"the Pilot Varsity Test"

[Maurizio]

In a nutshell this means that any pen you buy should write at least as well as an inexpensive $3.00 fountain pen out of its expensive box without the need for adjustment.

 

You can substitute your own favorite consistent writer, but I have chosen the Varsity for its inexpensiveness and generally wide availability.

 

A few years ago I bought a new Pelikan 400 with a customized nib grind from a famous (in these parts) internet seller. This was my first somewhat expensive Pelikan pen purchased after reading so many favourable reviews of the brand in general. I was sorely disappointed when the pen arrived; it wrote poorly and dry. A couple of days after this disappointment I happened into a local stationary store and spied for the first time a Pilot Varsity which I grabbed for I think $2.85. I was amazed at how well this "throwaway" pen wrote, delivering a wet, but not too wet, and consistent line, with not a hint of hesitation or hard starting every time I uncapped it and put it to paper. This $2.85 pen starkly contrasted with the $300.+ Pelikan 400 for which I had paid a premium for a base pen plus a custom nib grind.

 

As soon as I got home from work that day, I dashed off a rather curmudgeonly email to the Pelikan seller explaining that the Varsity wrote light years better than the Pelikan and this just didn't seem right given the disparity in their respective costs. The seller did agree to take the pen back and adjust it (I paid shipping back to the seller and the seller paid shipping back to me). The pen came back writing better than it did initially but I still felt that it was a dry writer even though I had explicitly asked that the nib be adjusted to be as wet as possible. Perhaps this was just a lemon of a pen, and no company is perfect, but I was never satisfied with that pen and eventually sold it at a loss. I have never bought another Pelikan and have since developed a very strong preference for Japanese pens.

 

Since then, I have resolved that any pen I buy must write at least as well as a Varsity or it is not worth its pricey cost. I believe too many fountain pens being sold today are sold on the a company's former reputation, or on a pen's glitzy looks or brand cachet, and too many of them simply do not write as well as they should. A fountain pen's function is to write: consistently and well, without much fussing about it. Sure for some adjusting and tweaking is a nice pastime and that's nice for those folks. But any pen costing more than, let's say $50., should at least perform its primary function which is to write. With increasing cost should come increasing gradations of quality, nib choice, nib sophistication, material quality and material choice. But if a pen doesn't write, then it's just an expensive bauble.

 

Get yourself a Varsity, or a Metropolitan or a Preppy, put one of these in your pocket, and take it with you to use as a baseline of writing characteristics when you go to a store to test drive your new fountain pen purchases. Of course this won't help those who don't have the luxury of a real fountain pen shop to which they can travel for their pen fun. For those whose only avenue to a new pen is the internet, I say: you should still get yourself a Varsity and compare your newly arrived pen to the Varsity when you ink it up at home. If it doesn't write as well, immediately send it back for an adjustment or demand a refund. I think too many pen companies have been getting too complacent and selling too many poorly performing pens to the burgeoning fountain pen community.

 

Agree?

Disagree?

Edited March 9, 2017 by Maurizio

[UDog]

A lot of high-priced pens are lousy writers, especially ones with JOWO nibs. The producers don't really expect you to write all that much with them, so they put very little effort into quality control. They will "adjust" them, but they should have put quality control first, not damage control.

[TSherbs]

Agree. Love this.

[escribo]

Absolutely agree.

 

I too am a Pilot fan. I love their nibs; their F and EF nibs are as near to fine enough for me as any I've used.

 

Sadly, the expensive (to me) Pilot Falcon SEF I purchased arrived here with a slight nib misalignment. I am not 100% comfortable with the thought of tuning a springy nib, so I'm debating what to do about it. Anyway, this is a big disappointment. I think my next expensive pen purchase will be from an outfit that inspects and tunes, if necessary, everything that goes out its door.

