Problems & Help Needed With Pilot Custom 74 Music Nib

[bodobose]

Hi,

I need your kind help regarding the problems that I am having with my Pilot Custom 74 Music Nib pen.

First of all, I must say that lookwise I simply love this pen. However, in order to try out a Music nib, I got this pen and sending it back to Pilot is not an option. So it pains me a lot that I am now stuck with a pen whose nib is not performing up to the standard! For me the writing experience with a nib is the most vital part of a fountain pen.

Being a Music Nib, it has two slits and three tines. I am using a Con 70 converter with Waterman Serenity (a.k.a. Florida) Blue ink with this pen.

The main problems that I am having are as follows:

1. There are way too many occasions when the nib partially skips, i.e., one side of the nib (one slit) not writing - so the lines are many a times uneven.

2. The nib skips sometimes. I have to prime it.

3. Holding the pen at anything other than 40-60º angle, the pen does not write at all.

4. The nib is quite wet.

I can peacefully live with the 4th problem, but I need some urgent help from you ghe other three, especially those who own the Pilot Custom 74 pen with Music Nib.

Kindly give me some idea how to solve these problems, or what I am doing wrong. I write holding the pen at about 50-60º angle.

I have read about some good and some bad opinions about this nib since getting this pen. I will be grateful if you could share you experience and how you dealt with these issues, if you faced them.

[Algester]

likewise then the culprit will be a Con-70, B the feed which is dry, c it could be the ink from my observations CON-70 doesnt like inks with high viscosity or with high surface tension

remedy: change to a cartridge or use the Con-50 converter

if you still like to not replace the feed then change the ink

then finally check the nib for baby bottoms

Edited May 1, 2015 by Algester

[perth]

That's really strange. For me, the first 3 conditions are true, but it makes more sense in my case since the nib and feed is extremely dry (a common issue among Pilots, unfortunately).

[Algester]

actually people have stated Pilots tend to have dry feeds even on wet nibs... soft nibs are if by any indication are wet nibs

[bodobose]

My feed is quite (and that's q-u-i-t-e) wet. But this juicy bit is not much of a headache with an appropriate ink.

 

After hours and hours of examination and sample writing with different inks, on different kind of papers and writing at different angles (in the process, sacrificing the Sunday), I have come to the following conclusions -

 

1. There was surely some baby's bottom at play with my particular nib. After I cured that to the best of my abilities, it still wrote wet, but the other three problems were about 70-80% reduced with the right kind of paper, ink, writing angle combination.

2. But unfortunately we do not live in an ideal world - so, to be happy using this pen, I have to stick to a particular combination ink/paper/writing angle.

3. It skips (partially) more at the later (down) part of pages (probably due to the sweat from my hand creating problems at those portions)

4. It also skips more on very smooth kinds of papers - on cheaper papers which soak more ink, the problem is less, but there's a new problem where the ink is very much visible on the reverse side of the page.

 

So, in my view, if I have to live with these limitations.

 

But the pen is so gorgeous!

[PingleiHe]

Pilot gold nibs can be sometimes skippy on Rhodia or Clairefontaine. Try some less smooth paper maybe?

[rutherfordr]

A Sunday spent messing around with fountain pens sounds wonderful... hardly a sacrifice!

[PortiaDaCosta]

I just received one of these pens from an Ebay seller the other day and am experiencing very similar problems. It seems wet, yet sometimes skips, sometimes railroads, sometimes writes a very thin, scratchy line.

 

I've flushed it and soaked it and tried different inks, converter and cartridge. If I write very slowly at a certain angle I can seem to get it to write, but the 'sweet spot' seems to be very tiny and I easily stray from it.

 

I've looked at the nib through a loupe and it seems to look okay, with no obvious problems visible.

 

Don't know what to do, really, as I'm not confident doing any nib tuning. I've already destroyed a couple of others with my hamfisted attempts.

 

Maybe I'll try it on less good paper. I've been writing on Clairefontaine.

[PortiaDaCosta]

Update...

 

More by luck than judgement, I think I've improved the pen a bit. I pulled the nib and feed last night, and tried to re-seat it with the feed closer to the tip of the nib. Ended up even worse and only seemed to write at a 90 degree angle to the paper, if at all.

 

This morning I piled into the thing again, because I'm stubborn like that. Pulled the nib and feed again and took a brass shim to the groove on the top of the feed to widen it just a hair. Also shimmed the two nib slits with a finer gauge of brass. Put it all back together again, and I think I managed to get the feed a bit nearer to the tip of the nib this time. I inked it with a bit of De Atramentis Aubergine in an empty cart, and tried it again.

 

It was a bit reluctant and finicky at first, but after I left it inverted for a while, it seemed to improve a bit. It's still far from ideal, and I've probably made it generally too wet now, but it's better than it was, and I can write with it for a little while without wanting to hurl it across the room in a rage!