Very Dissatisfied With My Pilot Custom 74

[Honeybadgers]

Whats it like writing with a soft nib at a normal speed?

Does it require writing slower than normal? I love the line variation Im seeing on videos but wonder about its everyday practicality (Im a college student).

 

Thanks.

 

No. only extremely flexible nibs really require that you slow down unless you write with a REALLY hard hand.

 

Soft nibs are just bouncy. The pilot soft nibs are a little flexible, but at most you could call them a fairly firm semiflex.

 

I write a ton of equations and formulas with a pilot 14k SF all the time.

 

but in all honesty, get used to messing with pens well north of $100. Pilot is one of the very best, so with a visconti, aurora, or pelikan, you will run into a much greater chance of a nib that's a little too wet, or too tight, or a little misaligned...

 

Nib QC in the hobby is kind of unacceptable these days. If you want more than one or two pens, you need to also invest in a loupe at the very minimum, you can open up tines with just a hard surface and a thumb (look up how to make a nib wetter on youtube, it's very easy) but it's usually a good idea to invest in at least a piece of 12,000 grit micro mesh too, since some nibs have baby's bottom and some are too scratchy, both of which the 12k can handle and leave a nice finish (if you want smoother, you can go for a 1 micron or 0.3 micron mylar paper, 12k micro mesh will leave a nib with just about exactly the same feel as a pilot nib.)

Edited July 19, 2019 by Honeybadgers

[TheDutchGuy]

While I agree about the general QC aspect and the need to tinker, Im not so sure about Pilot.

 

Pilot is one of the very best, so with a visconti, aurora, or pelikan, you will run into a much greater chance of a nib that's a little too wet, or too tight, or a little misaligned...

This has not been my personal experience. Not with Pilot, not with Visconti and not with Pelikan. To some degree someones personal experience with a brand depends on luck, but still. Id rate Sailor much higher than Pilot because in my personal experience their QC is much better, the variance in how their nibs perform and feel is much smaller and how a Sailor writes evokes much more passion and emotion in me.

 

...12k micro mesh will leave a nib with just about exactly the same feel as a pilot nib...

I wonder if there is such a thing as _the_ feel of a Pilot nib. Most Capless nibs that Ive tried (a dozen or so) where supersmooth but felt dull and lifeless, as if there is something that somehow detaches me from the actual writing experience, as if I am controlling a joystick on a computer which then controls the actual pen. Something like that. The F nib in my former C823 performed very well from a technical point of view but felt awful. The cheaper Metro uses steel nibs that perform well but do nothing for me; as with the Capless they usually feel dull and lifeless to me. The Falcon was very interesting, but felt somewhat unpleasant and totally sterile to me in comparison to one of my vintage pens that has a semi-flex nib. So sterile, in fact, that I would probably never have used it and instead would always have picked up the vintage pen to enjoy its amazing tactile respons. Last but not least, I acquired a Justus 95 recently because I like the size of the pen, its softness control feature and (most of all) it showed the potential for emotion. As for the nib..? The exterior of the nib was smoothed to perfection (too much, really) but the edges of the inner tines were not smoothed at all. Result: intense, unpleasant, rough feedback and the occasional paper snag. This on a pen that retails for close to 300 euros! I bought it, because it gives me a platform to tune the nib to my liking. But to summarize, Ive experienced so much variation in Pilot nibs that I wonder if there is such a thing as _the_ Pilot feel. With Sailor, whole different ballgame. Edited July 19, 2019 by TheDutchGuy

[Mongoosey]

Thanks everyone, I have sent the Fine C74 back to the seller and ordered a clear demonstrator Medium C74, which I think would fit much better in a college environment, compared with the business-like black and gold C74.

 

Ive also got to play with my Medium Loom a bit and started to really appreciate the thick line it puts on the page. I wouldnt mind if the medium C74 were the same...

 

As for the tines, I did not check them because Im not interested in messing with a $100 pen.

 

Do you own a loupe?

[YonathanZ]

I do not own a loupe.

