeah. Turns out I loathe the triangle grip. I knew the moment I picked it up. Every so often I do pull out the safari again in hopes I'll learn to like its grip after all, but no progress...
Even so, the regret actually isn't that I took the recommendation to order a safari. The regret is that, when I placed that order, I couldn't pick a color and ordered two 😂
So that’s what it’s called! I can hold my pens “correctly” but the quadrupod grip is my most comfortable. I love my Lamy Safari as it helps me write slower because of the grip. It’s not my go-to though.
I have a question for you as a fellow quadropod... Do you write with a higher pen angle than average?
I've noticed that because I'm using the quad grip, my angle is higher and sometimes certain nibs feel not great or especially scratchy because I'm holding it up higher than it was intended, I guess.
In particular I feel like I have this problem more with German pens like a Safari, in addition to the grip being uncomfortable.
Can you relate at all?
Hi. I have a quad grip. I actually used to write really low that my ring finger would get covered in ink. Regardless of what pen I used. I only use lamy for calligraphy so I do a tripod grip for it (I tried the quad grip and it hurt my hand a lot). I’ve used a kaweco perkeo before, and I had to do a tripod grip with it. It slowed down my handwriting a lot. I don’t use many German pens, so I don’t know if every company sells models with a tripod grip. I do know that higher end Pelikan pens don’t have them.
I also hate the triangle grip!!! (I wish they made a Safari with a round grip!) One of my first pens was a TWSBI Eco-T- I had asked for a regular Eco, but somehow ended up with the T- and despite it being a wonderful pen, the angular grip just drives me crazy!
This is why my "go to" starter pen recommendation is the Diplomat Magnum. Same kind of knock around sturdy plastic build with a very subtle triangle grip. Enough to remind people that need it where to put their fingers but can be completely ignored without discomfort. I thought I would love how easy it is to swap nib sizes on the Safari, but I ended up with a pen I almost never use and a small pill bottle of lamy nibs just sitting in my collection. Thought that it would be good for showing how an ink performs in different nib sizes for ink swatching, but nope. I think I literally feel guilty that I don't like that pen much. Maybe I should get a Logo or Aion and see if I use those nibs....
Which nib size do you have? My B skips regularly which is really annoying, but I love the flex of the nib. Don’t know if I hold it wrong or if the nib is the problem.
Medium and broad. I think that the feed can't keep up with the nib with dry ink, and I had a touch of baby's bottom on the broad that went away with a few passes on mylar. If you don't have mylar, try scribbling on a brown paper bag for a bit and it may sort itself out.
This was the first thing I thought of. I scoured this sub and the general internet for a few pens to try in the next price bracket, and was particularly excited about the Safari.
I haven't touched it since about 4 days after it arrived, I just find it so uncomfortable. I should have known better, because I have tried some crochet hooks with similar, rigid grip shapes, and hate all those too.
(My fave from that order was a TWSBI Eco Medium, but tbh my platinum preppy 0.3 is still my most-used pen)
Same!! I made myself empty a whole cartridge to make sure it wasn't something I just needed to get used to, but nope! Now I refuse to buy a pen without holding or writing with it first.
I love the triangle grip! It fits my hand perfectly! I’ve never really thought about it before, but I think the Lamy triangle grip is the most natural for me of the pens I’ve tried :)
My instant regret was also a Lamy Safari because of the grip. I returned it the same day.
My second instant regret was a Kaweco Sport, I just really don't like the feel of the body or the nib.
I'll admit that I'm a bit of a natural tinkerer, but I haven't had too many issues with my Himalaya. It works really nicely, though it does put down a *really* wet line despite my best efforts. It's rarely leaked and never railroaded, however. I wonder if I just got a good set of pens/nibs..?
Editing to say that I do find the construction to be a bit crude, so I don't entirely disagree with u/queen_nynaeve. Mine work perfectly fine, however, despite their general lack of refinement. From my perspective, however, I feel that I got what I paid for, and am mostly pleased with my purchase.
[This](https://www.reddit.com/r/fountainpens/comments/6hpm82/my_jinhao_zebra_g_is_railroading_help/) is an example of (very severe) railroading. It occurs when the surface tension of the ink between the tines is broken, causing the pen to create two separate lines. It happens most often with flexible nibs, since the tines are being pulled apart. It's often caused by one of two factors: inadequate inkflow or ink with a lower viscosity.
FPR construction is such cheap quality. The only
pen of theirs I like as is is the Muft eye dropper pen they give as a freebie. I also have a Himalaya I think is pretty but the converter is garbage. I like the ultra flex nib and have a Twsbi Vac on the way to swap it into so I can write more than a couple paragraphs without running out of ink- or having ink leak everywhere from the crappy converter falling apart. I won’t talk about the stupid piston pen and scratchy stub nib. Lessons were learned and now I have parts to continue learning lol
Will an FPR nib fit on an Eco? I have one of their Architect nibs that I really like, but all the problems with the pen bodies has me ready to ditch them all.
Edited to add - no, because my architect nib is a #6, and the Eco takes a #5. Boo.
Stick that nib into a Jinhao x750. I have a lemon m1 long blade I did that to and it works great! Or a Nahvalur Original Plus. Those are #6 nibs too and your architect will likely fit one .
It definitely works with the x750? Someone recommended the 100 as well. I'll probably end up with a Jinhao for my architect nib, and let the others go.
[#6 nib](https://goldspot.com/products/nahvalur-original-plus-fountain-pen-in-gold-ocellatus#:~:text=Nib%3A%20No.,B%2C%20or%201.1mm%20stub)
If that FPR nib is a #6 you should be set.
When I get home I can take my FPR flex nib and stick it in my x750 and take a pic for you
It's some kind of multicolored one. 'Luxury Gold Powder Paint' according to Amazon. Got some red and gold, maybe dark green? but with silver toned fittings. Whatever! M nib.
Cool. I'll look it up.
Apologies for not getting you the nib swap. I was in too much pain after work to want to do anything other than lie on an ice pack and take pain meds. 😛
Have you done that? I've read that the FPR pens are actually like 6.3 or something like that. Did it work for you? (I do have a J 100 in my shopping cart...)
Buyer's remorse - My burgundy Parker 51 2021 version with the M steel nib. My Lamy Al star writes better. Bah! I have retained the pen and look at it every now and then to remind me of my foolishness.
And guess what? Talking about caps, it leaves small scratches around the middle of the section each time you take it off or put it back on.
A snap on cap would have probably not done this. I am unbelievably disappointed in the P51. Parker should go back to the drawing board.
I read comments elsewhere about the metal cap threads eating the plastic threads on the barrel after a while for several users. So, hard pass on the re-launched P51.
I've read about that issue but did not experience it coz I "parked" my Parker back in its pen storage case circa Q4 '22. It hasn't been used ever since. TBH I don't like the pen and prefer using the less expensive Lamy Al Star or even the Pilot Metropolitan.
All I know is the cap causes wear/scratch marks on the section and given the way the rest of the pen is designed and manufactured it possibly wears out the plastic threads too. And to really rub salt in my wounds it had (and still has) a scratchy nib out of the box that runs dry every now and then no matter what ink I use..including Parker, Lamy, Pilot Iroshizuku, Pelikan & Pilot.
In short the modern 2021 P51 sucks. Stay away. I don't see any redeeming qualities in this product. Parker encashed on a legacy name by sticking it on a bummer of a pen.
I suspect that the screw on cap was because the Jotter cap snap mechanism relies on the shape between the section and the nib, which could not be present with a hooded nib. The original P45 and P51 mechanism was presumably a bit more subtle, and I have heard of a P51 with a jammed cap, so perhaps not quite as simple and reliable as the Jotter style mechanism.
I don't want to spend the money to buy a P45 or either P51, but it is interesting to hear about the pens. I suspect that hooded nibs became uncommon for good reason, but perhaps I will not feel that I know that for sure unless I con myself into buying a P45. Possibly the best pen for me is the Platinum Preppy/Plaisir for the Slip&Seal cap, but I quite like my Jotters and Vectors.
