So What Exactly Is The Difference Between A $50 Pen And A $150 Pen?

[erratik]

Lots of useful information here guys, thanks a ton. I see that there is no clear answer to my question, and hope i didn't come off as not liking my twsbi's, because i certainly do. I was just thinking "man, I bought 2 of these, and 4 or 5 nibs plus the ones the pens came with. I could totally have gotten a nice $150 pen by this time" but clearly that could have been just as bad or worse off. my only real complaint about the twsbi is the diameter of the pen, I have small hands and find myself squeezing it harder than i do my sharbos, and would prefer a pen more along those sizes, but i can deal with it at the cost of quality of writing.

 

I just do NOT want to make this a hobby. my audiophilia and denim obsession are more than expensive enough, and I'd prefer if I just got a couple pens I really enjoyed and walked away before i was too hurt, haha. Maybe one day I'll look into a custom pen if I ever have an excessive amount of cash lying about...

Hi Erratik

 

I was afraid of that.

 

Fountainpens need a different grip form BPs. A Ballpoint needs pressure to transfer the ink to the paper. The ink is much dryer.

My top-pens have a lot of girth and weight. But they do not need gripping. They just ly in the web between thumb and forefinger, the section resting on my middlefinger en the thumb and forefinger just lightly along the pen to avoid it rolls away. These pens write on their own weight. I do not grip them. Actually, when I write you could lift the pen easily form its position. No gripping needed, no strain on your fingers. That is the real beauty of FPs, you do not get writers cramp like you do with BPs.

 

Do a search here on FPN on "deathgrip", this has been explained in extenso before. Bo Bo Olsen is one who loudly advocates a good grip. He claims he wasted many years of writing because of a bad grip.... I agree with him on this point.

 

 

D.ick

 

I see, thanks, and yea I can see that. I've done a bit of reading recently because I had at one point decided to try and work towards better penmanship but it just isnt feasable at the moment. I think a major issue is that i write with my fingers/wrist instead of my shoulder/arm, y'know? Maybe this summer in between playing counter-strike and swimming

 

For starters, I've been a bit of a pen and paper fanatic for years, but have just recently taken the steps over to fountain pens. Up until now, I had been using my Zebra Sharbo X with 0.4mm gel inks and a 0.3mm pencil, 2B lead (or 4B if i ever used a 0.5mm. . .anyway) but I finally decided to cave and get some fountain pens.

 

It was not the smoothest road, I must say. My first was a Lamy Safari EF with Lamy black ink and I did not enjoy ANYTHING about it. it was too bold, it was scratchy, and it wasn't comfortable to write with. Sold it after about a week. After that I got a hero liseur 925 F along with some private reserve midnight blues which was slightly better in terms of smoothness, but still far too bold and too heavy for my liking, sold in another week.

 

After that I got a TWSBI Diamond 530 EF. The thickness was right but it was terribly scratchy. About that time I stumbled on goulet pens and got some various ink samples, and eventually got some Noodlers Turquoise Eel, as well as ordering a F nib set from twsbi off ebay just as a last resort.

 

and let me say, i LOVED it. it was honestly even more fine than the EF the pen came with, and silky smooth. I liked it so much that I bought a second pen right away, this time with a F.

 

Well thats where trouble began, I got it in and it was SIGNIFICANTLY more bold than the F nib I had received. Concerned, I emailed back and forth with speedy and they sent me a replacement nib fearing that maybe there was a mix up and i had gotten an incorrectly labeled nib or something. It was still huge. I decided as a last resort to purchase 2 more nib sets from ebay, one F and one EF. They came in today. And low and behold, the F I received was, once again, MUCH more fine than the other F's I had received, and noticeably more fine than the EF I had purchased along side it, though still slightly more bold than the first one i fell in love with (maybe its the different ink im using? Noodlers Dragons Napalm in this one) . I honestly have no clue whats going on there, but I got what I wanted so I wont question the workings of the world.

 

Anyway, these pens are quite smooth in my opinion, and write quite well, though I've never written with a $XXX pen before. and I don't mind spending the money, Id just like to know what I'd be getting into ahead of time? People told me I was crazy for spending $300 on a pair of jeans and $500 on a pair of headphones and they were WELL worth it, but I at least had the chance to try those out first ahha. I guess I'm mostly questioning it because between buying the second TWSBI and the number of nibs I went through trying to get one i liked, i almost could have gotten a pilot VP or something. Not that I mind.

