Cheap Vs $$$$$ Worth The Investment?

[Innosint]

I think it really depends person to person.

 

I buy pens for either aesthetic/craftsmanship, mechanic, or for general use, I'm wailling to pay extra for craftman ship and designed mechanic becuase that's what intrest me

 

I got fairly decent at tuning nibs, so honestly.... what I received doesn't really bothered me. some of my 20-50 dollar pens write fine just right out of the box, and yet, some needs some adjustment.

 

the same applied to $100+ pens. and honestly... at the end of the day, most of the $500+ use the same nib as ~$100 pens with just fancier material or design, so i really didn't' expect them to have better care/tuned nibs.

As someone that tends to take things into his own hands and sometimes modify things.... nibs that didn't come in and write perfectly is not exactly a big issue since no nib meisters cannot tune for an unknown person's writing habit.

 

but at the same time, if the nib was shipped damaged, or has some integral parts missing or screwed or, don't expected me to swallow the pill either.

Edited April 22, 2019 by Innosint

[DiveDr]

Well, US$500 or US$600 would barely get you an entry-level Nakaya pen. As for Pilot/Namiki, that price point isn't going to get you the (not necessarily limited edition) urushi and/or maki-e pens for which the company is famous. Perhaps you don't count the texture of the pen barrel and/or section as part of the experience, or the visual impact of seeing a beautifully crafted and/or decorated pen body in one's hand while writing. I do, however; the feel of my Platinum #3776 with a sandblasted briar shell body is entirely different from a #3776 yakusugi, and different again from a #3776 celluloid, and different again from a #3776 Century Bourgogne, even though the nibs are essentially the same on all of them. Then, the shallow-relief of the text of the Heart Sutra on the barrel of my Pilot 'Hannya Shingyo' is just... entirely something else.

 

As for high-end nibs, I haven't tried writing with a Sailor pen fitted with a Naginata King Eagle nib, but I daresay it's not an experience to be equalled by writing with any other nib. (Whether that is to the individual's tastes is a different question.) Even back when Sailor was still making those nibs, simply sporting such a nib on a stock standard, plain black Profit21 body would be enough to push the price past the US$500 level, and then much more again if someone wanted it on a Sailor Professional Gear Realo pen or some such.

 

Perhaps my hand is too hard and my writing style too coarse but Sailor pens have been a disappointment for me, Namiki not so. Again, perhaps my writing style does not lend itself to those nibs, I am a hard presser not a light stroker. That has a lot to do with how a nib will perform for the writer. Not everyone has a delicate finger, some of us have push harder to get the line accurate when writing. That having been said, some really inexpensive pens in my collection write better than some really expensive monsters! That said, guessing all things considered, YMMV!

[DrDebG]

Hmmm . . . re-reading this thread has really made me wonder about something. What about the almost intangible sensory experience?

 

If someone were to blindfold you, then hand you a pen - one of your own pens - and ask you to write something - anything - which you did. Then they took that pen from your had, then handed you another pen - again, one of your own pens - and asked you to do the same thing. Before the blindfold is taken away, would you be able to honestly say which pen was the more expensive pen, particularly if both pens were of the same width, weight

 

So . . . I thought I would try it. I had my husband come to my desk and pick out 4 of my pens - 2 "expensive" pens and then 2 "cheap" pens that were similar weight, material, etc. This wasn't too difficult since I do like acrylic/resin type of pens. We went to his desk and with paper in front of me, my husband handed me the first pen. Within seconds I knew which pen it was before I even wrote with the pen. He handed me another. Yep, I knew that one too. And the same with all four pens. BUT, I knew them by their "feel" not by their writing experience. Three of the four wrote almost exactly the same. The fourth I knew because it has a very slight feedback.

 

My point here is that the "feel" of the pen has almost as much to do with the pen as the writing experience. And to be very honest, very few of my cheap pens "feel" as good in my hand as some of my more expensive pens i.e. my Montblanc 146 and my Franklin Christoph Panther. I derive a great deal of satisfaction and comfort writing with these pens.

[Addertooth]

Some tangents, but related.