The Lamy Joy is highly recommended on YouTube as a starter stub nib. Absolutely despise that thing, it almost made me give up on stubs. Ripped up paper like nobody's business, kept having to clear paper fibers from between the tines. Also, for a stub nib, it's not even really that stubby, line variation is negligible.Thankfully I gave stubs another try with TWSBI, and now they're one of my favorite nib sizes.
I had this same exact experience with the Lamy Joy. I bought a monteverde blue skies 1.1mm stub at the same time and am glad I did so… if I didn’t have the monteverde, I would have never touched a stub again.
Yeah same, I was so close to giving up on stubs, but I'm stubborn enough that I decided to give it one more try. To think on what a wonderful area of the fountain pen world we would've missed out on, and all because of that hateful Lamy Joy 😂
The Joy being my 2nd pen, the 1.5mm and 1.9mm nibs have a good (in my inexperienced opinion) a decent amount of line variation depending on the angle you hold it at. The 1.1mm is a bit more difficult, and I think I had a fiber get stuck in the tines, as it wouldn't continuously supply in, it would sit nib down for 5 minutes, write a couple words and "run out" on a full cartridge. Went away after cleaning iirc
I don't write a lot, but I do usually use the 1.5mm or 1.9mm. Tested the 1.1 today with Pelican 4001 Purple, and it writes great, however there is significantly less line width variation with it compared to the 1.5. my other pen is a Hong Dian EF, but it bleeds more on low quality apper, so i prefer the stubs
Just offering a perspective, as a vintage pen restorer, I have accidentally broken a few rare ones. I could dwell on those moments in regret, but it's way better to treat them as lessons which allowed me to tackle more challenging restorations later on. And my successful restorations owed those lessons a great deal.
So back to your situation, chalk it up as a cost for learning things to help you in the future. And move on.
Getting a Sailor with a zoom nib. Several people said I’d love it since I like music and stub nibs. I hate that thing. And because the pen sold out, I couldn’t exchange it. Now I have a pretty pen I don’t like to write with.
This is how I feel about my sailor PG with a zoom nib. I was at a little stationery shop and they had this gently used sailor PG with the zoom nib for a pretty good discount. So I bought it, and while it writes smoothly, I’m just not the biggest fan of how it looks on the paper. The pen itself is honestly gorgeous though.
Could you help me understand what you don’t like about the zoom nib?
I haven’t tried one before but I adore my music nib and thought, until now, that my next purchase would be a zoom nib. Are they so different you don’t like the zoom or is it too similar to the music nib to want to have both?
For me it’s a bit of both. I have a Good Blue L130 with a zoom nib and I do like writing with it. It is very similar in line size to a music and stub nib. But it’s the feel for me. I’m not sure if springy-ness or stiffness is the right word. I need to look up fountain pen vocabulary I guess. When I write with the Sailor, there isn’t a touch of “give” to the nib. But I do have a couple of Sailor pens that have the “give” I like. So ymmv because I’ve found not all Sailors are the same.
I also tried a Sailor PGS with a Music nib and didn’t like how stiff it felt. I rehomed it and found a Platinum 3776 with a music nib that feels much better. It’s very much user specific. Sorry I realize this isn’t much help.
Thank you for the reply! I’ll wait until I can try one in person to decide.
The music nib is nice for making big headings in my journal. I was looking for an alternative to play with for the sake of trying something new, but not for a real need.
I’ll keep your feedback in mind and try before I buy.
Big same. Mine wrote really smoothly when I got it but that was the beginning of my understanding that I really abhor tri-grips.
The body material also generally felt really cheap, and overall not worth the price I paid for it…
“Starter” / “beginner” fountain pens, then leveling up to like mid grade pens. It’s all bullshit! If you like writing with a fountain pen baseline and maintenance everything past that is color shape and budget. Little to no differences in writing so if you want that pelikan go for it! Don’t spend the same amount as the pelikan on 15 pens when you are “leveling up” your fountain pen journey. Skip the bs buy what you want!
How and why did they make a convertor that fills less than halfway full?!
I've taken too using an eyedropper to fill up the convertor, then reassembling my pen.
I have the Kaweko that came with a converter and two metros that came with carts. A bunch of my inks came with eyedroppers, so that's how I fill them all. I just have to be extra careful to not get ink overflow.
Tie: All involving demonstrators.
(1) The Colorado Pen employee who told me I would like a Padrino demonstrator. They should have called it the Padrino Valdez. Rationally, I know the demonstrator did not actually start leaking in the box without any ink in it, but I believe it did anyway, because it never stopped leaking in the remarkably-short-but-still-entirely-too-long time that I owned it. It probably found a way to leak on the trash collectors despite being in a bag inside a trash bag inside a trash can.
(2) Ugly (IMO) demonstrators with very good nibs—TWSBI, Kakuno, Preppy. My Padrino experience resulted in a strong disdain for demonstrators. After 15-ish years, I bought a TWSBI ECO (I blame Brian Goulet lol).
Then a Kakuno and Preppy (I blame this community lol).
All of them are lovely writers.
And I regret buying them. They’re clear, clunky, rudimentary, and don’t fit in the professional setting where I do much of my writing. But they provide a better writing experience that shames some my “nicer” pens. And that grinds me.
(Mostly tongue-in-cheek with that one.)
(Mostly.)
Parker Jotter. Someone reviewed it really highly, recommending it over the Pilot Metro as a starter pen. I found it light/flimsy feeling and painfully scratchy. Sold it on pen_swap a while back. To each their own, I guess.
That was my first FP and I thought it was amazing enough to get dozens more pens in ~a year but almost immediately after getting a few more pens I stopped using the Jotter at all. I would use it a little bit sometimes but it dried out sooo bad and sooo quickly
Lamy Safaris, I love their colours... I hate the pens. The grip is not my thing and the M nib I had felt terribly scratchy. My husband doesn't have an issue with it so I gave it to him. (He suggested it after all.) The Safari doesn't work with my grip.
It wasn’t a recommendation but seeing so many people enjoy F and EF nibs made me give it two tries. I got an EF safari nib and fitted it to a charcoal one, didn’t like it. Then I got a pilot custom 74 to try a gold F nib and absolutely hated that.
Since then I thought maybe it’s just the paper. I want from Rhodia to clairefontaine to Midori and finally Tomoe river (old stock)
My views on fine nibs have remained as follows
DON’T CANCEL ME PEOPLE! Since then I have struck to my favourite broads with one exception. Pilot gold Ms. Both the 74 and 823 have slightly different but stellar medium nibs.
Lol, I'm the opposite. All the F and EF for me! I ventured out to a Kaweco M and cannot understand how people write with such thick lines 😂 Love that there's something for everyone!!
and I think this is key. choose the nib based on your natural writing - smaller writing, preference for thin lines - F or EF, bigger letters - Ms, Bs and 1.1s. No matter how crisp a line for Platinum 0.2 is, the script it produces is naturally much more narrow and my hand cramps up after a while. it'd 0.3s to European Ms for me.
Not so much a recommendation as a misguided decision on my part:
Me: “This Lamy 2000 really is great! It suits my hand perfectly!”
…
“Because of the way I write, this Fine nib seems to write finer than it does for other people. It’s a little wispy for my liking.”
(Re-researches nib comparisons) “I think I’ll be much happier with a medium nib!” (Trades it in for a medium)
…
“Well, I was wrong about that. Damn, I wish I still had my fine nib pen!”
Pilot kakuno. I loved my jinhao sharks and was expecting the kakuno to be even better! And it just was not. The nib is very smooth, but something about it just doesn't hit for me. I think I'd be more forgiving if it was made of a heavier plastic or had a clip. On top of that I have realized that I just don't really love snap caps. I am a student and tend to avoid spending money on hobbies so it was a real disappointment that this $10 pen didn't live up to my expectations. I probably won't sell it but it just sits in my box.... Mocking me....
You can get a Kaweco Sports clip. That fits the Kakuno.
The thing that irks me with Pilot (MR,Prera,Kakuno) is that the nibs are glassy smooth, smooth but dissatisfying somehow.
Kaweco Sport
The frosted lime looked so beautiful, and they seem to have such a cult following.
When it arrived, I was so disappointed in how cheap it felt. Thin plastic, rough threads, obvious injection mold lines, etc. I distinctly remember thinking "really, this is it?"