 

Cheap pens. Bought a Pilot Metro recently and fell in love! Swapped in a 78G F nib which was even finer than the Metro's F nib, and fell in love all over again. One problem. Color mismatch between the nib and the rest of the bright parts. Noticed the Penmanship Ergo Grip pens (they only come with EF nibs AFAIK) and bought a 3-pack. Now THAT is a nib! Ordered three more and another Metro last night. I'll be hair-fine (well nearly anyway) nibbed up for a while, and can now color-coordinate my Metro.

 

Point is all those cheap pens, which ran me less than 2/3 the cost of the expensive one, have given me tons more writing satisfaction, if not aesthetic satisfaction , than the single expensive one. And the Metros are nice enough to take out in public. Well, pretty much.

Edited March 9, 2017 by escribo

[Tasmith]

Agree.

 

Just purchased an Itoya Blade from Anderson Pens at the Baltimore Pen Show.

 

A bit more expensive than the Varsity at $4.50, it's a bit larger and a more contemporary design. Writes great and will be a nice pen to have as a back up.

Edited March 9, 2017 by Tasmith

[Ernst Bitterman]

With the proviso that I suspect Pilot of employing sorcery on the Varsity, I'm in agreement as well. I just had a couple of Platinum Centuries pass through my hands for flow amendment, brand new to the owner, and I have to admit they've somewhat put me off the brand; it was a LOT of work to get them running properly.

[escribo]

Agree.

 

Just purchased an Itoya Blade from Anderson Pens at the Baltimore Pen Show.

 

A bit more expensive than the Varsity at $4.50, it's a bit larger and a more contemporary design. Writes great and will be a nice pen to have as a back up.

Is the nib in any wise springy? I notice the FA-style cutouts below the nib's shoulders.

[Sailor Kenshin]

In a nutshell this means that any pen you buy should write at least as well as an inexpensive $3.00 fountain pen out of its expensive box without the need for adjustment.

You can substitute your own favorite consistent writer, but I have chosen the Varsity for its inexpensiveness and generally wide availability.

A few years ago I bought a new Pelikan 400 with a customized nib grind from a famous (in these parts) internet seller. This was my first somewhat expensive Pelikan pen purchased after reading so many favourable reviews of the brand in general. I was sorely disappointed when the pen arrived; it wrote poorly and dry. A couple of days after this disappointment I happened into a local stationary store and spied for the first time a Pilot Varsity which I grabbed for I think $2.85. I was amazed at how well this "throwaway" pen wrote, delivering a wet, but not too wet, and consistent line, with not a hint of hesitation or hard starting every time I uncapped it and put it to paper. This $2.85 pen starkly contrasted with the $300.+ Pelikan 400 for which I had paid a premium for a base pen plus a custom nib grind.

As soon as I got home from work that day, I dashed off a rather curmudgeonly email to the Pelikan seller explaining that the Varsity wrote light years better than the Pelikan and this just didn't seem right given the disparity in their respective costs. The seller did agree to take the pen back and adjust it (I paid shipping back to the seller and the seller paid shipping back to me). The pen came back writing better than it did initially but I still felt that it was a dry writer even though I had explicitly asked that the nib be adjusted to be as wet as possible. Perhaps this was just a lemon of a pen, and no company is perfect, but I was never satisfied with that pen and eventually sold it at a loss. I have never bought another Pelikan and have since developed a very strong preference for Japanese pens.

Since then, I have resolved that any pen I buy must write at least as well as a Varsity or it is not worth its pricey cost. I believe too many fountain pens being sold today are sold on the a company's former reputation, or on a pen's glitzy looks or brand cachet, and too many of them simply do not write as well as they should. A fountain pen's function is to write: consistently and well, without much fussing about it. Sure for some adjusting and tweaking is a nice pastime and that's nice for those folks. But any pen costing more than, let's say $50., should at least perform its primary function which is to write. With increasing cost should come increasing gradations of quality, nib choice, nib sophistication, material quality and material choice. But if a pen doesn't write, then it's just an expensive bauble.

