I just thought I'd post this for you to consider. My office stocks various different brands of legal pads (depending on where the scatterbrained "office runner" decides to go), and after trying them all I've been pretty impressed with the Staples self-branded pads. They're quite smooth, they don't feather much, if at all, at least with the inks I use in my office pens, and they don't bleed unless you have a real gusher of a pen. They do seem to offer a little resistance to the nib, but they remain smooth; it's an interesting sensation that I don't really mind, it's just different. It feels almost like you're sliding the nib through a very thin layer of grease or something.

Anyway, I'm quite happy with these pads for general note-taking at work. They are cheap enough you don't have to worry about wasting them, but still fairly pleasureable to write on.

The store brand paper can vary a lot depending where they get the paper from. Your best bet is tryout and then buy in bulk (assuming buying when on sales). My current stock of Office Depot letter pad is a little bit dry for fine nib pen.

My office as well uses Staples brand Legal pads. I run only PR inks and the pads are quite suitable. No complaints.

I would describe them as sometimes OK, sometimes not. The big problem with all of these "store brands" is that they subcontract to different suppliers for different batches, and there is no consistency from batch to batch. I prefer, therefore, to purchase pads from manufacturers who seek to maintain a long term consistency to their paper products.