Wearever - Difference Between Pacemaker And Meteor?

March 31, 2011

I have a Wearever that I inherited from a friend, and after looking around the web, I'd identified it as a Pacemaker. All the details seemed to fit. I sent it off to Richard Binder for repair, and the note included with it calls it a Wearever Meteor. Okay, Richard knows a lot more about pens than I do, so it's a Meteor.

Still, I'm interested in knowing for myself what identifies this as a Meteor instead of a Pacemaker (solving puzzles like this one is the way I learn), so I did a bit of hunting. I found this page on Pen Hero describing the Pacemaker, which notes that "the Meteor is also a very similar line". But it gives no details of how to tell the two models apart. And I can't find any information on the Meteor at all, other than a few posts here on FPN on how to repair one.

So, can anyone tell me what sets the Meteor apart from the Pacemaker? And does anyone have any history at all on the Meteor? Yes, I do know Wearever are not the most respected pens - and I have my own horrible childhood memory of a Wearever so awful that it sent me scurrying right back to Sheaffer, unwilling to even try another brand for a couple of decades. But it seems worth trying to learn what I can about any pen capable of surviving this long, and this Meteor is a reasonably nice pen.

March 31, 2011

Hello,

I actually restored your pen and recall that the barrel of it is marked Wearever Meteor! One of the benefits of wearing a magnifier helmet all day is one sees all the little details on pens.

It's a very nice pen you got there!

March 31, 2011

I actually restored your pen and recall that the barrel of it is marked Wearever Meteor! One of the benefits of wearing a magnifier helmet all day is one sees all the little details on pens.

It's a very nice pen you got there!

Thanks! That would be one way to tell the difference. Although, even after I just took the pen out to look for the imprint - knowing it was there - I had to hunt for it. So I guess I need to get myself a magnifier pretty quickly.

Yes, it is a nice pen, even if there doesn't seem to be much about it online. For that matter, you did a very nice job on it.

I'm still wondering if anyone knows much about the history of these. Or if there was any difference at all between them and the Pacemaker, and what that difference is. (I'd assume they weren't just marketed under different names, since in that case, it would have been cheaper to avoid stamping any model name on the barrel, and just print up the marketing materials as needed.)

March 31, 2011

I did some further digging, and discovered two things.

I found one post about repairing a Meteor in which someone said, on the side, that the only difference between them and the Pacemaker was a very slight size difference. I don't know if this is accurate, but it is interesting to note. Is there a reason they would have bothered, if the size difference was that slight?

Also, it did note that the Meteor originally had a size 18 sac installed - even though it should have had a size 16 (something about advertising wars and how much ink the pen could hold), and that this caused occasional flooding, easily resolved by putting in a size 16 sac in place of the original. (I'm impressed, the original poster had a Meteor which still had its original sac in working condition; he thought it was mint.) So, for anyone else who may be interested in the Meteor, I'm repeating this information here.

Two: sometimes, it does pay to sift through flea-bay... Notice that this auction ended a few days ago, and the pen didn't sell. For $16 with shipping?!?! How I wish I'd entered the minimum on that one... (I do know I have one already. So what? :roflmho: Mine is lonely. It wants company, someone from its own family...)

February 13, 2014

Not only would I too like more information about the Wearever Meteor model, but also the Pacemaker. In particular, it has been mentioned on a couple of web-sites that the retail cost of the Pacemaker was $2.75. That works out to around $27 today, using the Price Index. That sounds way high for Wearever. anyone have an info? Thanks. Dave Silber

October 15, 2019

I acquired what I thought was a Wearever Pacemaker FP. It arrived today and I discovered a "Meteor" imprint.

That brought me here........

It's a lovely pen and, to my eye, indistinguishable from the Pacemaker EXCEPT, indeed, it is slightly smaller in both length and girth.

I'm wondering if over the years either the OP or anyone else has acquired any additional information about these pens??

October 17, 2019

I have had a few Pacemakers, and now have a Meteor as well. I don't see a difference. So I am also curious if anyone has more information and knows if there is a difference, or if the same pen was simply marketed under both names. Maybe the Meteor name was abandoned early for some reason? Pacemaker certainly seems to be much more common of the two.