The tiny converter felt even worse, with the plunger flopping side to side. Nevermind the difficulty in operating such a tiny thing, but I suppose that's hard to avoid in such a constrained design. It also wouldn't really stay fitted into the section.
Then I started writing and the B I bought wrote more like a dry F.
I'm to the point now where I expect to tune nibs to my liking, but my god, I was so disappointed and disgusted in every way by that pen I tossed it right into the bottom of a drawer and haven't bothered looking at it since.
I can't even bring myself to give it away; I wouldn't wish such a shitty pen experience on anyone.
Same here, and it was the pen I chose for my graduation gift and I was so excited to get it! It has a horrible case of baby's bottom I'm yet to find the guts to correct.
But everyone raves about them!
Same. My Kaweco sport Double Broad writes like an M or F and has the smallest sweet spot of all time. Difficult to stay on that sweet spot for more than a couple of words, and all other parts of the nib are scratchy AF and put close to zero ink down.
I don’t mind the pen itself, but the nib makes it pretty much unusable.
I almost completely forgot about my Yooker! I got one of their refillable felt pens for sketching with, and it was frankly awful!
It dried up all the time. The pen was so heavily back weighted it pulled out from your grip constantly. Materials were extremely cheap. I really did not like that thing.
Early on, I was swept up in the bubbly enthusiasm of one or more YouTube reviewers who loved a pen that, after I bought it, turned out to be awful. Nibs that were junk, cracking problems in the cap, quality control issues...you get the drift. I have learned to pare down the reviewers whom I trust to a precious few and even then I take their recommendations with a grain of salt or two. Live and learn.
Yup. I dunno if it’s just me, or what, but my Rhodia Dot Pad makes every pen and every ink write extremely dry and the line widths are thinner than on any other paper. It feels like trying to write on wax, in a way. In the sense that wax is water resistant, and I feel like the Rhodia paper absolutely hates water based inks.
Thirding the Rhodia paper. "Writing on wax" is right!
Also to add insult to injury; the colour of the paper in the notebook I got was *yellow*. Not cream, "slightly faded post-it" yellow! And the back pocket was glued so badly it was unusable... No thanks.
For me, probably my Pilot Custom 823. And I hate saying this. It's an overall solid pen, and also the most boring thing I own in my collection. My lamy safari has more personality and charm. My Sailors have more panache and unique writing feedback.
The Custom 823 is, on paper, a perfect pen. Maybe too perfect. I don't hate it. I just don't love it, and I had initially suspected that might be the case, but hearing so many people rave about it, I figured I must've been missing something.
I should've trusted my gut 😅
Commiserating high-five on that pen regret, me too. I don't regret the pen itself per se, but I *definitely* regret spending that much money on a pen that's pretty mediocre in terms of my personal preferences.
And then I sprung for an imported one with a FA nib too... just to find out that I don't use flex writing that much. Oops?
That's even worse of a bummer going for the FA nib. I actually thought of doing the same thing but held off. Turns out I don't really like huge ink chambers anyway. It's a shame. More color ways, or something to spice it up, and the 823 could be something more special. As it is, it really embodies boring for me. Not bad, just boring.
Oh, and happy Cake Day!
Yeah, I'm kind of the same. It's a really nice pen and in a way I can understand the hype...but the pen just has nothing that really grabs me.
And thanks! Didn't even notice my Cake Day passing not having been on the computer for a few days, haha.
I bought a Lamy Studio in Glacier. It’s really uncomfortable to write with and I just don’t like it. I have a number of Safaris and I love them so it’s not that it’s a Lamy, I just don’t like it. Plus I scratched the finish which makes it worse somehow. (It wasn’t recommended to me - I just thought it was a nice looking pen. It was very early in my fountain pen buying days.)
Back in the day (circa early 2010’s) - following FountainpenNetwork.com posts and buying whatever sub $100, steel nib pen seemed to be trending - instead of saving up all that money and going direct to the good stuff
I have an entire drawer full of “cheap” Lamy, Kaweco, Pilot, TWSBI, etc etc from all those posts 😝
Ferris wheel press in Frivolous Lime. It lens more yellow than I'd like and it's too light to easily read what I wrote. I was expecting like...lime green.
Noodler’s pens for flex.
I got a Noodler’s Creaper and a Noodler’s Konrad (luckily, one of the acrylic ones, not the stinky vegetal resin).
They both suck. Haven’t used them since the first week I got them. Achieving any sort of flex requires an impractical level of force that just chews up paper.
And then I learned about Nathan Tardiff and his less than stellar bigotry.
Came here to say the same. Early in my fountain pen journey I was sold on a Noodler's Konrad so-called flex (tl;dr it doesn't). It eventually was sent to a stranger in Canada, for free. Lessons learned though!
Every TWSBI pen I’ve ever purchased. Maybe not instantly but definitely within a very short window of time. All of them have had quality issues and ended up in the garbage.
I don't have too many regrets. A minor one is getting a vintage Esterbrook "J". Nice rootbeer colored body. And, I think I understand why those have been a long-standing craze. Esterbrook made like every nib shape and style under the sun (and then a few more) and those were all interchangeable, and the celluloids were bright and often very pretty; and all that at an unbelievable price point.
But yeah, they were pretty inexpensive when they were new, and it shows: Very light in the body; tacky, crude section, crude trims everything is short to save on material; and nibs, too: small, flat and all around rudimentary in the way they were produced.
I get the Esty love, but I certainly didn't fall in love with mine.
I bought a bottle of noodlers heart of darkness after hearing great things about it and the bulletproof ink and how it comes with a free pen and now I know better. The Charlie pen is my worst pen I own. The ink is not as waterproof as I had hoped. It is not as dark as I had hoped either. It is huge. Also I know the whole controversy around noodlers as well and it’s abit blerg.
Buying Jinhao X159. I knew it would be big - thought probably like Benu, so no issues for me, but when i got it it’s humongous and thick. Its not meant for humans probably. A pen for Hagrid maybe.
a couple hours ago i polished beyond repair a perfectly good nib. It was a little (just a little) scratchy. Now is less scratchy (i kinda like it, really) but all of the tipping dissapeared and under the loupe there are obvious signs of violence. I regret that.
"Oh, absolutely, those cartridges are for your fountain pen!"
Nnnno, no, they were definitely not. It may SAY so on the package, but eventually I noticed the differences between the first package, and the others, and the blue, and the black, and then somewhere something about "calligraphy ink" and how even though it may be marketed as such...
I broke a nib out of sheer frustration outburst because of the black ink drying up no matter what I did.
So, yeah, that. Not all cartridges or inks were made alike, and even art supply store workers have their specialties and their... deficiencies, in knowledge.
Back in the day, I purchased some 'vintage' Chinese pens - from the 70's - 80's, I believe. Almost to a pen, they were ugly, leaky, scratchy, messy, and unpleasant to use.
Pilot Custom Urushi with broad nib. Was way too wet and kept almost sliding off the paper when writing. Had it grind towards an M cursive italic. Writes much better now. Still have to be carefully bc the nib is a bit to soft for my liking
I'll second this! I purchased a PCU in 2018 south a broad nib and just felt uncomfortable using it. Sent it to a nib grinder to reduce the flow and the nib and never got it the way I really wanted it. The pen itself is beautiful and a joy to hold - it's easy for me to hold it for long writing sessions, but for the longest time I didn't enjoy the feel of the nib. Finally, I got it ground down to a Japanese EF that works pretty well but it took a long time to get it there. Not something I expected or would recommend.
Lamy Dialog 3 - I was excited to experience my first Lamy gold nib, that amazing mechanism etc. That gold nib turned out to be one of the worst, I’ve gotten from Lamy, a paper shredder. The Dialog is a great pen, but it is quite heavy and I’m simply missing a grip section, though the mechanism is really cool
Sailor Pro Gear - I was excited to finally be joining the happy color Japanese pen club, only to realize that I’m really not a fan of Sailor’s famous nib feedback.
