Nakaya Writing Experience

[jskywalker]

Hi,

 

I would like to seek some opinion on Nakaya nib writing experience.

 

I'm currently considering to purchase a Nakaya with SM nib.

 

I have a Platinum President M and a Izumo M nib. Both nibs write with feedback that's too much for my liking.

 

I came from Pelikan M600 and M800, Parker Duofold and Mont Blanc 146. All these gave me butter smooth writing experience.

 

I'm afraid that the Nakaya behaves like the President or Izumo. Is this true ? Are they also writes with feedback ?

 

Of the big 3 Japanese brands, I find Sailor KOP and their 21k series most acceptable. Pilot 743 with the size 15 nibs are a close second.

 

How does the Nakaya perform ? or should I forget about it and get a Namiki instead ?

[jar]

If you like how Pilot nibs feel then you will most likely prefer a Pilot pen over a Platinum pen.

[Uncial]

I have a Platinum 3776 which I still own, use and enjoy (in a medium nib). It has a curious touch of feedback, but it doesn't irritate me. I went through three nibs on my Nakaya and I still don't like them. I couldn't write with them at all. Under its own weight the nib would stagger and stick on the page. It did this even on Tomoe River Paper leading me to believe initially that I had a faulty nib. I have since been assured by others that this is the way the nibs are; still others insist their nibs are super smooth. My advice would be to get your hands on at least one example to try for yourself. It's an awful lot of money to spend on something that, if it doesn't suit you, will languish forever in a drawer.

[minddance]

Platinum 3776 is super feedbacky and dry. It is not a matter of whether one likes it or not but whether it is present or not. Even the broad is bone dry and not without feedback. I am not sure about Nakaya. If they (Platinum) must insist on transferring the 3776 nib feel and feed to Nakaya, then it is nowhere near a Pelikan or Mont Blanc. I have not tried a Parker Duofold so I wouldn't know.

[jar]

Platinum 3776 is super feedbacky and dry. It is not a matter of whether one likes it or not but whether it is present or not. Even the broad is bone dry and not without feedback.

Mine aren't but it is only a small sample of less than two dozen pens.

[Bluey]

Apart from the SF nib which tends to be drier, you will likely find all Platinums/Nakayas to be in the middle but slightly more towards the wet side.

They have the most feedback of the big 3 though.

Edited March 17, 2018 by Bluey

[farazqamar]

A few passes over 12000 grit micro mesh can make it buttery smooth.

[ENewton]

Mine aren't but it is only a small sample of less than two dozen pens.

 

My much smaller sample of one Platinum 3776 is smooth and wet.

[JonSzanto]

Platinum 3776 is super feedbacky and dry. It is not a matter of whether one likes it or not but whether it is present or not. Even the broad is bone dry and not without feedback. I am not sure about Nakaya. If they (Platinum) must insist on transferring the 3776 nib feel and feed to Nakaya, then it is nowhere near a Pelikan or Mont Blanc. I have not tried a Parker Duofold so I wouldn't know.

 

If I ever followed advice like the above I wouldn't own half a dozen 3776s and a couple of Nakayas. None of the above paragraph has been in my experience. The nibs run from very smooth to those with a small amount of surface feedback, which I don't happen to mind. I don't have, nor have I had, any flow issues.

 

To the OP: all things being equal, the Nakaya doesn't sound like the pen you'll enjoy, and I imagine the Pilot nib (assuming you don't get any of these swanked up by a nibmeister) would be a better choice.

[Freddy]

minddance, on 17 Mar 2018 - 07:52, said:

Platinum 3776 is super feedbacky and dry. It is not a matter of whether one likes it or not but whether it is present or not. Even the broad is bone dry and not without feedback. I am not sure about Nakaya. If they (Platinum) must insist on transferring the 3776 nib feel and feed to Nakaya, then it is nowhere near a Pelikan or Mont Blanc. I have not tried a Parker Duofold so I wouldn't know.

If I ever followed advice like the above I wouldn't own half a dozen 3776s and a couple of Nakayas. None of the above paragraph has been in my experience. The nibs run from very smooth to those with a small amount of surface feedback, which I don't happen to mind. I don't have, nor have I had, any flow issues.