 

Now to figure out what paper I like the most. . .but thats for another topic I guess

 

 

The thing is where I am from, the $300 jeans only cost us at most $20 to $25 dollars to produce ;)then we send it out to you guys Thought I would let you know before you go ahead and spend on something like that again:p

 

These aren't some disgusting "designer" jeans like diesel or anything like that. They're pure japanese selvage, which in my opinion is becoming one of the rarest materials around, made by a skilled craftsman on century old shuttle looms, measured and cut without patterns to fit my body specifically, and died in natural indigo multiple times. They're an artisan piece, not some mass produced (bleep) with labels and sequins all over them.

 

The difference between a $50 pen and a $150 pen usually amounts to fit and finish. With honorable exceptions (TWSBI).

 

The original poster has had 5 scratchy nibs from 3 different manufacturers, which leads me to think that the problem may not be with the nibs, but with the OP's writing style. I get the distinct impression that too much force is being applied to the nib. (Symptoms: all the nibs feel scratchy, fine points writing like broads from multiple manufacturers, EF broader than F) Reducing writing force is something we've all had to do when changing from using ball-points, and it's particularly important if you are using a fine-point pen.

the only scratchy ones where the EF's which, I'm told, are expected to be scratchy to an extent. the others I simply just didn't like the way the pen felt or the width of the line it laid, but I hear ya. i really doubt its an issue of me pressing pen to paper too hard though, as any reasonable amount of force leads to line variation and even just drawing a straight line with no line variation I can feel or even hear it. it could be that the tines arent properly aligned, but to the best of my naked eye they are. i did go ahead and invest in a loupe just to take a closer look at things though

[Bo Bo Olson]

Yep he's using a hold before the first knuckle plow the south forty with a ball point pen death grip....and pressing too hard.

 

Read the other two threads on grasping a fountain pen.

You grip a ball point real hard because you got to drag it across the paper.

A fountain pen floats on a little puddle of ink.

 

Place your fore finger on the top of the pen between 12 and 13:00, place the flat of the thumb along side the pen...no pressure. Let the pen fall back.

 

If you do not post, the pen will be behind the back of the first knuckle @45-40 degrees. The forefinger will be 'slightly' bent.

 

If you post, the pen will rest at the start of the web of your thumb, to in the middle of the web of your thumb. 40-35 degrees. The forefinger will rest 'longer' on the pen.

 

It requires only the forefinger being 'placed' on top of the pen, then 'placing' the ball of the thumb on the fountain pen, with no pressure. If you post, your thumb will automatically find a place a hair higher on the pen, than if you don't post.

 

You can let the fountain pen move down 1/3 of an inch from the junction of your middle finger fingernail, in the fountain pen don't have to be pressed into the meat of that finger, causing dents and calluses like a ball point.

 

 

All pens companies make F, M, and B to it's own standards, not some 'rumored' standard.

 

There is no standard...but that the Japanese because of their own market, where the Japanese write in their own very tiny non cursive script, they run a size smaller than 'western'.

 

In that you are now only interested in spiderwebs and baby spiderweb nibs....buy only Japanese, and you will be happy.

Buy only mono-tone glow in the dark inks...in that shading inks don't work on EF nibs.

 

The Huge Fat Fine's you dislike are normal fines...with in tolerances, and the company's very own and different from any other company's very own standards. There are only that company's standard, there is not now, nor ever will be an national, nor international standard.

 

This chart was done by a poster who had a great number of EF, F and M pens he measured. If you expand this with Ctrl +, you will see there is little rhyme or reason in nib sizes.

 

If it bothers you and you don't buy Japanese, you can have a nibmeister grind you XXF, XXXF, and XXXXF nibs.

 

http://i299.photobucket.com/albums/mm300/BoBoOlson/NibWidthChart.jpg

 

 

There is slop/tolerance in making nibs.

 

 

The reason is with in the company standards there is 'slop' to what is what width.

This was posted by a fine poster.

 

‘’’Sheaffer used a dial indicator nib gauge for measuring nib sizes. The nib was inserted into the gauge, and the size read off of the dial. A given size being nibs that fell within a given range. What is listed below were the ranges given on a gauge that I saw in the Sheaffer service center prior to being closed in March 2008.

 

Measurements are in thousandths of an inch.

 

XXF = 0.010 - 0.013

XF = 0.013 - 0.018

F = 0.018 - 0.025

M = 0.025 - 0.031

Broad* = 0.031 - 0.050

Stub = 0.038 - 0.050

 

*there was some overlap on the gauge. May be 0.035 - 0.050 ‘’’

 

 

As you can see, a fat in any range and a thin of the next higher width are the same.

