"the Pilot Varsity Test"

[Maurizio]

Kaputnik - you did not accuse me of it, but, just to be clear, I did not say that Varsities write just as well as a more expensive pen. I'd feel like I was living in Chairman Mao's China if all I had to write with was a Varsity and life would be gray indeed.

 

What I did say was that the writing characteristics of a Varsity (or something similar) should serve as a baseline, a set of minimum fountain pen qualities, against which more expensive pens should be compared. That was point one.

 

Point two was that the sad fact is that too many high priced pens don't even write as well as a Varsity.

 

You didn't disagree and I invited disagreement and welcome it.

 

I just wanted to make clear what it was I was asserting.

[Michael F]

I absolutely agree with this test. I wrote with a Pilot Varsity for the first time today and was blown away by the performance. I recently got a TWSBI Eco with a medium nib and haven't been too pleased with the nib performance. I had high hopes considering I was relatively happy with the EF version, but now I'm considering giving away the Eco and picking up a few Varsities instead.

[escribo]

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

[emphasis mine]

Thanks for that!

Of course, upon reading that I immediately went and bought a multicolor 12-pack of those for $0.93 per pen.

^esc

[BillH]

I'm curious about something with these disposables and their good performance. Have any of you bothered to refill them with other fountain pen inks? I believe the Varsity can be refilled eyedropper style. Do the writing characteristics change with different ink? The reason I ask, I have many high end pens (all of which write superbly btw) and know that their characteristics change depending on the ink I fill them with. I always keep a pack of Pilot Petits around too because I love them and they make awesome pocket pens but I've never bothered to refill them. I'm wondering how much of their good performance is related to the ink they come with? Anybody know?

[Tricky647]

I too love the Pilot Petit1s. I bought refill off Amazon for $20 which amounts to three refill for every color. That'll give me plenty of cartridges to use after I use up all the ink inside them.

[ISW_Kaputnik]

I'm curious about something with these disposables and their good performance. Have any of you bothered to refill them with other fountain pen inks? I believe the Varsity can be refilled eyedropper style. Do the writing characteristics change with different ink? The reason I ask, I have many high end pens (all of which write superbly btw) and know that their characteristics change depending on the ink I fill them with. I always keep a pack of Pilot Petits around too because I love them and they make awesome pocket pens but I've never bothered to refill them. I'm wondering how much of their good performance is related to the ink they come with? Anybody know?

 

I wanted to have a water resistant red fountain pen ink available, and was satisfied with Noodler's Fox, but it had a tendency to clog some of my "regular" fountain pens (sorry, don't recall exactly which ones). I put it in a Varsity, and haven't had a problem. I think the huge feed on a Varsity may help with difficult inks. And I can let it go months between uses and still start right up.

 

I've refilled other Varsities, and had good results. I've got another one filled with Noodler's La Reine Mauve, another problem ink in my other pens. Just took it out now after what has to be a very long time, and it also started right up.

 

By the way, I've refilled these only using the eyedropper method of removing the nib and feed. The next time this comes up, there's a feed saturation method using a syringe and some rubber tubing that I want to try instead.

[Sailor Kenshin]

I'm curious about something with these disposables and their good performance. Have any of you bothered to refill them with other fountain pen inks? I believe the Varsity can be refilled eyedropper style. Do the writing characteristics change with different ink? The reason I ask, I have many high end pens (all of which write superbly btw) and know that their characteristics change depending on the ink I fill them with. I always keep a pack of Pilot Petits around too because I love them and they make awesome pocket pens but I've never bothered to refill them. I'm wondering how much of their good performance is related to the ink they come with? Anybody know?

Sometimes.

 

It's a gamble, just like any other pen/ink combination. Some of my pens hate a certain ink and love another. I've refilled the Petits with all sorts of inks, and the only one that didn't 'take' was the pink, for which I caved and ordered Official ™ Pilot ® Petit1© refills.

[BillH]

Thank you both, that's great to know. It's not like I don't have enough pens already but I'm tempted now to buy a bag of Varsities to play with.

[TSherbs]

I'm curious about something with these disposables and their good performance. Have any of you bothered to refill them with other fountain pen inks? I believe the Varsity can be refilled eyedropper style. Do the writing characteristics change with different ink? The reason I ask, I have many high end pens (all of which write superbly btw) and know that their characteristics change depending on the ink I fill them with. I always keep a pack of Pilot Petits around too because I love them and they make awesome pocket pens but I've never bothered to refill them. I'm wondering how much of their good performance is related to the ink they come with? Anybody know?

Removing the nib and feed takes a good grip and a deal of strength. Then, remember that the Varsity makes a thick line, so saturated ink a can sometimes be too much, especially on cheaper paper.

Edited March 11, 2017 by TSherbs

[bigkahuna]

I'm curious about something with these disposables and their good performance. Have any of you bothered to refill them with other fountain pen inks? I believe the Varsity can be refilled eyedropper style. Do the writing characteristics change with different ink? The reason I ask, I have many high end pens (all of which write superbly btw) and know that their characteristics change depending on the ink I fill them with. I always keep a pack of Pilot Petits around too because I love them and they make awesome pocket pens but I've never bothered to refill them. I'm wondering how much of their good performance is related to the ink they come with? Anybody know?

