What is more important to you to have and use lots of different ink colours and or using different kind of pens ?

Or maybe to make this question more understandable.What is more important to you ?
1.Using different kind of pens but with the same ink ?
or
2.Using different inks but using 1 or 2 pens ?

For me the use of the actual pen is the important part.I couldnt care what ink I use as long as its either blue or black.

Variety of pens. My ink-colour barely changes. It's almost always black.

The primary function of my first pens was drawing and calligraphy. I used black. I needed a variety of pens. My fountain pen use today is diminished but I still use different pens but mostly only one color (if you want to count black as a color) ( From an art color theory perspective, it isn't a color)

Variety of inks. Isn't that what the variety of pens is for? I need different pens so I can use different inks. For me, ink is 90% of the fun of fountain pens. Otherwise, I could have stuck with ballpoint or gel pens with the exciting (not!) choice of blue or black ink.

Cedar

Difficult to answer, I think they are both more or less equally important to me. Although I am shifting from many pens and few inks to many pens and many inks. An ink works out in different pens in different ways. The other way around also exists : take one pen and try several inks in it and you can tell the difference too. Many pen/ink combinations can be made if you have plenty of both....

Present Fav combo's : Vintage MB149 with Noodlers Apache sunset. Sh Balance II with Baystate Blue and Vintage Sh O/S Balance with waterman southseas blue.

I'd go with a variety of pens. I only use black or blue and have poor color preception ( quick to deactivate the bomb, you MUST cut the green wire! Errr, which one is green?) So I can't see any variance in color. So it's those two. And my pens are dedicated to that color as well.

Andy

I use one ink per pen, so part of the fun for me is deciding which ink will belong to which pen exclusively. So, to answer your question, both. And neither. It's Schrödinger's pen.
David

I think pens. I could more easily accept using just one color than just one type of pen. I have really come to enjoy having the choice between round, italic, and flexible.

no doubt: pens. Even if I do care what ink I use.
I don't have that much pens (5, at this moment ), but they are all filled with the same ink.

If I had to make the choice, I would have many pens, few inks. But I don't and instead have too many of both....

Simon

Both! I love being able to use any of several different colors of ink to reflect my mood, change the impact of my writing, or just keep people on their toes. However, I'm very lazy and don't like changing inks around a lot, so a specific pen is generally used for a specific ink all of the time (except for one, but that's another story). Thus, I must have several pens to keep my several inks in! However, if I were really between a rock and a hard place I suppose I'd use a couple of pens and just change the inks out more often.

For me it's different pens. I use and have used LAMY Blue/Black only for years and a few months ago added Diamine Prussian Blue. I have plenty of intention to get more pens but not ink.

Gee if I only had one ink choice why would I need more than 4 pens at the most? A couple sizes and a couple of nib choices, other than that why bother! And if I had only one pen to use, I wouldn't need but a couple of inks. Sooooo...

I can't really set one as more important than the other!

Before FP's my life was sadly monotone.. I used a Pentel #7 Mech Pencil and a Black Uniball with black ink.

Today I can write with a pen from France, Germany, China, England, Italy, USA or Japan. I have 104 choices of pens and could ink half of them and not have the same ink in a single pen. I can write with a modern marvel of engineering excellence or a beautifully crafted antique from each of the last 9 decades. I can use inks from a dozen companies and half a dozen countries in colors that would embarrass even the big 48 box of Crayola Crayons. I can write with a pen worth $10 all the way up to $500. I can write with a pen made of hard rubber, celluloid, Italian Resin, plastic, wood, gold, sterling silver, precious resin, markalon and in sizes and colors and styles too numerous to mention. I can write with an Extra Fine nib and in each size from there to 2.7mm. Nibs that are open, closed, inlayed, hooded, triumph, manifold, smooth, soft, semi flex, superflex, wet noodle, dry, calligraphy, duopoint, italifine, gold, palladium, platinum, steel, stainless steel. With filling systems that are pumps, buttons, levers, pistons, cartridges, converters, squeeze, crescent, vacumatic, vacufil, snorkel, touchdown. I can fill out a crossword or do a Sudoku with a 1928 Parker Streamlined Senior Duofold Black and Pearl pencil or an extrafine pen in any color I can imagine!

So in answer to the first question, they are both extremely important to me! Because after all....


"Life is too short to write with ugly pens or black ink" pakmanpony

Have to add my voice to the BOTH ranks.

Normally was a Skrip blue-black kinda guy. But have a range of inks and a range of pens, and do enjoy picking up a pen and knowing I have X ink in it. Like the diffenent "slant" Levenger Bahamas Blue gives to my thoughts or the connection to something in the past that an older bottle of Penman Green I have makes me feel. And using an older pen with a newer ink---I like to think I am giving a treasured older citizen a new chance...

So while I tend to blues and blacks and blue/blacks...I splurge on colors now and again...

The question is difficult for me, too. I like a variety of pens, and might choose that as my first criterion. But many of my pens are able to "be all they can be" with specific inks. So, for me, too, a variety of inks is crucial.

Does your question limit me to one ink color, or to one brand of ink? If one brand of ink, then I would choose J. Herbin for the variety of colors and ink flow characteristics and buy my hoard of pens.

Variety of pens I could live w/ only a few inks.

Variety of pens is more important to me, but having only one ink would definitely be most boring.

I am a "both" voter. Right now, at my work desk I have 3 pens, with 3 different inks (2 reds and a brown today, for some reason). I hardly ever have more than one pen inked per color. I like to test my pens with different color inks; for instance, the Parker Sonnet w/18k medium nib is too wet and wide for normal writing with blue or black, but works wonderfully with the thin Waterman Red - it works almost like a highlighter. I had almost written that Sonnet off, but have regained my respect for it.

Another "both". Though when I had only one pen, I did have three inks. Didn't really use the other two much, but they were there if I needed them. I have roughly the same number pens as I do ink bottles.

That's hilarious!

My buying pattern is I buy lots of the same type of pen and a variety of inks, so's there's one pen for each colour approximately

P.S. If I had more money I would buy more pens

I would rather have more pens than more inks.

I reject your premise! Ha!

Seriously, though, I think that since the ink is what actually goes on the paper, and that the pen is only a means of getting the ink into that position, that one should plan one's collection around the various inks that one might desire for particular purposes. A ink for every purpose, a pen for every ink, is my philosophy.

Once that goal is met, then if you would like various pens for their own sake, then by all means, purchase away...