 

Nib size Some links are broken

 

 

http://www.nibs.com/...ngSizespage.htm … com/TippingSizegage.htm

 

The below is ‘complete’ but don’t work for me from Word like the Blue, this is some sort of purple/violet color?????????? Maybe you can get it to do something by cutting and pasting or something.

http://www.nibs.com /TippingSizepage.htm

 

 

 

http://www.pentrace....e052501085.html .com/article052

More complete both work by me from Word

 

http://www.pentrace....e052501085.html

 

 

http://www.nakaya.org/estub.html

 

 

 

 

http://www.richardsp...flex_italic.htm

 

 

http://www.algonet.se/~claesg

[toomanypelikans]

Short answer to the original question (i.e., "what exactly is the difference between a $50 pen and a $150 pen?"):

 

$100.

+1 :-)

[bassopotamus]

No one has mentioned the Platinum Preppy/Plaisir. The Preppy is a cheap pen ($3) that looks like a cheap pen but you have a really good chance of getting a decent writing nib, and they have F (.03) and M (.05) nibs. The Plaisir is a Preppy nib/section with a much nicer casing - pearlized metallic in pales and deep jewel colors - and costs all of $20. I have four Plaisirs and with a tiny bit of pressure against my thumbnail all of them now write rather nicely; currently I have an F with Noodlers Black Swan in Australian Roses and the M has Noodlers Bad Belted Kingfisher. You can make the Preppy (or have Goulet do it) into an eyedropper pen, but the Plaisir is a cartridge/converter.

 

Nor has anyone mentioned the Pilot 78G. You can buy them from a Hong Kong dealer for under $8 or from hisnibs dot com for more; hisnibs makes sure they write nicely. I don't know the precise mm sizes, but the F leaves a thread of color on the paper and the B is a stub with some nice variation in color. They have cheap and very annoying squeeze converters but work with a cartridge quite nicely; I think you can use a nicer piston converter. All 3 of mine (F, M & "B") write quite acceptably.

 

 

 

Both are good suggestions. I find the fine 78gs to be a little scratchy, but the M and B are great. The preppy is awesome, except the caps crack easily. I abuse the heck out of mine, and it always works fine.

 

To the original question, I don't think there are any hard and fast rules when connecting price and performance/features. At some point, you probably stop buying performance and are just paying for aesthetics, but it's hard to say where that is.

 

Rather than expectations by price, I think you should really just look for reviews (or to try) different models in your price range. The bexley simplicity, pelikan 200, and lamy 2000 are all great pens around 100. you can get a nice used parker 51 for under 75.

[troglokev]

the only scratchy ones where the EF's which, I'm told, are expected to be scratchy to an extent. the others I simply just didn't like the way the pen felt or the width of the line it laid, but I hear ya. i really doubt its an issue of me pressing pen to paper too hard though, as any reasonable amount of force leads to line variation and even just drawing a straight line with no line variation I can feel or even hear it. it could be that the tines arent properly aligned, but to the best of my naked eye they are. i did go ahead and invest in a loupe just to take a closer look at things though

Used correctly, a pen should not be scratchy (not even an EF).

 

A loupe is an excellent investment, though. A small correction, made while able to see what you're doing, can make a huge difference to the writing experience.

[redisburning]

the twsbi 530 is a great pen but not because of the nib imoimoimoimo

 

maybe you can sell your nib units and watch the for sale forums and get a deal on something from pilot or sailor.

[gerard1973]

$100

 

You can buy many great writing fountain pens with smooth nibs for under $50 like Lamys, Pelikans, Sailors, Pilots, etc. You can also buy them and other brands for under $100 and for under $150.

 

So my answer would be that the difference between a $50 pen and a $150 pen would be a hundred dollars.

 

$100

Edited April 30, 2011 by gerard1973

[clmurphy]

Sounds like you really like a fine line.

 

1st - This varies with the ink you use. Some inks feather a lot more than others, making the line appear MUCH bolder.

 

2nd - The best think you can do is purchase a pen you like the look/feel of and send it to a nib meister. Greg Minuskin would be my top pick. He makes custom needlepoints you can see on his site that will amaze you....

 

3rd - If you really want something that writes very fine out of the box, you should look at Japanese pens, they tend to run finer than the rest of the world. Sailor, Platinum, Hero, etc make XF nibs that are extremely thin lines (again taking into account point 1).

 

Best of luck, finding the one you love can be difficult.

[erratik]

thanks for all the info guys, i've done some searching around and bookmarked a LOT of topics on posture, holding the pen, writing, and various manufacturer reviews that im going to get through as soon as finals are done with!

[FPcollection]

$100