I collect modern manufactured Asian swords. They are made with many of the traditional design cues as the ancient ones (pattern steel, fancy laminations such as SanMai, Shihozume, Gyaku Kobuse, etc.). Small details such as the Tsuka Maki (the wrapping of the handle), are important. These swords suffer from the same kinds of defects and flaws seen in fountain pens (quality control issues). It is viewed that as you pay more, and get a "flagship sword", that cost is not an insurance against flaws, rather, the flaw rate tends to go "generally" down as price goes up. The manufacturer's willingness to rectify flaws gets better as you pay more as well. And then, there are the young and hungry companies, which produce superior products (on the average), at an entry price point. They are trying to make a name for themselves. Most people who collect these swords instantly recognize the brands which have an affinity for producing swords of a consistently high quality, without apparent regard for the price. We also recognize the brands which make very attractive looking high-priced swords, but under the stress of competition cutting have an excessive failure rate (blades that bend or break too easily). With swords, price does not assure quality. There is constant feedback among users in the forums, which lets other users know when Brand X is slipping in their quality control. Brands rise and fall, few remain consistently near the top.

 

The same is true for the China I collect. Marquis brands tend to see certain flaws as "acceptable for sale", which previously would have ended in the discard pile. It is nearly impossible to find a Noritake plate which has discernable warpage which was made prior to 1955. Today, I can go to a high end China shop and "rock" several modern Noritake plate back and forth in a stack due to the "currently acceptable" firing warpage.

 

Some pen brands live off the reputation they built decades ago, and they hope the public does not realize their quality control has slipped over time. They shift to less expensive and less enduring materials in their products. Lets face it, Hard Rubber and properly cured Celluloid are hard to beat... they have both passed the "test of time". Many modern plastics have failed, especially if they are frequently "light struck". In my opinion, the zenith material for feeds is hard rubber/ebonite. Certainly you can make a feed out of plastic, but then you must creatively shape it to get similar performance. I cannot tell you how many fins/ribs I have seen broken off the feeds of more modern pens which had feeds made of plastic.

 

The ultimate subjective test is how it writes. I am an evil lefty, who initially had a problem with dragging my hand across my writing. For this reason, wet pens were problematic for me (until I broke myself of dragging my hand across the wet ink). At first I preferred dry pens, now I love wet pens. I tend to hold my pen at 45 degrees, not all nibs are optimized for this holding angle. For nibs which are ground for this holding angle, they performed well out of the box. For a person who holds at a steeper, or shallower angle, my favorite nibs would seem absolutely awful to them. Not everyone holds pens at the same angle, I would not expect the same nib to perform equally well for everyone. Polish level and drag are important to me. I tend to like my nibs smoother than some people who favor more feedback. I even got a comment of "I cannot control this pen, it glides too easily" from a co-worker. A good nib for me, was unacceptable to him. These organic differences in users tends to strongly skew how a Pen is perceived. I do believe that every pen (no matter how well constructed) needs to be tuned for the desires of the owner.

 

Some brands specialized for a type of user. The early Waterman pens tended to be Wet, Flexy, and Smooth. Stiff nibs they stamped with Manifold, as this was a divergence from their typical writing experience. The Sheaffer Triumph nibs tended to be uniformly stiff (with very limited exceptions), and were optimized to users who were seeking that kind of writing experience.

 

Pens can be rightfully judged as flawed if they experience skips, changes in ink flow with the duration of the write, leaks, hard starts, and poor ink capacity. Very small pens can be forgiven for holding less ink, as physics are largely immutable. Other factors do influence my "likes". I dislike pens that dry out in a week. I like pens that I can pick up after ignoring two weeks and instantly leave a line. As for style of body, that is such a personal taste that it does not merit discussion, nor does bling-level. Ultimately, I expect to pick up a pen and write with it. I want it to leave a good line and not be too fussy.

 

Summary: Price is not a promise of Quality. A pen frequently needs to be tuned to your hand to expose the hidden greatness, as no two people hold the pen and write in the exact same fashion.

Edited September 8, 2019 by Addertooth

[A Smug Dill]

Pens can be rightfully judged as flawed if they experience skips, changes in ink flow with the duration of the write, leaks, hard starts, and poor ink capacity. Very small pens can be forgiven for holding less ink, as physics are largely immutable.

There's a logical difference between a shortcoming and a flaw. There is no inherent promise, no express contract and no agreed design principle (with the manufacturer, who is in the driving seat) that maximising the size of the ink reservoir as far as the form factor of the pen will permit is a key objective. Being able to reuse the same converter across different pen models of the same brand, on the other hand, is a recognised goal that delivers some benefit to both manufacturer and customer of the brand. I have (roughly) three dozen Platinum pens and three dozen Sailor pens, and I'm very glad they all use the "standard" converters of the respective brands, instead of the Sailor Pro Gear having a different converter from the Sailor Pro Gear Slim, or the Platinum Izumo having a different converter from the Platinum PTL-5000A, just because the models have different-sized barrels. If 0.5ml of ink is insufficient for a particular application, then it's a shortcoming of the pen that I as the user have to be mindful of, and perhaps try to work around for my own benefit, but that doesn't mean the model has either a design or manufacturing flaw.

