Platinum 3776 Improved?

[Andrea_R]

I recently was being luck enough to get a nakaya sporting a sf on reddit and i compared its nib to a 3776 sf at a meet-up with other penfriends.

There was a remarkable difference with the nakaya tuned by Jessica, a Mottishaw employee, with a steady flow (i wouldnt call that nib a wet writer) and well tuned nib, while the 3776 nib was noticeable drier . YMMV

[dapprman]

Don't forget each Nakaya nib is hand tested and tuned by highly experienced and highly skilled nibmeister at Nakaya (which is why I still do not understand why John Mottishaw and his staff insist on fiddling with them without being asked)

[almoore]

I bought a 3776 about 18 months ago with a medium nib and it's not a patch on my Custom 74 and I was put off the 3776 but this year I decided to dabble again and bought a 3776 with a music nib. The music nib is something else; it's perfectly smooth and a delight to use.

 

I am thinking of another 3776 later this year but that will be a broad nib, I get the feeling the bigger Platinum nibs are smoother to use but that's just my two cents.

 

Al

[CassieC]

I bought a 3776 soft fine about a year ago. it's very scratchy, even on the very fine papers.

I thought more writing with it will improve the issue, I forced myself to write with it almost every day, for at least 30min, about 2 months. it's getting easier to use, but still very scratchy compared with any other pen I own/tried. I don't know if its the pen getting better as I wrote with it more, OR I am getting better to know how carefully I need to write in a certain angle/speed/etc.

 

the good thing is the 3776 I got is a maki-e, it's now on my display case, looking pretty, I doubt I would use it again.

[A Smug Dill]

I find it interesting, although not entirely surprising, that at least on here it seems that whenever the Platinum #3776 range of fountain pens is discussed (beyond instances of an owner merely mentioning it in passing, possibly among a bunch of different makes and models) the:

• Soft Fine nibs;
• Ultra Extra Fine nibs; and/or
• Coarse nibs

almost always end up becoming the focus (in that descending order of likelihood), as if they were what the #3776 nibs are all about (Why else would you buy a #3776 with any other nib width grade that is common to other brands, uh-huh?) or they were the most popular or commonly sold nibs. Considering the number of models in the #3776 family that don't offer those nibs as options, I'll happily wager that they are the least commonly sold nibs by volume across all #3776 pen sales.

I have two #3776 pens with SF nibs — or three, if you count the one I bought for my fiancée — and six with F nibs. The SF nibs have their good points, but I certainly wouldn't say they're the best nibs with the #3776 imprint that Platinum has to offer, or the easiest nibs to handle if one care about controlling the line width/variation in his/her handwriting. They are relatively dry and put down narrower lines than #3776 F nibs if or when you write with a light hand, and if you apply enough pressure for the tines to yield and put down wider lines (on par with F nibs or broader), in all likelihood you will feel more friction than if you were using a 'hard' regular #3776 nib designed to deliver those line widths, and it will require noticeably more effort to overcome that friction and get the nib moving along.

Call me a doubting Thomas, but I just don't understand when some folks say soft nibs make it easier for them to write with a fountain pen in everyday handwriting. In my experience, they take more effort and more concentration to use properly, even when I'm not trying to write with any semblance of some calligraphic hand. The Pilot #10 14K gold Fine nib on the Custom Kaede and large 21K gold Fine nibs on Sailor Professional Gear/Profit21 models are not designated as Soft, but have some give all the same and they are forgiving; you can vary your hand pressure (deliberately or inadvertently) and get a disproportionately small change in the line width, and so the shape of the writing output is quite closely regulated.

 

Not so with the #3776 SF nibs. If you want a cushioned writing experience that puts down closely regulated lines, they are most likely the wrong tools. If you want a relatively effortless way to produce controlled line variation that is readily noticeable by any reader of your handwriting, the SF nibs are probably still the wrong tools because they actually require quite a bit of effort to handle with precise control.

 

So I'm not surprised some people think poorly of #3776 nibs when their first experiences are with the SF nibs, and probably with some misplaced expectations of how the nibs are designed to behave. I think the #3776 nibs are generally very well made across the board irrespective of nib width grade, but I simply don't enjoy using the SF nibs all that much in spite of the high quality, whereas I have a better time with any of the five #3776 F nibs I've used (while the sixth pen has never been inked as yet).

Edited March 22, 2019 by A Smug Dill

[TSherbs]

Well put, Dills. I was watching a video today of someone using the Elabo (I know, a different brand) SEF, and I was struck by how well the nib worked for Asian character writing but then how awkward it seemed for connected letter writing. It really does depend on how one expects to use the pen.

 

.

Edited March 22, 2019 by TSherbs

[ethernautrix]

Briefly:

 

I bought two 3776s to harvest their UEF nibs and one 3776 Bounce with a steel EF for my Nakayas. (The second UEF cos I lost the Nakaya Piccolo paired with the first one.)

 

I love the steel EF nib, btw. It's in daily use.