Get yourself a Varsity, or a Metropolitan or a Preppy, put one of these in your pocket, and take it with you to use as a baseline of writing characteristics when you go to a store to test drive your new fountain pen purchases. Of course this won't help those who don't have the luxury of a real fountain pen shop to which they can travel for their pen fun. For those whose only avenue to a new pen is the internet, I say: you should still get yourself a Varsity and compare your newly arrived pen to the Varsity when you ink it up at home. If it doesn't write as well, immediately send it back for an adjustment or demand a refund. I think too many pen companies have been getting too complacent and selling too many poorly performing pens to the burgeoning fountain pen community.

Agree?

Disagree?

You got it!

[Tasmith]

Is the nib in any wise springy? I notice the FA-style cutouts below the nib's shoulders.

 

A little springy with a tiny bit of line variation when pressed.

[Maurizio]

Agree.

 

Just purchased an Itoya Blade from Anderson Pens at the Baltimore Pen Show.

 

A bit more expensive than the Varsity at $4.50, it's a bit larger and a more contemporary design. Writes great and will be a nice pen to have as a back up.

Sounds interesting. I will check one of those out and see if they sell them at my local Kinokuniya store.

[rwilsonedn]

Agreed that the Varsity sets a very high bar for writing quality. Unless your writing requires a specialty nib, you pretty much have to admit that after the first $3, you are paying for something other than writing quality--not that other things can't be important, or that they aren't worth real money.

ron

[ksm]

@maurizio

Your point is reminiscent of the discussion Why Are Expensive Pens So Badly Made? on nibs & tines subforum.

 

We couldn't really get to consensus. A fraction I was a part of insisted on quality control problems in modern "premium" pens, the other fraction insisted we were biased because of our personal experiences, and that most of "premium" pens are OK.

 

As I need 'speciality nib' (stub, cursive italic or italic), my reference point is Plumix <B> not Varsity/V-Pen.

 

On the other hand I cannot say ALL Japanese pens are perfect. I have a Pilot <SU> nib that does not show enough line variation for cursive italic, and is not smooth enough for a stub.

[bigkahuna]

Agree.

 

I love my Varsities/V-pens. I always carry one as a backup/loaner and keep a few around my office/home/car. I've given them as gifts to my coworkers so they stop asking to borrow mine. Seriously, my Varsities are the most dead-nuts reliable and essentially functional fountain pens I own. I buy them by the dozen box from Amazon, so the cost is about $2 apiece. I also use them to try out "high maintenance inks" before risking those inks in my more expensive pens The only reason I have my other (more expensive) pens is that Varsity's don't provide me the particular materialistic/consumer-type satisfactions that I have come to crave.

 

It seems strange (irritating? wrong? unjust?) that pens costing 10 or 100 times as much as a Varsity sometimes do not deliver as much reliability or consistency.

[Maurizio]

@maurizio

Your point is reminiscent of the discussion Why Are Expensive Pens So Badly Made? on nibs & tines subforum.

 

We couldn't really get to consensus. A fraction I was a part of insisted on quality control problems in modern "premium" pens, the other fraction insisted we were biased because of our personal experiences, and that most of "premium" pens are OK.

 

As I need 'speciality nib' (stub, cursive italic or italic), my reference point is Plumix <B> not Varsity/V-Pen.

On the other hand I cannot say ALL Japanese pens are perfect. I have a Pilot <SU> nib that does not show enough line variation for cursive italic, and is not smooth enough for a stub.

I did not post to insist that my position is absolute or correct. I don't think I stated this clearly enough so I'll state it now: in my opinion, and in my experience, too many fountain pens do not perform as they should given their cost. If other people have a different experience I'm genuinely pleased for them.

 

Most certainly I do not assert that all Japanese pens are perfect and even Toyota and Honda produce a lemon once in a while. I do assert though that, in general, Japanese pens are consistently high in quality and more often than not perform as expected. Do lemons come off the production line? I'm sure they do. In my limited experience I have never experienced a disappointing Japanese fountain pen.

[ksm]

Truth to be told, <SU> nib I'm referring to works reliably, unlike italic nib on certain Aurora I had doubtful pleasure to use. It's just not as satisfying to use as I expected it to be.