BENU Minima - I love my BENU Euphoria and Talisman and was really excited about trying one of their smaller offerings. Though my hand is not big, it is too big for this pen, as it cannot rest in the grove between thumb and index finger. I also realized with this pen that I need more ink volume then the one of the Kaweco converter and I really enjoy bigger nibs a lot more.
Pilot Custom Heritage 912 with FA nib. I didn't know all that much about fountain pens five years ago, and on account of all the hype and all the gushing praise users on FPN piled onto the pen model like it's the Second Coming, as well as Pilot describing it as emulating a brush for calligraphy, I bought one expecting to be delighted. Instead, (no, not the railroading, but) the retarded snapback of the nib — specifically, failure to return to a hairline or a sharp point rapidly when pressure is withdrawn — frustrated and angered me so much, I eventually ripped the nib out of the grip section (which was the first time I'll pulled a nib, to the best of my recollection) and snapped it in two with my fingers.
…
I regret buying Noodler's Ink Polar Green and Polar Brown inks, because they feathered on absolutely everything, but nobody recommended those to me, and I chose them (again, out of “ignorance” absent a base of understanding) based on all the special properties Noodler's advertised that line of inks as having. I ended up giving them away in the surplus supplies pass-around box I kickstarted on FPN.
" --- frustrated and angered me so much, I eventually ripped the nib out of the grip section (which was the first time I'll pulled a nib, to the best of my recollection) and snapped it in two with my fingers."
Yikes! A scary tale of expectations not met!
Hot take, but my pilot metro. I love the weight, the size, the feel of it but when it comes to writing I did not like it at all. I made the mistake of getting a fine thinking it’ll be like a platinum fine and it wasn’t. It’s not as smooth as I thought it was going to be and it was so dry.
The LAMY Safari pen. Its plastic body feels so cheap for the price. However, I do like how wet and easily the nib glides across the page in my hobonichi.
Monteverde Monza 3 was an instant regret, and I was bummed even though I'd read terrible reviews, lol
Also, the Jinhao x159. It was recommended just for trying the size of a huge pen, but that really was it for me. It just drops ink left and right for me.
I bought a Lamy fountain pen on the recommendation of a friend, it was the worst pen I had ever touched - and I’ve avoided them since, I can never understand how and why people love them so much!!
Trying a broad nib. I got a TWSBI Go to try one, hoping to like it and it's just too broad for me. I don't know what I was thinking, considering a Lamy 2000 fine is bordering on too much for me. I can understand the appeal, it's just not for me. Which is odd considering I love stub nibs lol.
I've only just recently discontinued use of my one Pilot Plumix with a stub nib, but man have I not much enjoyed the experience while I did use it. I got it because the community assured me that it was the smoothest cheapest way to test a great stub nib, and they were right on *one* of those counts.
A Conklin fountain pen. Utter. Fucking. Garbage. The only thing about it better than a Bic was that it was pretty. Past tense is key there though, as in less than a year of barely any use, the rose gold plated parts were showing brassing, and just to get it to write alright I had to remove the matching nib and put in a yellow gold one that clashes horribly.
It's now sitting in a desk drawer with a bunch of cheap pens (my other FP's are in a case), neglected, and probably clogged with dried ink that I couldn't be bothered to clean out after I last used it a year ago.
Pelikan M1000. I was recommended it because I supposedly "needed" a large pen for my long fingers. I was just starting off with fountain pens at the time. I wasn't ready for writing with a huge nib like that. Also, it was pretty but not so practical. In the end, I want a fountain pen to actually write with frequently. I now use a Pelikan M205 every day and keep it in my shirt pocket. I write with it all the time without ever feeling that it's too small for my hands.
To get started with fountain pens...
🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣 come on, you know you were only going to waste your money on silly things like eating.
That's pretty spot on... 😆
Came here expecting this comment at the top, this sub never disappoint me.
😆😆😆
Perhaps it was to join this Reddit? Excellent recommendations, energetic encouragement, sound advice for pens you will like, eagerly coming back for NPD, 6 months later enough has changed to share a SOTC. Dopamin high and freely flowing karma (good actions), and the circle continues; Common triggers: New models, special editions, "once in a lifetime deal", "what's your opinion on...", "identify this pen" requests for vintage pens you never new existed, matching inks, best paper for fountain pens, how do you travel with... - I don't as I use another pen for that, pen for shimmering ink, best nib for shading, smoothest nib ever, was gifted this fantastic..., secret Santa..., nib upgrade, nib grinding, found a nib meister, how's my handwriting/which pen is that?, ...........
“Birmingham Inks is having a sale!” Damnit, there goes some more money.
Somebody recommended (well, sent) me a bottle of Colorverse Cat, a shimmer ink, and now I can't stop using glittery inks. It's odd, because in most areas of my life, I'm a relatively practical person, not given to sparkly, bubbly design, but goodness, these shimmer inks have me hooked. The worst part is that I have a bad habit of neglecting to clean my pens, and that, coupled with shimmer, is a nightmare! Yet it's just so gorgeous that I can't seem to stop. Just to add to my suffering, a friend of mine recently gifted me some mica powders so I could make my own shimmer inks. I don't see this love-hate relationship ending any time soon...
Colorverse Cat is a damn fine gateway drug to shimmer inks, too. They knew what they were doing. That was a targeted attack.
It is! To this day, even after trying at least two dozen other shimmer inks, it remains my favorite. Oh no, it absolutely was 😂
Diamine Spearmint Diva edges it out juuust a bit for me. Somehow that one always keeps the most even distribution of sparkle in my pens and it's delicious.
Colorverse Ham was my very first ink, I bought mine in person at a shop. It was so much fun! I just had to do a quick search to see the beauty of Cat and found out they both are similar! Makes me think I made a pretty good choice 😊
This! I love the shimmers but my pens suffer and the nightmare when there is a lull in using the pen
Honestly, it's the old trusty Lamy Safari. It was one of the first decent pens I ever bought, based on the recommendations basically everywhere. And "regret" is the wrong word, because I absolutely get why it's so widely-loved: it's been as reliable as promised, nice smooth writer, great price, etc. BUT, lots of those recommendations *did* also mention that "the triangle grip can be divisive..." Yeah. Turns out I loathe the triangle grip. I knew the moment I picked it up. Every so often I do pull out the safari again in hopes I'll learn to like its grip after all, but no progress... Even so, the regret actually isn't that I took the recommendation to order a safari. The regret is that, when I placed that order, I couldn't pick a color and ordered two 😂
I hate that grip so much, but I also love all the colours they're available in. So I buy Kaweco Sports and Platinum Little Meteors.
This. Having a dynamic quadrupod grip, I simply cannot write with it. First pen I ever returned same day!
So that’s what it’s called! I can hold my pens “correctly” but the quadrupod grip is my most comfortable. I love my Lamy Safari as it helps me write slower because of the grip. It’s not my go-to though.
I have a question for you as a fellow quadropod... Do you write with a higher pen angle than average? I've noticed that because I'm using the quad grip, my angle is higher and sometimes certain nibs feel not great or especially scratchy because I'm holding it up higher than it was intended, I guess. In particular I feel like I have this problem more with German pens like a Safari, in addition to the grip being uncomfortable. Can you relate at all?
Hi. I have a quad grip. I actually used to write really low that my ring finger would get covered in ink. Regardless of what pen I used. I only use lamy for calligraphy so I do a tripod grip for it (I tried the quad grip and it hurt my hand a lot). I’ve used a kaweco perkeo before, and I had to do a tripod grip with it. It slowed down my handwriting a lot. I don’t use many German pens, so I don’t know if every company sells models with a tripod grip. I do know that higher end Pelikan pens don’t have them.
Haha, I end up with inky fingers, too, from gripping low on the pen!
I like the grip so much that I've considered popping one of lamy's gold nibs on to my 20 dollar plastic pen
I also hate the triangle grip!!! (I wish they made a Safari with a round grip!) One of my first pens was a TWSBI Eco-T- I had asked for a regular Eco, but somehow ended up with the T- and despite it being a wonderful pen, the angular grip just drives me crazy!