 

I also have a Pilot Falcon (SEF) that vies with PO for favorite-ever nib. I use it for print and cursive and a hybrid of both (English only... well, Polish, too, ahem) and drawing. I don't apply pressure or write in any of the specialized hands. I get a hint of line variation, which I enjoy very much.

[geodesigner]

I find it interesting, although not entirely surprising, that at least on here it seems that whenever the Platinum #3776 range of fountain pens is discussed (beyond instances of an owner merely mentioning it in passing, possibly among a bunch of different makes and models) the:

• Soft Fine nibs;
• Ultra Extra Fine nibs; and/or
• Coarse nibs

almost always end up becoming the focus (in that descending order of likelihood), as if they were what the #3776 nibs are all about (Why else would you buy a #3776 with any other nib width grade that is common to other brands, uh-huh?) or they were the most popular or commonly sold nibs. Considering the number of models in the #3776 family that don't offer those nibs as options, I'll happily wager that they are the least commonly sold nibs by volume across all #3776 pen sales.

 

I have two #3776 pens with SF nibs — or three, if you count the one I bought for my fiancée — and six with F nibs. The SF nibs have their good points, but I certainly wouldn't say they're the best nibs with the #3776 imprint that Platinum has to offer, or the easiest nibs to handle if one care about controlling the line width/variation in his/her handwriting. They are relatively dry and put down narrower lines than #3776 F nibs if or when you write with a light hand, and if you apply enough pressure for the tines to yield and put down wider lines (on par with F nibs or broader), in all likelihood you will feel more friction than if you were using a 'hard' regular #3776 nib designed to deliver those line widths, and it will require noticeably more effort to overcome that friction and get the nib moving along.

 

Call me a doubting Thomas, but I just don't understand when some folks say soft nibs make it easier for them to write with a fountain pen in everyday handwriting. In my experience, they take more effort and more concentration to use properly, even when I'm not trying to write with any semblance of some calligraphic hand. The Pilot #10 14K gold Fine nib on the Custom Kaede and large 21K gold Fine nibs on Sailor Professional Gear/Profit21 models are not designated as Soft, but have some give all the same and they are forgiving; you can vary your hand pressure (deliberately or inadvertently) and get a disproportionately small change in the line width, and so the shape of the writing output is quite closely regulated.

 

Not so with the #3776 SF nibs. If you want a cushioned writing experience that puts down closely regulated lines, they are most likely the wrong tools. If you want a relatively effortless way to produce controlled line variation that is readily noticeable by any reader of your handwriting, the SF nibs are probably still the wrong tools because they actually require quite a bit of effort to handle with precise control.

 

So I'm not surprised some people think poorly of #3776 nibs when their first experiences are with the SF nibs, and probably with some misplaced expectations of how the nibs are designed to behave. I think the #3776 nibs are generally very well made across the board irrespective of nib width grade, but I simply don't enjoy using the SF nibs all that much in spite of the high quality, whereas I have a better time with any of the five #3776 F nibs I've used (while the sixth pen has never been inked as yet).

 

Excellent observations.

[TSherbs]

Briefly:

 

I bought two 3776s to harvest their UEF nibs and one 3776 Bounce with a steel EF for my Nakayas. (The second UEF cos I lost the Nakaya Piccolo paired with the first one.)

 

I love the steel EF nib, btw. It's in daily use.

 

I also have a Pilot Falcon (SEF) that vies with PO for favorite-ever nib. I use it for print and cursive and a hybrid of both (English only... well, Polish, too, ahem) and drawing. I don't apply pressure or write in any of the specialized hands. I get a hint of line variation, which I enjoy very much.

Wow, my hat is off to you. I don't write easily or lightly. I could not do that.

[A Smug Dill]

As much as I'm loath to say this, since I expect the "Feedback is undesirable, mmkay?" crowd to jump right on it with deliberate misinterpretation, the sharp Platinum #3776 SF nibs dragging on paper surfaces presented a problem for me, that eventually became too much to leave well alone. Specifically, because the nibs are soft and elastic, I was finding that the nibs were being pulled away from the feeds slightly with any downstroke I made with more-than-trivial hand pressure, and it caused a clickety-clack sound and sensation whenever I wrote long strings of connected letters in English, which was distracting, annoying and made the pens feel cheap.

 

At the risk of making the needlepoint-narrow SF nibs broader, I decided to smoothen them with a nail buffer block; and, yes, they now leave thicker lines than before, but the subjective writing experience improved with the quelling of the clickety-clack. Thankfully, they still write much, much finer than the Platinum #3776 SM nib:

 

 

I think the different shape of the SEF nibs on the Pilot Elabo/Falcon, which writes equally as finely, prevented the clickety-clack issue from arising in the use of those pens.

[TSherbs]

I really appreciate this kind of comparative photo from out in the wild ^^^

[A Smug Dill]

I really appreciate this kind of comparative photo from out in the wild ^^^

Sure. I put some comparison photos up a while back, in the "Q: I Use Western Fine Nibs. What Is The Japanese Equivalent?" thread.