October 17, 2019

Put your Meteor next to your Pacemaker and you will see that the Meteor is slightly smaller.

I believe that other than the size difference they are identical.

The Meteor is slightly smaller in both length and girth.

I have not done measurements with my electronic caliper but would be happy to do so if someone wanted that information.

October 18, 2019

I have a Wearever Pacemaker and Wearever Meteor on hand.

Using my cheap and mostly accurate calipers, they are within a fraction of a mm of each other in all measurements, and in reality, round off to just about the same in all dimensions. The caps are also interchangeable. Blind caps slightly different but also interchangeable. Construction is identical.

Meteor

barrel 12.05 mm

cap 13.54 mm

length 135.0 mm

Pacemaker

barrel 11.97 mm

cap 13.51 mm

length 135.4 mm

October 18, 2019

Thanks for the great photos and information.

I can get photos in the morning when the light is better if you wish.

I have several Pacemakers and they all come in at 135mm-136mm capped. And, yes, I do see some differences among the blind caps so that might be the explanation for the 1mm variation in the length measurements.

My Meteor, however, comes in at 132.5mm, capped. I agree, its blind cap is the same size as the others. So the blind cap is not the source of the difference in length.

I don't know about you but I found the measurements of the barrel and cap to be a bit frustrating. I have difficulty assuring that I am making my measurements in exactly the same place so as to make a fair comparison. But, again, it seems the Meteor is slightly smaller. It may be an optical illusion but actually it "looks" smaller than the measurements would lead one to believe.

I don't know what to say. You have surely demonstrated that the difference (if any) is not great as I thought. However, others besides myself have observed the size difference between the Pacemaker and the Meteor. Given the unequivocal difference in capped length, at least for the pens in my collection, I do think there is a real distinction between the Pacemaker and the Meteor. I wonder if there was an imprint "misprint" on your Meteor??

Maybe what you have is a real (and likely very collectable) anomaly!!

My final comment is "back in the day" when David Kahn was making these pens there was little to no quality control. And every scrap of everything was used, somewhere / somehow. I'm not surprised that the Company's lack of strict QC standards and frugal approach to materials management has resulted in a conversation like this one!!

Would love to continue the conversation; hopefully there are some others who can jump in and provide additional information or insights!

October 18, 2019

Seney -

Overall - I agree with everything! Confusion and all. This is my only Meteor. It is hard to get a perfect measurement of barrel and cap, and the measurements were off slightly from one measurement to the next, but were pretty close to the same 0.5 mm overall measurement each time. And of course there can be some distortion of shrinkage or a pen out of round that alters the measurement.

Now to make my own personal experience stranger - I have sold two Pacemakers, and my rough measurement I put on the listing for sale was 5 1/8" for each of the two (130 mm), which comes in shorter than both of my current pens. But that was with a cruder caliper I had at the time. And I sometimes confuse the markings, so they could have been 5 1/4 anyway (133.5 mm) ..... Either way, those two pens seem to be closer to your 132.5 mm sizes, so could I currently have two odd slightly larger pens.... maybe?

And since it appears that Pacemakers can be 132.5 mm up to 135 mm, and if we guess/assume/surmise/make up a possibly false fact....... that the Pacemaker and Meteor are identical, it could be a quirk of each collector which model seems larger, smaller, or they seem the same. Maybe?

It would be interesting to compare the 135 mm pens to a 132.5 mm pen and try to measure the barrel, section, etc. A shorter section will result in the cap screwing down a bit farther making the length different. Or are the barrels actually not identical? Are the caps swappable?

Reviewing the review at PenHero - Jim states that the Pacemaker is 5 3/8"! So his pen for the write up was about 135 mm (or a hair greater - depending on how accurate the 1/8" increment was). And as for comparing diameters, he notes, as I have seen, that the cap band is a bit loose, so the cap diameter measurements will vary from pen to pen

My gut is that these are the same pens, just suffering from typical size variations seen with many vintage pens. But that is a gut opinion only.

If we really want to know - I will keep my two pens at least through February and someone needs to bring theirs to the LA pen show and we can check them all out and try to decide what we think!

Edited October 18, 2019 by Greenie