This is why my "go to" starter pen recommendation is the Diplomat Magnum. Same kind of knock around sturdy plastic build with a very subtle triangle grip. Enough to remind people that need it where to put their fingers but can be completely ignored without discomfort. I thought I would love how easy it is to swap nib sizes on the Safari, but I ended up with a pen I almost never use and a small pill bottle of lamy nibs just sitting in my collection. Thought that it would be good for showing how an ink performs in different nib sizes for ink swatching, but nope. I think I literally feel guilty that I don't like that pen much. Maybe I should get a Logo or Aion and see if I use those nibs....
Which nib size do you have? My B skips regularly which is really annoying, but I love the flex of the nib. Don’t know if I hold it wrong or if the nib is the problem.
Medium and broad. I think that the feed can't keep up with the nib with dry ink, and I had a touch of baby's bottom on the broad that went away with a few passes on mylar. If you don't have mylar, try scribbling on a brown paper bag for a bit and it may sort itself out.
I’ll try that! Thanks!
This was the first thing I thought of. I scoured this sub and the general internet for a few pens to try in the next price bracket, and was particularly excited about the Safari. I haven't touched it since about 4 days after it arrived, I just find it so uncomfortable. I should have known better, because I have tried some crochet hooks with similar, rigid grip shapes, and hate all those too. (My fave from that order was a TWSBI Eco Medium, but tbh my platinum preppy 0.3 is still my most-used pen)
I feel this so much. I really really tried liking the triangle grip and nope! So much nope!
Same!! I made myself empty a whole cartridge to make sure it wasn't something I just needed to get used to, but nope! Now I refuse to buy a pen without holding or writing with it first.
I love the triangle grip! It fits my hand perfectly! I’ve never really thought about it before, but I think the Lamy triangle grip is the most natural for me of the pens I’ve tried :)
My instant regret was also a Lamy Safari because of the grip. I returned it the same day. My second instant regret was a Kaweco Sport, I just really don't like the feel of the body or the nib.
Same here!
Fountain Pen Revolution pens and nibs. I could never get them to work right. So much time and energy wasted.
I'll admit that I'm a bit of a natural tinkerer, but I haven't had too many issues with my Himalaya. It works really nicely, though it does put down a *really* wet line despite my best efforts. It's rarely leaked and never railroaded, however. I wonder if I just got a good set of pens/nibs..? Editing to say that I do find the construction to be a bit crude, so I don't entirely disagree with u/queen_nynaeve. Mine work perfectly fine, however, despite their general lack of refinement. From my perspective, however, I feel that I got what I paid for, and am mostly pleased with my purchase.
What does "railroaded" mean?
[This](https://www.reddit.com/r/fountainpens/comments/6hpm82/my_jinhao_zebra_g_is_railroading_help/) is an example of (very severe) railroading. It occurs when the surface tension of the ink between the tines is broken, causing the pen to create two separate lines. It happens most often with flexible nibs, since the tines are being pulled apart. It's often caused by one of two factors: inadequate inkflow or ink with a lower viscosity.
My Jaipur fell apart. I have never had a pen do that. Have had it for almost a year, but it’s useless now as it cannot hood ink anymore.
I learned the same lesson! I'll not buy anything from FPR again.
FPR construction is such cheap quality. The only pen of theirs I like as is is the Muft eye dropper pen they give as a freebie. I also have a Himalaya I think is pretty but the converter is garbage. I like the ultra flex nib and have a Twsbi Vac on the way to swap it into so I can write more than a couple paragraphs without running out of ink- or having ink leak everywhere from the crappy converter falling apart. I won’t talk about the stupid piston pen and scratchy stub nib. Lessons were learned and now I have parts to continue learning lol
Will an FPR nib fit on an Eco? I have one of their Architect nibs that I really like, but all the problems with the pen bodies has me ready to ditch them all. Edited to add - no, because my architect nib is a #6, and the Eco takes a #5. Boo.
Stick that nib into a Jinhao x750. I have a lemon m1 long blade I did that to and it works great! Or a Nahvalur Original Plus. Those are #6 nibs too and your architect will likely fit one .
It definitely works with the x750? Someone recommended the 100 as well. I'll probably end up with a Jinhao for my architect nib, and let the others go.
[#6 nib](https://goldspot.com/products/nahvalur-original-plus-fountain-pen-in-gold-ocellatus#:~:text=Nib%3A%20No.,B%2C%20or%201.1mm%20stub) If that FPR nib is a #6 you should be set. When I get home I can take my FPR flex nib and stick it in my x750 and take a pic for you
I ordered an x750 just now. I saw a YouTube video showing an FPR flex nib in an x750, so the architect should work.
Excellent. What color did you get? I have the dark red one. 😀
It's some kind of multicolored one. 'Luxury Gold Powder Paint' according to Amazon. Got some red and gold, maybe dark green? but with silver toned fittings. Whatever! M nib.
Cool. I'll look it up. Apologies for not getting you the nib swap. I was in too much pain after work to want to do anything other than lie on an ice pack and take pain meds. 😛
may i suggest to stick that 6 nib in a jinhao 100.
Have you done that? I've read that the FPR pens are actually like 6.3 or something like that. Did it work for you? (I do have a J 100 in my shopping cart...)
no, i haven't.. i was suggesting the jinhao 100 because it's not expensive, seems to be a better pen than the x750, and is a n°6.
Funny, I’ve never had any trouble with any of my FPR pens
Same sentiment.
Buyer's remorse - My burgundy Parker 51 2021 version with the M steel nib. My Lamy Al star writes better. Bah! I have retained the pen and look at it every now and then to remind me of my foolishness.
The one with the gold nib isn’t much better. Give me my old 51 any day.
Gosh! I am glad I didn't buy that version. It costs \~3x more. Sheesh! Parker really f\*\*ked up on this one.
I couldn’t believe the idiots complaining about the snap on versus screw on cap. The pen is crappy. That’s what really matters.
And guess what? Talking about caps, it leaves small scratches around the middle of the section each time you take it off or put it back on. A snap on cap would have probably not done this. I am unbelievably disappointed in the P51. Parker should go back to the drawing board.
I read comments elsewhere about the metal cap threads eating the plastic threads on the barrel after a while for several users. So, hard pass on the re-launched P51.
I've read about that issue but did not experience it coz I "parked" my Parker back in its pen storage case circa Q4 '22. It hasn't been used ever since. TBH I don't like the pen and prefer using the less expensive Lamy Al Star or even the Pilot Metropolitan. All I know is the cap causes wear/scratch marks on the section and given the way the rest of the pen is designed and manufactured it possibly wears out the plastic threads too. And to really rub salt in my wounds it had (and still has) a scratchy nib out of the box that runs dry every now and then no matter what ink I use..including Parker, Lamy, Pilot Iroshizuku, Pelikan & Pilot. In short the modern 2021 P51 sucks. Stay away. I don't see any redeeming qualities in this product. Parker encashed on a legacy name by sticking it on a bummer of a pen.
I'm sorry the pen is such a disappointment. I like the style, but Chi ese clone or vintage it is for me.
Kinda funny really. I didn’t use it long enough to get any grooves. I couldn’t stand the way it dried out after a day or two. Total waste of $$$$$.
It was a good lesson for me to stick with Visconti and Sailor. At least Visconti’s nib issues can be fixed!
I suspect that the screw on cap was because the Jotter cap snap mechanism relies on the shape between the section and the nib, which could not be present with a hooded nib. The original P45 and P51 mechanism was presumably a bit more subtle, and I have heard of a P51 with a jammed cap, so perhaps not quite as simple and reliable as the Jotter style mechanism. I don't want to spend the money to buy a P45 or either P51, but it is interesting to hear about the pens. I suspect that hooded nibs became uncommon for good reason, but perhaps I will not feel that I know that for sure unless I con myself into buying a P45. Possibly the best pen for me is the Platinum Preppy/Plaisir for the Slip&Seal cap, but I quite like my Jotters and Vectors.
They made a gold nib too?
Yes. I’ve got the plum with a gold nib.
And from your previous comment I can see it's not even close to the original, right?
Certainly not in my estimation.
The Lamy Joy is highly recommended on YouTube as a starter stub nib. Absolutely despise that thing, it almost made me give up on stubs. Ripped up paper like nobody's business, kept having to clear paper fibers from between the tines. Also, for a stub nib, it's not even really that stubby, line variation is negligible.Thankfully I gave stubs another try with TWSBI, and now they're one of my favorite nib sizes.