To the OP: all things being equal, the Nakaya doesn't sound like the pen you'll enjoy, and I imagine the Pilot nib (assuming you don't get any of these swanked up by a nibmeister) would be a better choice.

Or.....nihi sequitur geminis ex particularibus unquam......

Some men are rich.....Some men are a brain pipe {Brain Pipe {n} Stupid person who has no use for intelligent insight.}

Therefore some rich men are a brain pipe..........

Redactin' see below..................

I have met quite a few brain pipes..and not all folks are brain pipes....However, most Brain Pipes are

Spin consistent...{Spin Consistent having press or hype that doesn't match the facts.}

{freakin' happy smiley facetimethingie}

Fred

Edited March 17, 2018 by Freddy

[jmccarty3]

I have a Nakaya with a soft medium nib that I like very much--same for my other two with oblique and stub nibs. Yes, they have a little feedback, but that's their nature. These are more like Platinum 3776 nibs than Platinum President nibs. I had two Izumos, one with a fine and one with a medium, and couldn't stand either one. The US rep switched them out to broads for me, and now I like them just fine. Just make sure when you order your Nakaya that you specify a high flow.

[rudyhou]

Nakaya nibs are pretty much Platinum nibs, as they basically are the same company. Sailor nibs also give a certain 'feedback' nib experience. i like these two brands for their 'feedback' nib feel. if you dislike a 'feedback' on your nib performance, best stick with Pilot or Namiki instead. their nibs are butter smooth compared to Platinum and Sailor nibs.

[Kodiac136]

Nakayas are beautiful pens, but the nibs -- to me -- feel basic and unremarkable in comparison to the rest of the pen.

[ridiculopathy]

I have read on these boards that writing with a Platinum nib is like writing with a pencil, and I would agree. I also agree with most everyone else that you'd probably enjoy the writing experience of a Pilot/Namiki more.

[JunkyardSam]

I can't comment on Nakaya but I've owned 10 Platinum 3776 Century pens and one Platinum President. These pens arrive all over the place in terms of wetness.

 

At least 3 of them arrived absolutely needing adjustment to write at all. The issue was always the tines being so incredibly tight that no ink would pass through them.

 

Some people said "well that's because you got your 3776 from Amazon." So I got one from a shop in Japan. Another from Pisuke2005. And I just got a 3776 Oshino from Pen Chalet.

 

Once again, this new one incredibly dry -- unusably dry. It would only make a mark on downstrokes and a very dry one at that... And it would skip.

 

Luckily this issue is easy to fix and took under 10 minutes... now the pen writes beautifully.

 

The problem is many people new to pens don't know how to troubleshoot the issue and they mistake the dryness for scratchiness. Next think you know they're micromeshing their pens with 'Goulet Smoothing Kits' and unnecessarily eating away at the their tipping material when it was really just a matter of overly tight tines restricting flow.

 

 

My real point here is this is one of the reasons people report entirely different experiences with fountain pens. You can get two of the exact same model and they can feel completely different.

 

 

Also - it can make a difference depending on where you order your pen. I've heard people say, "Pilot has exceptional quality control. Every pen I've purchased has written perfectly out of the box." -- And then you find out they ordered from a premium retailer like Tokyo Quill Shop who checks the pen to ensure wetness and smoothness before sending out.

 

Meanwhile another person could get untested pens that need adjustment to write.

 

 

A fountain pen owner needs to be prepared to either send a pen off for adjustment or better yet -- know how to tune a nib themselves... because this issue can happen with any brand.

 

 

I've had unusably dry pens from Pilot, Sailor, Platinum, and Lamy. Price point doesn't even seem to make a difference.

 

So to wrap this up -- the first order of issue is making sure a Nakaya has an appropriate flow because any nib that is running dry will have incredible amounts of feedback. We're talking about metal scraping paper here.

[dapprman]

I can't comment on Nakaya but I've owned 10 Platinum 3776 Century pens and one Platinum President. These pens arrive all over the place in terms of wetness.

 

<snip>

 

So to wrap this up -- the first order of issue is making sure a Nakaya has an appropriate flow because any nib that is running dry will have incredible amounts of feedback. We're talking about metal scraping paper here.

