My new Pelikan M200 in Green Marble arrived yesterday. Filled it with Waterman Blue Black.
First impressions: Looks - beautiful pen. Writing - no no no !
Ink was failrly dry. Colour unsaturated and washed out. Grrr!
Took it home and wasked the nib in soapy water. The was much improvement but still not as wet or saturated as much as I would prefer.

So I thought I'd try a different ink and put in some Private Reserve Sherwood Green. This comes out very nice. Smooth writer and good flow. I am much happier. Absolutely a lot smoother and easier than in the Lamy Safari that I currently have filled with the Sherwood.
(Do others find that the performance of these pens (Pelikans) varies a lot with different ink?)

I have another M200 coming in the mail in Silver Pearl so I will compare the two nibs. If the second is indeed wetter then I will send the first back to Chartpak for an exchange.
Need to do a lot more writing before I decide how happy I am with the size of the open though.

Armchop

Maybe I have been lucky but I have never used any ink but PR in my Pelikans and have not had a single problem.

I have just one M200, a stub -- like you, I found that cleaning helped (thanks, FPN!), but yes, different inks seems to make a difference in how Mr. Skippy performs. So far, Diamine Sepia has been the best. Next up will be Prussian Blue ...

I used to have a M215 pen, which is the same nib as the M200. I filled it with Waterman South Sea Blue as soon as it arrived (no washing), and it wrote perfectly. I was impressed by how smooth it was. I also used Pelikan Royal Blue, Noodler's Gulf Stream Blue, Pelikan Black, J. Herbin Violette Pensee, and Private Reserve Lake Placid. I didn't notice any differences in performance.

Hi,

Just a thought - I have three M200's and one M215 and they all work great (two have Binder nibs). I have about 10 different inks and I like them all, but I gave away a bottle of blue/black ink (lamy). I just didn't like the way it looked - washed out. So, maybe it was just the color. My Waterman Florida blue looks great w/my M200's, as does Lamy Blue and a variety of Noodler's and Private Reserve inks.

Hi,

Just a thought - I have three M200's and one M215 and they all work great (two have Binder nibs). I have about 10 different inks and I like them all, but I gave away a bottle of blue/black ink (lamy). I just didn't like the way it looked - washed out. So, maybe it was just the color. My Waterman Florida blue looks great w/my M200's, as does Lamy Blue and a variety of Noodler's and Private Reserve inks.

The M200/M215 is a great pen!

Just did some of my college students corrections. I used my new Pelikan with the Sherwood Green. One poor kid's work was so bad I went medieval (we need an "evil" emoticon") on him just for the sake of seeing a nice page of green ink!
Methinks I like my Pelikan.

Armchop