I refill my Varsities and V-pens using the pressure-differential method (involving a syringe and a piece of PVC tubing). I do not remove the nib and feed. Youtube has some videos demonstrating this method:

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NQsNOTA6gTg

[bigkahuna]

Removing the nib and feed takes a good grip and a deal of strength. Then, remember that the Varsity makes a thick line, so saturated ink a can sometimes be too much, especially on cheaper paper.

The V-Pen version of the Varsity intended for the Japanese Domestic Market is available with a Fine nib. I bought some JDM V-pens on Amazon and prefer them to the typical medium-point Varsity intended for the Western markets.

[max dog]

I did not say that Varsities write just as well as a more expensive pen. I'd feel like I was living in Chairman Mao's China if all I had to write with was a Varsity and life would be gray indeed.

 

What I did say was that the writing characteristics of a Varsity (or something similar) should serve as a baseline, a set of minimum fountain pen qualities, against which more expensive pens should be compared. That was point one.

 

Point two was that the sad fact is that too many high priced pens don't even write as well as a Varsity.

 

You didn't disagree and I invited disagreement and welcome it.

 

I just wanted to make clear what it was I was asserting.

I can certainly agree with you there on your first point highlighted. It would be a gray world indeed if Varsities and the like were all there was.

 

For the 2nd point, the same can be said of $10 quartz watches, and imitation fine bone china etc... Mass production for the masses is the way of the world unfortunately at the expense of the finer things that make things special.

 

A more expensive fountain pen should perform better than a Varsity for sure, so they do make a good baseline to compare to.

 

I'm not sure there is much of a market though these days for ultra low end disposable $2 fountain pens, at least not where I live (maybe in Japan and asia where fountain pen use is more common these days). Don't see company's ordering packs of Varsities for office use, usually it\s the ever reliable 30 cents BICs and the like for that purpose. Upscale Lamys, Montblancs, Pelikans, Parkers, Watermans and Cross are more common for people interested in fountain pens. I've yet to see a Varsity or any other $2 fountain pen in the wild, except at online retailers and boutique pen shops which are far and few in between.

Edited March 12, 2017 by max dog

[Maurizio]

Ah . . . the finer things in life: a glass of 15 yr old port, a weil-designed book printed on acidfree paper, Chopin's Nocturnes or Bach's Lute Suites. A Pilot Custom Kaede filled with SailorJentle Blue writing on some French or Japanese paper. I'm sure all here have their own special lists of the finer things. Cheers to all of us living lives fortunate to enjoy such things. May you all do so for a long time.

Edited March 12, 2017 by Maurizio

[max dog]

"Without {the finer things in life}, the crudeness of reality would make the world unbearable"

-George Bernard Shaw

Edited March 12, 2017 by max dog

[Jamesbeat]

I've said this before, and I'll say it again - the Varsity is a marvel of engineering. I'd go as far as to say groundbreaking.

 

Although it's a cheap disposable pen, you have actually set the bar rather high, because the Varsity writes extraordinarily well for a pen at any price.

 

Many people have suspected some kind of advanced ink formula as the key to this, but having filled a Varsity with several standard inks, I disagree.

 

I think the magic may be in part due to the fiber insert between the nib and the feed, but the large collector must have something to do with it too.

The fiber insert must also prevent burping, which is common on eyedropper pens (which is essentially what the Varsity is).

 

What really amazes me is that the cap has an anti-choking airhole in it - it is not airtight, yet the pen doesn't dry out.

Again, I think this is due to the fiber wick.

 

The Varsity is not an exciting pen and it's not going to win any beauty competitions, but it is almost freakishly reliable.

 

I think it is almost unfair to use it as a yardstick when judging other pens.

Edited March 12, 2017 by Jamesbeat

[ink-syringe]

The Varsity is a fantastic writer and I have owned many going back to the early 1990s. You might not believe this but I found, in a box over christmas, a Pilot Varsity in box of pencils from 1992. I uncapped it. It wrote. Since it is the old style I am going to keep it for nostalgia's sake and see if I can refill it. We used to use them at work and I always get a kick out of them. We had boxes of them in the supply closet.

 

Great as they are. They are bested by one pen for me (on this particular criteria, cheap well performing pen benchmark): The Sheaffer Nononsense. So think I'll mentally use that. Of course a lot of $300+ pens do not, will not, can not match the excellence of a well preserved Nononsense pen.

 

 

 

 

 

[Mrpink]

Has anyone tinkered with this thing? Can we get a dip pen in there? Are there any other compatibilities for it? I don't like writing with the Varsity but I do appreciate that the pen is so reliable.

[Noihvo]

 

[ErrantSmudge]

A few years ago I bought a new Pelikan 400 with a customized nib grind from a famous (in these parts) internet seller. .... 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. .... 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.

 

While I agree with you on your basic point (an expensive pen should be able to write as well as a $3 disposable), I take issue with your experience on the Pelikan.

 

You bought a pen that was customized by a nibmeister. So you have no way of knowing how that pen behaved from the factory. It's really not fair to Pelikan to call them out for a pen that was quite possibly mangled by a less-than-skilled nibmeister.

[max dog]

 

I agree, but at that price I'd rather get a Jinhao instead. You get something a little more substantial and interesting to look at, at least.

 

The Varsity is nothing more than an exercise by Pilot to see how cheap they can make a fountain pen reliably. It has its uses I suppose just like a $10 watch.

Edited March 12, 2017 by max dog