Aurora Talentum - Nib Exchange

[kavanagh]

Dear Colleagues,

 

I have an Aurora Talentum Fountain Pen with a medium nib given to me as a birthday present - hence no receipt or ability to identify where it was bought.

 

I want to exchange the medium nib for a fine nib and wanted to ask if there is an Aurora UK office or will they have to be contacted in Italy ?.

Has any FPN member exchanged a nib before with Aurora ( in the UK or abroad ) ? - what was the experience like ?.

Any advice is appreciated and thank you for reading this post.

 

kavanagh

[Oregon Duck]

Unfortunately, I don't know whether Aurora will exchange nibs with you, particularly if your nib is now "experienced." You might consider contacting them directly with your question: aurora home page.

 

I have one other thought, and a back-up plan to share, however. First, the thought -- to start with, Aurora nibs tend to run narrower than just about any other western nib -- they are more like Japanese nibs. You didn't mention whether you were dissatisfied with the nib's performance.... My Aurora Talentum was the first gold-nibbed pen I bought, which was around 2001. It, too, is a medium. I felt it took a longer-than-normal period for this nib to "break-in", but after about 6 mos of use, the nib's performance dramatically improved for me (smoother, and more flow). This is also one of the nibs that I can use flipped (i.e., writing upside down), in order to get a thinner line for margin notes. (It is, however, a little more scratchy that way.) This pen/nib is one of my "star performers"/favorite pens (even after many, many more gold nibbed pen purchases over the last decade). It's terrific with any ink, and just plain rocks! So -- maybe giving it a try/giving it time would be an option for you.

 

And now, for the back-up plan.... The Talentums with large nibs (i.e., not the Talentum "Finesse" model, which is smaller) can be unscrewed and interchanged with the large Aurora nibs with other model pens. See e.g., nibs.com - aurora nibs. My back-up plan is that you eventually settle on another Aurora model to try -- say, one with a piston fill. I love these pens, because they write like the Talentum but hold more ink. The Aurora 88 is my fav., but many like the style and additional color choices that the Optima line offers. The only limitation to this plan is that what you buy should match the nib/trim colors of the Talentum you presently have (i.e., white or yellow gold nib). Then you can buy a fine in that pen, and swap nibs between pens. (Side note: I've noticed that the nib in the Talentum is a little more difficult to unscrew than the nibs in the piston-fill pens. If your pen has been used, it might need to soak in water first to remove ink that could have hardened in the section between the feed and the section wall.)

 

Hope these thoughts help.

 

P.S. You might also note that the footprint size difference between an Aurora fine and medium is quite slight.... nib tipping sizes

Edited September 2, 2012 by Oregon Duck

[kauloltran]

Aurora will exchange nibs regardless of the extent of usage. I had a factory broad nib on an 88 that was ground to a stub by a nibmeister. I ended up not liking the stub and sent the pen to the US representative of Aurora to exchange for a normal broad nib, which routed the pen back to Italy. The nib was exchanged free of charge and came back a month later. of course I didn't tell them that the nib had received alteration . Maybe they thought it was their mistake of mislabeling the stub nib as a broad in factory , Lord knows! Aurora provides excellent customer service and has very liberal repair service policies, perhaps one of the best in the world. From what I've read, even old pens that were broken by mishandling were replaced by brand new pens at no charge. On the flip side, I've also read a story about them charging someone a substantial fee for fixing a rotating cap band on a relatively new pen. Aurora is hard to predict! If you are lucky, they will fix things for free and send you a note that says "courtesy of Aurora". If you're not lucky, you will have to pay a fee.

Edited September 2, 2012 by kauloltran