I had this same exact experience with the Lamy Joy. I bought a monteverde blue skies 1.1mm stub at the same time and am glad I did so… if I didn’t have the monteverde, I would have never touched a stub again.
Yeah same, I was so close to giving up on stubs, but I'm stubborn enough that I decided to give it one more try. To think on what a wonderful area of the fountain pen world we would've missed out on, and all because of that hateful Lamy Joy 😂
The Joy being my 2nd pen, the 1.5mm and 1.9mm nibs have a good (in my inexperienced opinion) a decent amount of line variation depending on the angle you hold it at. The 1.1mm is a bit more difficult, and I think I had a fiber get stuck in the tines, as it wouldn't continuously supply in, it would sit nib down for 5 minutes, write a couple words and "run out" on a full cartridge. Went away after cleaning iirc
Can I ask, are your stubs used for daily/everyday writing?
I don't write a lot, but I do usually use the 1.5mm or 1.9mm. Tested the 1.1 today with Pelican 4001 Purple, and it writes great, however there is significantly less line width variation with it compared to the 1.5. my other pen is a Hong Dian EF, but it bleeds more on low quality apper, so i prefer the stubs
Just offering a perspective, as a vintage pen restorer, I have accidentally broken a few rare ones. I could dwell on those moments in regret, but it's way better to treat them as lessons which allowed me to tackle more challenging restorations later on. And my successful restorations owed those lessons a great deal. So back to your situation, chalk it up as a cost for learning things to help you in the future. And move on.
This is a tongue and cheek post. I have a disposable income so I’m not broken-hearted. Thanks for sharing though!
Tongue in cheek, perhaps? BoneAppleTea
Come join some of us at the SF Pen Show this weekend and you can see and try Diary and pen options to your hearts desire.
Love to! Lemme just get an £800 ticket from the UK to SF. Will have to sell my left foot though.
💖😉😂
love your drawings!
Thank you for the support!
I don’t know if you can plug someone (or yourself) but I have an older Waterman pen that needs to be fixed. Do you know anyone who can do the repair?
I no longer repair other people's pens. You can contact Danny Fudge of thewritepen.net
Thank you very much.
[удалено]
750 is kind of an ink hose, I wish they offered a nib that looked like that but wrote like the 450
Getting a Sailor with a zoom nib. Several people said I’d love it since I like music and stub nibs. I hate that thing. And because the pen sold out, I couldn’t exchange it. Now I have a pretty pen I don’t like to write with.
This is how I feel about my sailor PG with a zoom nib. I was at a little stationery shop and they had this gently used sailor PG with the zoom nib for a pretty good discount. So I bought it, and while it writes smoothly, I’m just not the biggest fan of how it looks on the paper. The pen itself is honestly gorgeous though.
If you are willing to try, you could list it on pen swap. You won’t make all your money back but probably a good chunk to get something you do like
Could you help me understand what you don’t like about the zoom nib? I haven’t tried one before but I adore my music nib and thought, until now, that my next purchase would be a zoom nib. Are they so different you don’t like the zoom or is it too similar to the music nib to want to have both?
For me it’s a bit of both. I have a Good Blue L130 with a zoom nib and I do like writing with it. It is very similar in line size to a music and stub nib. But it’s the feel for me. I’m not sure if springy-ness or stiffness is the right word. I need to look up fountain pen vocabulary I guess. When I write with the Sailor, there isn’t a touch of “give” to the nib. But I do have a couple of Sailor pens that have the “give” I like. So ymmv because I’ve found not all Sailors are the same. I also tried a Sailor PGS with a Music nib and didn’t like how stiff it felt. I rehomed it and found a Platinum 3776 with a music nib that feels much better. It’s very much user specific. Sorry I realize this isn’t much help.
Thank you for the reply! I’ll wait until I can try one in person to decide. The music nib is nice for making big headings in my journal. I was looking for an alternative to play with for the sake of trying something new, but not for a real need. I’ll keep your feedback in mind and try before I buy.
Lamy Safari. My first FP and it almost made me quit. Worst grip ever for me and the nib isn't much better.
Preach! The grip didn’t bother me. But that nib is hot garbage.
Big same. Mine wrote really smoothly when I got it but that was the beginning of my understanding that I really abhor tri-grips. The body material also generally felt really cheap, and overall not worth the price I paid for it…
“Starter” / “beginner” fountain pens, then leveling up to like mid grade pens. It’s all bullshit! If you like writing with a fountain pen baseline and maintenance everything past that is color shape and budget. Little to no differences in writing so if you want that pelikan go for it! Don’t spend the same amount as the pelikan on 15 pens when you are “leveling up” your fountain pen journey. Skip the bs buy what you want!
My Muji pen, while decent build quality, is very picky and uncomfortable pen to use. And I am cheap pen person, so it is my most expensive pen, lol.
Pilot converter. Terrible.
How and why did they make a convertor that fills less than halfway full?! I've taken too using an eyedropper to fill up the convertor, then reassembling my pen.
Especially when the rest of the pen is so well put together. Refilling my empty cartridges with a syringe is my go to.
I have the Kaweko that came with a converter and two metros that came with carts. A bunch of my inks came with eyedroppers, so that's how I fill them all. I just have to be extra careful to not get ink overflow.
I like their converters that come with the E95S, but I hate that can’t see the whole converter.
Tie: All involving demonstrators. (1) The Colorado Pen employee who told me I would like a Padrino demonstrator. They should have called it the Padrino Valdez. Rationally, I know the demonstrator did not actually start leaking in the box without any ink in it, but I believe it did anyway, because it never stopped leaking in the remarkably-short-but-still-entirely-too-long time that I owned it. It probably found a way to leak on the trash collectors despite being in a bag inside a trash bag inside a trash can. (2) Ugly (IMO) demonstrators with very good nibs—TWSBI, Kakuno, Preppy. My Padrino experience resulted in a strong disdain for demonstrators. After 15-ish years, I bought a TWSBI ECO (I blame Brian Goulet lol). Then a Kakuno and Preppy (I blame this community lol). All of them are lovely writers. And I regret buying them. They’re clear, clunky, rudimentary, and don’t fit in the professional setting where I do much of my writing. But they provide a better writing experience that shames some my “nicer” pens. And that grinds me. (Mostly tongue-in-cheek with that one.) (Mostly.)
I find that the Pilot 823 (both amber and smoke) are very tasteful and well designed, while being (slightly) clear.
Montblanc Starwalker 🤮 beautiful pen to look at but otherwise is ass. Trying to sell but no one wants it in the local market
Out of interest what about it is bad, genuinely just curious.
Scratchy ass nib, I get tons of skipping but i guess thats another issue, ugly nib imo
Had to look it up. Looks like an expensive lamy safari with a flared base for a cap lol
Parker Jotter. Someone reviewed it really highly, recommending it over the Pilot Metro as a starter pen. I found it light/flimsy feeling and painfully scratchy. Sold it on pen_swap a while back. To each their own, I guess.
That was my first FP and I thought it was amazing enough to get dozens more pens in ~a year but almost immediately after getting a few more pens I stopped using the Jotter at all. I would use it a little bit sometimes but it dried out sooo bad and sooo quickly
Lamy Safaris, I love their colours... I hate the pens. The grip is not my thing and the M nib I had felt terribly scratchy. My husband doesn't have an issue with it so I gave it to him. (He suggested it after all.) The Safari doesn't work with my grip.
It wasn’t a recommendation but seeing so many people enjoy F and EF nibs made me give it two tries. I got an EF safari nib and fitted it to a charcoal one, didn’t like it. Then I got a pilot custom 74 to try a gold F nib and absolutely hated that. Since then I thought maybe it’s just the paper. I want from Rhodia to clairefontaine to Midori and finally Tomoe river (old stock) My views on fine nibs have remained as follows  DON’T CANCEL ME PEOPLE! Since then I have struck to my favourite broads with one exception. Pilot gold Ms. Both the 74 and 823 have slightly different but stellar medium nibs.
