A Brace Of Cheap Pens - Parker Frontier And Wing Sung 659

[dcwaites]

A Brace of Cheap Pens
Parker Frontier and Wing Sung 659

I have recently acquired two new pens at the cheaper end of the market, a Parker Frontier made in India by Parker affiliate The Luxor Group, and a Wing Sung 659 clone of the Pilot 78G. I wanted a Frontier with a Fine nib to complement the Medium I had bought about 20 years ago. I wanted the Wing Sung as it came with two nibs, a Fine and an Extra Fine, and they could replace the Medium nibs in my low-end Pilot pens.

Both pens were a resounding disappointment. All three nibs were misaligned and scratchy. The Parker was the worst , and needed quite a lot of work to get it writing. The Wing Sung nibs weren't so bad.

The Parker nib was very misaligned out of the packaging. This was sealed at the factory, so the pen was put together like that in Parker's India factory. I was able to re-align the tines, but the nib was still quite scratchy. I had to re-shape it with my Arkansas stones and then smooth it down to an acceptable level using my full set of micro-mesh pads. The nib is now much more pleasant to write with, but it is not a Fine nib. It writes the same line width as my older Frontier Medium. This nib will be going back to the stones for re-shaping.

The two Wing Sung nibs weren't nearly so bad. They were only slightly mis-aligned, and were easily fixed. Then, a little smoothing on a nail buffing pad, and they are now pleasant to write with. In fact, the Fine is now butter-smooth.

So, I have a sample of 3 nibs, 2 x Wing Sung China and 1 x Parker India. This is the first time ever I have had to do any work at all on a Parker nib, and I have been buying them now for 40 years. I can only say - avoid the new batch of Parker Frontiers. I was a bit disappointed with the Wing Sung nibs, but they needed much less work to get them performing properly. The Wing Sung is a worthwhile purchase if you are willing to put 10 minutes' work into the nibs. The Frontier, though, avoid. It is too expensive to then have to turn around and put that much work just to get an acceptable pen.

[Kev]

are you having any troubles with pilot cartridges, in ws659?

[dcwaites]

I haven't tried any yet. I am using the converter that came with it, which looks to be a longer version of the Pilot Con-50