 

Summary: Price is not a promise of Quality.

Agreed.

 

A pen frequently needs to be tuned to your hand to expose the hidden greatness, as no two people hold the pen and write in the exact same fashion.

Alternatively, the owner has to learn some new skills as its wielder, or hand the pen to someone else, for the inherent greatness to be exposed, because the user's shortcoming may be what is stopping the pen from shining as-is.

[Addertooth]

Smug,

 

I will politely demur, as a pen is a tool which can be adjusted for your hand, it should be adjusted to work best for you. If you find yourself holding a pen at an angle which is unatural for you, your use of it will suffer. All of the pens I use frequently have been tuned for my natural way of holding the pen, unless by good fortune it worked right out of the box. Lefties are notorious for holding a pen in an odd fashion; I do not hold or write like a typical Right-handed user. Pens which are purchased for future resale are left in their natural state. On the flip side, I have only owned one car which did not get significantly modified to meet my tastes either.

[A Smug Dill]

Not everyone can handle writing with a crisp italic nib, at least to start with; there was certainly a learning curve for me. Just because I couldn't get the pen to write consistently without skipping and show the line variation one would expect of a crisp italic nib, doesn't mean it should be tuned or adjusted so I could use it to make up for my lack of skill yet to be developed. Similarly, it takes practice to be able to get the best out of a Sailor Zoom nib or a Naginata Concord nib, etc.

 

It's not a matter of how much the pen or nib costs, though. Both an 18K gold Italic nib on an Aurora and a "cheap" steel CM nib on a Pilot Plumix can be unforgiving if the pen is rotated at a slight angle, while an Italic nib on a Lamy priced between the two can be far more accommodating of the user's lack of precise control.

[Addertooth]

I would certainly agree on the rotation for Italic Nibs, that IS something which the user needs to get right, and no adjustment of the nib will address this without losing the crispness of the nib.

[Zou]

For me Pilot and Sailor have been very consistent. I own two dozen or so pens, but they all write. Three of them needed a bit of work, or at least had a bit of a learning curve. Some of them I like the way they write slightly better than others. The ones that didn't work were size 5 pilot nibs. Size 10 and up were good out of the box, except for a stub which I think I just needed to learn how to hold.

I think when people say a pen doesn't write well, they mean they don't think it is wet enough, or they don't like the variation in the up stroke. If I'm going to say a pen doesn't write, I mean that it doesn't write under its own weight (or a touch more if the pen is very light in the first place), or it skips constantly, or it otherwise frustrates the act of putting words onto a page. I don't think it's fair to say it doesn't write well just because on the spectrum of dry to wet it's not your preference. I also think that you need to be a little forgiving of lower end pens which were designed to write on more absorbent paper, that expensive, slick paper is not necessary the best writing surface for all fountain pens. Pens which write drier will naturally take on a better variety of paper types, will write a finer line... A person could easily complain that your wet writing monsters just bleed through everything and are useless.

Finally, I don't think you buy an expensive pen because it is going to write so much better. You buy it because it is nice to have nice things. Because you're curious what it's like. Because it's an attainable luxury for you, or because it is an expression of your affluence, part of a fantasy of being cultured and noble. I think pens should still write, I think you shouldn't support brands which burn you with products that don't work and no way to correct them without further expense, but the act of writing itself... That's something I'm happy to say belongs to everyone, that you don't need to be very affluent to have a very good writing experience. The humble pencil is a very nice writing experience. A 15 or 20 dollar fountain pen might be someone's fountain pen to last a lifetime. I'm glad that people don't have to pay $1000 to enjoy that.

Edited September 8, 2019 by Zou

[bemon]

For me, the point of diminishing return happens after the $200 mark. Between $150 to $200 I should be able to get something with all the feature specs I like, whether it be a piston fill or gold nib for example, and it should write well out of the box. It should also be something I can use reliably for years too. I think I achieved this with the Pilot Vanishing Point and Lamy 2000.

 

Above the $200 mark you start to pay for trim material and brand cache. Anyone who's read my various Pelikan gripes knows where I'm coming from here.

 

This of course depends on whether or not you agree that the law of diminishing return applies to the way a pen behaves on paper and not how it looks in your hand. And to be clear, I have pens that are north of the $200 mark (I carry a GVFC Classic along with my other EDC), but the extra $$$ I put into it doesn't equate to a better writing experience.