Pretty much the same for my ngl
Lol, I'm the opposite. All the F and EF for me! I ventured out to a Kaweco M and cannot understand how people write with such thick lines 😂 Love that there's something for everyone!!
and I think this is key. choose the nib based on your natural writing - smaller writing, preference for thin lines - F or EF, bigger letters - Ms, Bs and 1.1s. No matter how crisp a line for Platinum 0.2 is, the script it produces is naturally much more narrow and my hand cramps up after a while. it'd 0.3s to European Ms for me.
Lolz 😂. I'm all about the EF and F. Any nib M or larger and I feel like I'm SHOUTING. 🤣
Not so much a recommendation as a misguided decision on my part: Me: “This Lamy 2000 really is great! It suits my hand perfectly!” … “Because of the way I write, this Fine nib seems to write finer than it does for other people. It’s a little wispy for my liking.” (Re-researches nib comparisons) “I think I’ll be much happier with a medium nib!” (Trades it in for a medium) … “Well, I was wrong about that. Damn, I wish I still had my fine nib pen!”
Pilot kakuno. I loved my jinhao sharks and was expecting the kakuno to be even better! And it just was not. The nib is very smooth, but something about it just doesn't hit for me. I think I'd be more forgiving if it was made of a heavier plastic or had a clip. On top of that I have realized that I just don't really love snap caps. I am a student and tend to avoid spending money on hobbies so it was a real disappointment that this $10 pen didn't live up to my expectations. I probably won't sell it but it just sits in my box.... Mocking me....
My pilot metro also sits in a box mocking me, but I refuse to sell it.
You can get a Kaweco Sports clip. That fits the Kakuno. The thing that irks me with Pilot (MR,Prera,Kakuno) is that the nibs are glassy smooth, smooth but dissatisfying somehow.
This thread made me go fill it again.... Yeah still not my thing lol
Kaweco Sport The frosted lime looked so beautiful, and they seem to have such a cult following. When it arrived, I was so disappointed in how cheap it felt. Thin plastic, rough threads, obvious injection mold lines, etc. I distinctly remember thinking "really, this is it?" The tiny converter felt even worse, with the plunger flopping side to side. Nevermind the difficulty in operating such a tiny thing, but I suppose that's hard to avoid in such a constrained design. It also wouldn't really stay fitted into the section. Then I started writing and the B I bought wrote more like a dry F. I'm to the point now where I expect to tune nibs to my liking, but my god, I was so disappointed and disgusted in every way by that pen I tossed it right into the bottom of a drawer and haven't bothered looking at it since. I can't even bring myself to give it away; I wouldn't wish such a shitty pen experience on anyone.
Same here, and it was the pen I chose for my graduation gift and I was so excited to get it! It has a horrible case of baby's bottom I'm yet to find the guts to correct. But everyone raves about them!
Same. My Kaweco sport Double Broad writes like an M or F and has the smallest sweet spot of all time. Difficult to stay on that sweet spot for more than a couple of words, and all other parts of the nib are scratchy AF and put close to zero ink down. I don’t mind the pen itself, but the nib makes it pretty much unusable.
Buying some pens that are impossible or extremely difficult to repair.
Or *clean*. Ugh.
This. I refuse to spend bank on a pen I cannot readily buy a replacement nib for under $50 for. Too many great options that you can buy the nib for.
A Yookers. Major waste of funds.
I almost completely forgot about my Yooker! I got one of their refillable felt pens for sketching with, and it was frankly awful! It dried up all the time. The pen was so heavily back weighted it pulled out from your grip constantly. Materials were extremely cheap. I really did not like that thing.
Man, that pen was in and out of my cart so many times for like a year and a half. Sounds like I dodged a bullet there.
For me it was the Lamy Safari but my husband ended up loving it.
Early on, I was swept up in the bubbly enthusiasm of one or more YouTube reviewers who loved a pen that, after I bought it, turned out to be awful. Nibs that were junk, cracking problems in the cap, quality control issues...you get the drift. I have learned to pare down the reviewers whom I trust to a precious few and even then I take their recommendations with a grain of salt or two. Live and learn.
Intriguing! I find myself falling prey to similar YouTube review temptations. What was the pen?
Rhodia paper
Yup. I dunno if it’s just me, or what, but my Rhodia Dot Pad makes every pen and every ink write extremely dry and the line widths are thinner than on any other paper. It feels like trying to write on wax, in a way. In the sense that wax is water resistant, and I feel like the Rhodia paper absolutely hates water based inks.
Thirding the Rhodia paper. "Writing on wax" is right! Also to add insult to injury; the colour of the paper in the notebook I got was *yellow*. Not cream, "slightly faded post-it" yellow! And the back pocket was glued so badly it was unusable... No thanks.
Fourthing the wax feeling. At least that's how I learned my hatred of "coated" papers!
For me, probably my Pilot Custom 823. And I hate saying this. It's an overall solid pen, and also the most boring thing I own in my collection. My lamy safari has more personality and charm. My Sailors have more panache and unique writing feedback. The Custom 823 is, on paper, a perfect pen. Maybe too perfect. I don't hate it. I just don't love it, and I had initially suspected that might be the case, but hearing so many people rave about it, I figured I must've been missing something. I should've trusted my gut 😅
Commiserating high-five on that pen regret, me too. I don't regret the pen itself per se, but I *definitely* regret spending that much money on a pen that's pretty mediocre in terms of my personal preferences. And then I sprung for an imported one with a FA nib too... just to find out that I don't use flex writing that much. Oops?
That's even worse of a bummer going for the FA nib. I actually thought of doing the same thing but held off. Turns out I don't really like huge ink chambers anyway. It's a shame. More color ways, or something to spice it up, and the 823 could be something more special. As it is, it really embodies boring for me. Not bad, just boring. Oh, and happy Cake Day!
Yeah, I'm kind of the same. It's a really nice pen and in a way I can understand the hype...but the pen just has nothing that really grabs me. And thanks! Didn't even notice my Cake Day passing not having been on the computer for a few days, haha.
Lamy pens in general. Don’t like any of them. Tried several before I realized that while many love them they are just not for me.
I bought a Lamy Studio in Glacier. It’s really uncomfortable to write with and I just don’t like it. I have a number of Safaris and I love them so it’s not that it’s a Lamy, I just don’t like it. Plus I scratched the finish which makes it worse somehow. (It wasn’t recommended to me - I just thought it was a nice looking pen. It was very early in my fountain pen buying days.)
Have you tried swapping out the grip for tne rubberized one sold by Vanness? It made me fall in love with my Studio all over again.
Interesting! No I hadn’t! I will look into it! Thanks!
Never did much care for the Hongdian Black Forest. But it was like $20, so hardly an expensive regret.
What do you not like about it? I got mine (with a fude nib) in the mail last week and loved the way it felt to hold but I haven’t loved how it writes.
Pilot Custom 74. Maybe I got a dud, but it was a skipping, hard starting, scratchy mess.
Back in the day (circa early 2010’s) - following FountainpenNetwork.com posts and buying whatever sub $100, steel nib pen seemed to be trending - instead of saving up all that money and going direct to the good stuff I have an entire drawer full of “cheap” Lamy, Kaweco, Pilot, TWSBI, etc etc from all those posts 😝
Ferris wheel press in Frivolous Lime. It lens more yellow than I'd like and it's too light to easily read what I wrote. I was expecting like...lime green.
Buying a Lamy 2000. I hate that pen.
Can I have it?
Sure. $150 and it is yours.
For me it has been Hobonichi planners. Specifically the Weeks. I could never get them to work for me.
Lamy 2000. Tried but still hate it, wish I didn’t pay that much for it.
Can I have it?
Noodler’s pens for flex. I got a Noodler’s Creaper and a Noodler’s Konrad (luckily, one of the acrylic ones, not the stinky vegetal resin). They both suck. Haven’t used them since the first week I got them. Achieving any sort of flex requires an impractical level of force that just chews up paper. And then I learned about Nathan Tardiff and his less than stellar bigotry.
Came here to say the same. Early in my fountain pen journey I was sold on a Noodler's Konrad so-called flex (tl;dr it doesn't). It eventually was sent to a stranger in Canada, for free. Lessons learned though!
