The following was written with the item under consideration:

The ink is an unmarked cartridge which came with the pen, which seems to fade heroically-- the lines went down 20 hours prior to scanning.

edit-- Hey, how about a picture of the pen itself, lifted from the maker's web-site:

thanx for the review. i've never seen or heard about this pen. although is has an appealing body the metal section is a turn off for me.

ps. thanx for posting the catalogue. they have a lot of other interesting models there!!!

Hi Ernst,
Thanks so much for the review! I hadn't seen your question about X-Pens because, if I *had*, I would have squeaked "YES!! I own an X-Pen fountain pen!!"
I bought mine (which is the "Rainbow" model) at www.stylo.ca and I really like the way the pen looks (love the orange and red colour combo ) and feels. I reground its ordinary M steel nib to something approximating a cursive italic and it's now one of my favourite writers.

A local art store carries the X-Pen line; they had about 8 different models in their pen display rack, which was nearly completely hidden by post-it notes and payment policy signs (obviously they haven't been selling well and aren't expected to sell well in the near future). They looked really striking from far away, but I didn't like them too much up close. They reminded me of Cross pens, with some modern flair but lacking in genuine personality or something. I also thought they were horribly over priced... there was one for $30 or so but the others were $80 or $90 and they didn't look THAT good to me.

Not knowing anything about the brand, I was a bit leery as well, especially after reading stories on FPN about Staples brand pens and other mystery pens.

Maybe next time I'll see if they're willing to cut me a deal, as they appear to be dead stock.

Thanks for the review!

Neill

Is that Colours, as once was Norcal? It's where I grabbed mine, although not at the Edmonton flagship(which I see is now the ONLY one referred to on the website), and there wasn't one that was over (or under) $29.50.

Yes, that's it! I was having trouble remembering the name. Looking at the pens they had I wondered if someone had just arbitrarily stuck crazy prices on them. Colours sometimes puts slow-moving ink bottles on their clearance table; I cleaned them out of all their remaining J. Herbin and a big bottle of Pelikan royal blue for 1/2 price or less. I wish they'd put their X-pens on sale like that.

The store I went to was the Calgary Trail one, near Billingsgate Fish Market. Not sure if that's their flagship store or not. And their website is terrible so I don't even bother looking at it.

Neill

An update-- don't try the trick of storing a spare cartridge in the bottom of the barrel. You can get it out eventually, and without damage, but only if you've got the right kind of tools. Very frustrating 20 minutes, that.