Shouldn't be an issue. The big difference is that, while the Nakaya nibs are the same as on the 3776), everyone is hand tested and tuned by a top nib specialist so should write near perfectly out of the box, and if ordered directly from them you can even specify how the nib is tuned,

In every review I've read of a poor Nakaya nib experience , the pen has been ordered via a very well respected US pen shop who also fiddle with the nibs before sending them out - they have a great reputation for nib tuning, but have screwed up Nakaya nibs as a result.

[JonSzanto]

In every review I've read of a poor Nakaya nib experience , the pen has been ordered via a very well respected US pen shop who also fiddle with the nibs before sending them out - they have a great reputation for nib tuning, but have screwed up Nakaya nibs as a result.

 

Which is, of course, just more anecdotal evidence. My first Nakaya was directly through John and his shop, and he indeed did put a specific grind on the nib for me after watching me write with a pen for a few minutes and taking notes. The pen arrived a few days later (I purchased 'live' at the LA Pen Show) and it was immediately - and remains to this day - one of my favorite pen / nib combinations. I offer this not as argumentation, but to simply counter someone else's misreading of your post to mean that any Nakaya that goes through that shop is going to be hosed. That simply isn't the case.

[dapprman]

 

Which is, of course, just more anecdotal evidence. My first Nakaya was directly through John and his shop, and he indeed did put a specific grind on the nib for me after watching me write with a pen for a few minutes and taking notes. The pen arrived a few days later (I purchased 'live' at the LA Pen Show) and it was immediately - and remains to this day - one of my favorite pen / nib combinations. I offer this not as argumentation, but to simply counter someone else's misreading of your post to mean that any Nakaya that goes through that shop is going to be hosed. That simply isn't the case.

I was purposely not including the name of the shop and yes it is anecdotal - but so is every review post on here.

 

Hunt for them yourselves, there are three or four threads on this forum about how some one has bought a Nakaya based upon the reviews of others and found problems with the nib and/or ink flow - every one of them got their pen from the same US based vendor.

 

Now I have no problem with some one ordering a larger nib and getting a nib meister to grind it down to their preference (though I'd still strongly recommend getting the pen directly from Nakaya and let them do it), however to hear that he or one of his people will not automatically 'fix' nibs they do not feel are right unless you ask otherwise them not to sets major alarm bells ringing for me.

--

edited to remove anything identifiable

Edited March 31, 2018 by dapprman

[JonSzanto]

I was purposely not including the name of the shop...

 

Right... except everything about what you wrote clearly identified the business in question, and it isn't like you get points for simply not typing out the name. We're adults here, yeah?

 

I've also heard a number of recountings of fairly serious issues with pens directly from Nakaya and between language issues and the long posting it can be difficult to make right. Things *do* happen and I take that into account. As to having a nib ground by them as opposed to a favored nib person who knows your own writing preferences, that is up to you. From my perspective, it makes no sense. Both Mr. Mottishaw and Mike Masuyama know how I like my pens done and they are masters, and I have no qualms about their work as opposed to the Nakaya shop itself.

 

I doubt there is a business on the planet that doesn't occasionally have issues and I try to look at the big picture - how long have they been in business, how much repeat business do they do, how many satisfied customers, will they make things right if they aren't good initially. I'll wager CFP has done well on all these counts. I still expect to see an occasional post that has a negative experience with them, because that is how forums and social platforms work. As in all things in life, YMMV.

[dapprman]

I've removed from my second post anything that identifies the individual or company, I advise you to do so from your original reply as yo clearly identified him to many as well.

 

I agree all have bad days. All the famous nib tuners (as at least one of them hates the term nib meister) has made mistakes over the years, though normally they hold their hands up to those and try to fix things. Think it's the posting here from a member in Barbados who found said nib tuner claimed the fault was not his - owner of pen (who eventually sold it) was told it was probably down to the humidity where he lives (he never had a problem with any of his other pens so assumed the fault was with Nakaya). Thread is on here.

 

It takes years to build up a reputation and the nib tuner we're talking about has done massive amounts of work, but this is not a case of him fiddling with sub $100 pens he feels he can improve, it's pens starting at $500 and going in to the thousands. As I mentioned I've got no problems if the owner asks him to make the changes (assuming it is him doing the work) it's when they don't.