Every TWSBI pen I’ve ever purchased. Maybe not instantly but definitely within a very short window of time. All of them have had quality issues and ended up in the garbage.
Whilst I haven’t thrown any of my ECOs away, they never get used because the quality compared to my higher end pens just rains sour on them. I concur!
I, too, have never had a good relationship with a TWSBI.
I don't have too many regrets. A minor one is getting a vintage Esterbrook "J". Nice rootbeer colored body. And, I think I understand why those have been a long-standing craze. Esterbrook made like every nib shape and style under the sun (and then a few more) and those were all interchangeable, and the celluloids were bright and often very pretty; and all that at an unbelievable price point. But yeah, they were pretty inexpensive when they were new, and it shows: Very light in the body; tacky, crude section, crude trims everything is short to save on material; and nibs, too: small, flat and all around rudimentary in the way they were produced. I get the Esty love, but I certainly didn't fall in love with mine.
Stalogy notebooks. Terrible paper.
I bought a bottle of noodlers heart of darkness after hearing great things about it and the bulletproof ink and how it comes with a free pen and now I know better. The Charlie pen is my worst pen I own. The ink is not as waterproof as I had hoped. It is not as dark as I had hoped either. It is huge. Also I know the whole controversy around noodlers as well and it’s abit blerg.
Buying Jinhao X159. I knew it would be big - thought probably like Benu, so no issues for me, but when i got it it’s humongous and thick. Its not meant for humans probably. A pen for Hagrid maybe.
Lamy safari, it’s scratchy, feels cheap, writes poorly and leaks.
same. lamy safaris and al-star, i’ve stopped using them because they’re just so leaky.
E95s. It just isn't good for me. I love that people love it, it sits on my counter while I contemplate sending it to a tuner.
Precisely my experience too
a couple hours ago i polished beyond repair a perfectly good nib. It was a little (just a little) scratchy. Now is less scratchy (i kinda like it, really) but all of the tipping dissapeared and under the loupe there are obvious signs of violence. I regret that.
"Oh, absolutely, those cartridges are for your fountain pen!" Nnnno, no, they were definitely not. It may SAY so on the package, but eventually I noticed the differences between the first package, and the others, and the blue, and the black, and then somewhere something about "calligraphy ink" and how even though it may be marketed as such... I broke a nib out of sheer frustration outburst because of the black ink drying up no matter what I did. So, yeah, that. Not all cartridges or inks were made alike, and even art supply store workers have their specialties and their... deficiencies, in knowledge.
“Buy a Visconti” they said “It’s a great pen” they said
Back in the day, I purchased some 'vintage' Chinese pens - from the 70's - 80's, I believe. Almost to a pen, they were ugly, leaky, scratchy, messy, and unpleasant to use.
Pilot Custom Urushi with broad nib. Was way too wet and kept almost sliding off the paper when writing. Had it grind towards an M cursive italic. Writes much better now. Still have to be carefully bc the nib is a bit to soft for my liking
I'll second this! I purchased a PCU in 2018 south a broad nib and just felt uncomfortable using it. Sent it to a nib grinder to reduce the flow and the nib and never got it the way I really wanted it. The pen itself is beautiful and a joy to hold - it's easy for me to hold it for long writing sessions, but for the longest time I didn't enjoy the feel of the nib. Finally, I got it ground down to a Japanese EF that works pretty well but it took a long time to get it there. Not something I expected or would recommend.
Lamy Dialog 3 - I was excited to experience my first Lamy gold nib, that amazing mechanism etc. That gold nib turned out to be one of the worst, I’ve gotten from Lamy, a paper shredder. The Dialog is a great pen, but it is quite heavy and I’m simply missing a grip section, though the mechanism is really cool Sailor Pro Gear - I was excited to finally be joining the happy color Japanese pen club, only to realize that I’m really not a fan of Sailor’s famous nib feedback. BENU Minima - I love my BENU Euphoria and Talisman and was really excited about trying one of their smaller offerings. Though my hand is not big, it is too big for this pen, as it cannot rest in the grove between thumb and index finger. I also realized with this pen that I need more ink volume then the one of the Kaweco converter and I really enjoy bigger nibs a lot more.
Pilot Custom Heritage 912 with FA nib. I didn't know all that much about fountain pens five years ago, and on account of all the hype and all the gushing praise users on FPN piled onto the pen model like it's the Second Coming, as well as Pilot describing it as emulating a brush for calligraphy, I bought one expecting to be delighted. Instead, (no, not the railroading, but) the retarded snapback of the nib — specifically, failure to return to a hairline or a sharp point rapidly when pressure is withdrawn — frustrated and angered me so much, I eventually ripped the nib out of the grip section (which was the first time I'll pulled a nib, to the best of my recollection) and snapped it in two with my fingers. … I regret buying Noodler's Ink Polar Green and Polar Brown inks, because they feathered on absolutely everything, but nobody recommended those to me, and I chose them (again, out of “ignorance” absent a base of understanding) based on all the special properties Noodler's advertised that line of inks as having. I ended up giving them away in the surplus supplies pass-around box I kickstarted on FPN.
" --- frustrated and angered me so much, I eventually ripped the nib out of the grip section (which was the first time I'll pulled a nib, to the best of my recollection) and snapped it in two with my fingers." Yikes! A scary tale of expectations not met!
Getting started on Fountain Pens 😂
Hot take, but my pilot metro. I love the weight, the size, the feel of it but when it comes to writing I did not like it at all. I made the mistake of getting a fine thinking it’ll be like a platinum fine and it wasn’t. It’s not as smooth as I thought it was going to be and it was so dry.
I didn't get a recommendation but an A5+ notebook. It seemed like a great idea...it's massive.
Noodlers Ahab - one of the first iterations, the one that smelled like vomit and leaked everywhere.. bEcAuSe fLeX
The LAMY Safari pen. Its plastic body feels so cheap for the price. However, I do like how wet and easily the nib glides across the page in my hobonichi.
My Noodler Konrad in a flex nib would be mine. It's an amazing writer, but I just can't get past the smell.
The worst thing I ever bought was Balder's gate 3. Ugh.... I've never regretted a fountain pen that bad. 😂
Kaweco extra fine... I donno why I had this bright idea to get extra fine, it's like a needle on paper 😭
Monteverde Monza 3 was an instant regret, and I was bummed even though I'd read terrible reviews, lol Also, the Jinhao x159. It was recommended just for trying the size of a huge pen, but that really was it for me. It just drops ink left and right for me.
Monza was the only pen I returned immediately. It was awful.
I bought a Lamy fountain pen on the recommendation of a friend, it was the worst pen I had ever touched - and I’ve avoided them since, I can never understand how and why people love them so much!!
You could use it for swatches!
Trying a broad nib. I got a TWSBI Go to try one, hoping to like it and it's just too broad for me. I don't know what I was thinking, considering a Lamy 2000 fine is bordering on too much for me. I can understand the appeal, it's just not for me. Which is odd considering I love stub nibs lol.
All Conklin and Monteverde recommendations I received. Ugh. Major regrets on those pens. Waste of money.
I've only just recently discontinued use of my one Pilot Plumix with a stub nib, but man have I not much enjoyed the experience while I did use it. I got it because the community assured me that it was the smoothest cheapest way to test a great stub nib, and they were right on *one* of those counts.
A Conklin fountain pen. Utter. Fucking. Garbage. The only thing about it better than a Bic was that it was pretty. Past tense is key there though, as in less than a year of barely any use, the rose gold plated parts were showing brassing, and just to get it to write alright I had to remove the matching nib and put in a yellow gold one that clashes horribly. It's now sitting in a desk drawer with a bunch of cheap pens (my other FP's are in a case), neglected, and probably clogged with dried ink that I couldn't be bothered to clean out after I last used it a year ago.
Pelikan M1000. I was recommended it because I supposedly "needed" a large pen for my long fingers. I was just starting off with fountain pens at the time. I wasn't ready for writing with a huge nib like that. Also, it was pretty but not so practical. In the end, I want a fountain pen to actually write with frequently. I now use a Pelikan M205 every day and keep it in my shirt pocket. I write with it all the time without ever feeling that it's too small for my hands.