Private Reserve Lake Placid Blue Vs. Pilot Iroshizuku Asa-Gao

[Antenociticus]

I've been testing both ink samples and inexpensive Chinese pens. Yesterday I put some Private Reserve Lake Placid Blue into a Wing Sung 6359, and today I inked a Moonman 600S with some Pilot Iroshizuku Asa-Gao.

 

I wasn't really thinking about them being similar colours. I've been working my way through the various Private Reserve blues, and today something reminded me that I'd been meaning to look at Asa-Gao.

 

I was amazed to find the product of these two pen-and-ink combos to be virtually identical. And so I did an off-the-cuff side-by-side comparison on a page in an A6 Leuchtturm 1917.

 

You can see some differences at the top of the page, but nothing that couldn't be explained by the Moonman laying down more ink. Both pens have F nibs, but they're different nibs from different makers.

 

The lines of text at the bottom were written alternately with one pen and the other. I find it hard to see any difference at all.

 

Nothing remotely scientific about this. Just a doodle for my own amusement, but I thought the result was interesting. The image is an iPhone snap under artificial light after some rudimentary photoshopping.

 

[senzen]

Interesting, with finer nibs Asa Gao can look lighter, which I prefer.

[lapis]

Nice! Since I prefer (and love only) broad nibs, both will (and do) look darker than with a fine nib. In any case I still prefer asa gao because it looks less placid i.e. richer, stronger.

[welch]

I like them both, and have used both for ten years or so. Always thought that Lake Placid was lighter and brighter. Asa-gao is one of my two or three daily inks because it is just dark and purple enough.

[USG]

Hi All

I have a comment about Private Reserve Lake Placid Blue.  I recently ordered a few bottles of Private Reserve blue inks and this is what I've found.  Vintage Lake Placid Blue, maybe 15+ years old was a perfect match for new Private Reserve American Blue.  New Lake Placid blue had a lighter cast that "leaned" toward a lavender rather than the bright blue of the original Lake Placid or the new American Blue.  When Yafa bought Private Reserve they reformulated many of the inks and according to the new inks I received, they relabeled the former Lake Placid Blue formula, American Blue and came up with a new shade, that doesn't match any of my vintage Private Reserve Blues, which they are now calling Lake Placid Blue.

 

I don't know how revealing this quick and dirty cell phone pic is but here it is anyway.  I tapped the white eye dropper in PhotoShop in the enlargement to see if it made the difference more noticable, but the cell phone camera is what it is.  By eye, the new Lake Placid blue is obviously a completely different color.

 

New Lake Placid Blue Pen is a Jinhao x159 with a medium nib

New American Blue Pen is a Jinhao 80 with a Medium Lamy nib

The Vintage Lake Placid Blue Pen is a Lamy 2K with an OM nib

[ErrantSmudge]

On 10/21/2022 at 1:18 PM, USG said:

Vintage Lake Placid Blue, maybe 15+ years old was a perfect match for new Private Reserve American Blue.  New Lake Placid blue had a lighter cast that "leaned" toward a lavender rather than the bright blue of the original Lake Placid or the new American Blue.

 

Thank you for this update on the "new" Lake Placid Blue.   Vintage LPB was one of my favorite blues of years past, when Private Reserve first came out on the scene.  It was one of the few "true blues" on the market and I used a lot of it in my pens. 

 

Recently I got a sample of the Yafa formulation of Lake Placid Blue and it did seem a bit flatter and closer to the standard "washable blue" cast of the standard blue inks from pen makers, even if it is still much richer in saturation.  

 

It's useful to know that I should look for American Blue instead to get that same hue, even if I really liked the name "Lake Placid Blue" and the cool, serene images it inspires.

[USG]

I've been fooling around with this ink and if you don't mind a quick cell phone pic I'll show you what I've got....   At first blush the new Lake Placid formulation looks like a pale standard blue but it is not...  (sorry about the smudge, slow drying on Clairefontaine paper)

Up loaded cell phone Pics don't show the colors exactly right.  The LPB leans toward a lavender blue and the Namiki Blue is like a standard blue.  Both inks are a little lighter than they appear in the pics.

 

[ErrantSmudge]

Here's a sample that I made comparing the Yafa Lake Placid Blue against several manufacturer-brand blues, as well as some selected blurples.  I've included a scan and a cellphone photo to better try to capture the differences in color.

 

One thing I notice about the usual manufacturer "washable blue"-type inks is that on some papers (including this paper I used for the test, a Daiso notepad), they tend to fade a few days or weeks after writing even when kept away from light.  Most of the writing on these samples is a few months old.  You can see two examples of Waterman Blue-Black, one written months ago, the other about two weeks ago. 

 

Lake Placid Blue on these samples in real life is slightly darker and more saturated than either the phone or the scanner can capture.  The closest match for the current Lake Placid Blue in this sample chart is probably Pilot Blue, but even there Pilot Blue shows signs of fading whereas Lake Placid does not fade on the page over time.

 

Scan:

Cellphone pic (lightly color-corrected for white balance in an image processing app):

 

[ErrantSmudge]

Here's another set of comparisons, taken from my notebook of ink samples.  These were all done at various times, but the paper for all is Tomoe River.  On TR paper the Yafa formulation of Lake Placid is more saturaded and pure in tone.  The same pen created the Lake Placid samples in this and the preceding scans (a Lamy Studio with M nib).

 

 

 

[USG]

On 10/28/2022 at 1:03 PM, ErrantSmudge said:

Here's another set of comparisons, taken from my notebook of ink samples.  These were all done at various times, but the paper for all is Tomoe River.  On TR paper the Yafa formulation of Lake Placid is more saturaded and pure in tone.  The same pen created the Lake Placid samples in this and the preceding scans (a Lamy Studio with M nib).

 

 

 

 

Those are nice samples and a good reference... but I just got 4 bottles of various, blue, Private Reserve Inks and Lake Placid Blue is no longer that rich blue color in your sample.  That color has now been assigned to American Blue.  The new Lake Placid blue is a lavenderish blue like this below.....

 

LOL, But maybe I'm all wrong because the video that this pic comes from is 5 years old... (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s2fUHdY2BpM&ab_channel=VittaR)

Anyway that's what my new Lake Placid Ink looks like.

 

So, I have no explanation for why my 20yr old Lake Placid blue strongly resembles the New American Blue to the point where I've found them interchangeable.

 

Ha Ha Ha, So now that I've completely contradicted myself, all I can say is that the pic above is what new Lake Placid Blue looks like to me.