[Maurizio]

Truth to be told, <SU> nib I'm referring to works reliably, unlike italic nib on certain Aurora I had doubtful pleasure to use. It's just not as satisfying to use as I expected it to be.

OK a quick anecdote. I have a Pilot Custom 912 with a SU nib (maybe you do too?). I like the pen a lot and it has a nice juicy flow. There was a hiccup with this pen initially though because I didn't like the way it flowed out of the box - even though I gave it a flush with dliuted ammonia. Brought it right back to the store (Fountain Pen Hospital in NYC which is near my office) and they adjusted it onsite. They told me the feed had been slightly clogged with mfg debris and cleared it. It has worked flawlessly since then. This has been the only Pilot that has ever given me any trouble and it was minor trouble at that. No company can produce perfect pieces 100% of the time.

 

KSM - thanks very much for posting your guideline generator. I didn't notice this link the first time I read your post. I'm in awe of your computer skills. I will definitely use this.

Edited March 10, 2017 by Maurizio

[ISW_Kaputnik]

I've played around with Varsities a bit, as I got them in a seven pack originally, and picked up a couple of extras somewhere. I like the fact that they write well, actually can be refilled, and seem able to go a long time unused without the ink drying up inside them. Currently I have one that's been refilled with Noodler's Fox for the rare times that I want a red ink. And there are a couple of others around.

 

But, although the price is right, I think that this "cheap pens write just as well" theme can get exaggerated sometimes. I actually had to do minor nib adjustment on a couple of Varsities to get them to write smoothly (best to practice this on such a cheap pen, of course). And although they write well, there are more expensive pens that very noticeably nicer to write with. After writing with pens such as a Pilot CH 91 and 92, Pilot Falcon, Lamy 2000, Montblanc Noblesse, Sheaffer Imperial IV, and others, I really have little interest in using my cheap pens any more.

 

Which isn't to say that there aren't disappointments at higher levels; there are. Something like the "Varsity test" is a reasonable first check for whether a more expensive pen is overpriced. And even if an expensive pen is much nicer to write with than a Varsity, you can still question whether it's worth what you paid for it.

Edited March 10, 2017 by ISW_Kaputnik

[Sailor Kenshin]

Agree.

 

I love my Varsities/V-pens. I always carry one as a backup/loaner and keep a few around my office/home/car. I've given them as gifts to my coworkers so they stop asking to borrow mine. Seriously, my Varsities are the most dead-nuts reliable and essentially functional fountain pens I own. I buy them by the dozen box from Amazon, so the cost is about $2 apiece. I also use them to try out "high maintenance inks" before risking those inks in my more expensive pens The only reason I have my other (more expensive) pens is that Varsity's don't provide me the particular materialistic/consumer-type satisfactions that I have come to crave.

 

It seems strange (irritating? wrong? unjust?) that pens costing 10 or 100 times as much as a Varsity sometimes do not deliver as much reliability or consistency.

The Varsity has a serious competitor now in the Thornton 'disposables.' Much broader array of colors, but the sections are a bit more slippery.

[encre]

I feel the same way, many disappointments with "premium" brand pens- I now primarily purchase Japanese as the consistency has always been top notch. I will say that my experience with Waterman (of all budgets) has always been pleasant with never an issue with regards to the nib.

[sirgilbert357]

A lot of high-priced pens are lousy writers, especially ones with JOWO nibs. The producers don't really expect you to write all that much with them, so they put very little effort into quality control. They will "adjust" them, but they should have put quality control first, not damage control.

I have started to feel this way too. Every pen I've had with a Jowo nib has needed adjustment, and out of the 5 or 6 additional nibs I've bought for those two pens, they have ALL underperformed or needed some kind of messing with. I eventually sold one pen with three nibs and I still have the other and am currently still trying to tune the nib(s) to perform well enough to get through a journal entry without the nib going dry. I shouldn't have to open my pen and twist the converter to force ink into the feed to write a page...might as well use a dip pen! I'm about to start hacking away at the internal feed channels to widen and deepen them!

Edited March 10, 2017 by sirgilbert357