[Mongoosey]

I do not own a loupe.

 

I thought not.

 

Just a heads up: A loupe is essential to anyone using a fountain pen. It is one of the if not the most important accessories for anyone using fountain pens besides the bulb syringe (some pens really do need a flushing with a bulb syringe to work or clean out oils, residues, or previous inks used).

 

You need a 10x loupe at least. I find 10x to be sufficient, but you can always go with higher magnification I suppose.

 

You will come across many fountain pens that simply come with tight tines or misaligned tines OOTB and the only way to fix that is with a gentle hand and a loupe. That doesn't mean they are bad fountain pens necessarily. That's just the way it is.

 

If that's the case, then for future reference I recommend removing the nib and inserting a single Brass sheet (the kind you get from Goulet pens) in between the tines and leaving it there for a few hours or over night (gentle approach). This will help prevent you from spreading the tines too much. If that doesn't work after 2 days (playing it safe), then you use 2 brass sheets with that same gentle pace. If that doesn't work you just add more brass sheets, but be careful to go slow. IME Regular Pilot Gold nibs that come with tines too tight usually don't require more than a single brass sheet left over a few hours or overnight. Pilot Soft Gold nibs are a different story : /

 

If you try to wrench open the nib slits without such a gentle approach you'll likely misalign the tines in the process (not a hard fix, but not necessary) and loose some of the smoothness of the nib, or you run the risking of spreading them too far and that is not a good thing, but easy to avoid with a slow approach.

 

This is a necessary skill, but very easy with a proper loupe and Brass sheets. A Loupe will make your life with fountain pens sooo much easier.

 

TBH, and I don't mean to be discouraging, but if you are doing school work with your pen the Pilot Gold Medium nib may be too thick, but it also may not be depending on the ink. I do find Sailor Kiwa-Guro, which is a great ink for any paper and the best for cheap paper, does tame the line width well for any pen including a Pilot Gold Medium nib. It may be an ink worth sampling to see how it works in your pen : )

[TheDutchGuy]

Just a heads up: A loupe is essential to anyone using a fountain pen. It is one of the if not the most important accessories for anyone using fountain pens besides the bulb syringe (some pens really do need a flushing with a bulb syringe to work or clean out oils, residues, or previous inks used).

A hand lens is certainly helpful. Another trick, which I find more pleasant, is to put on a cheap reading glass with large magnification. Sometimes I even put on two of those at once. It isn’t winning me any beauty contests but it’s great for nib work - I can see what I am doing and I don’t have to pick up the hand lens every time.

 

Having said that, you can do a lot by touch and feel. At the end of the day, it’s how a nib writes, not how it looks. For smoothing, I rarely use a hand lens. For tine corrections, it can come in handy but even those I could do by feel and touch alone.

[YonathanZ]

Thanks for the "nib modification" tips, however I'd rather just give such an expensive pen to a nibmeister. There's one just 20 minutes away...

[Mongoosey]

Thanks for the "nib modification" tips, however I'd rather just give such an expensive pen to a nibmeister. There's one just 20 minutes away...

 

Sounds good.

Edited July 20, 2019 by Mongoosey

[khalameet]

This sounds just like my experience with my first C74. But after some googling I found that the #5 gold nibs from Pilot have some problems very often. The "dry upstroke" is in fact a very common problem.

 

It was very easy to fix, and now this is my most favourite pen. Worth mentioning that I got the M nib, though.

[A Smug Dill]

Just a heads up: A loupe is essential to anyone using a fountain pen. It is one of the if not the most important accessories for anyone using fountain pens besides the bulb syringe (some pens really do need a flushing with a bulb syringe to work or clean out oils, residues, or previous inks used).

 

 

I think you're terribly overstating the importance or even relevance of a loupe, or the willingness to inspect and tune a nib, to "anyone using a fountain pen", considering the huge number of users of sub-$10 Chinese fountain pens in China (and elsewhere too).

 

I have twenty-six Wing Sung 3008 pens here, as well as a number of Delike New Moon 3, Wing Sung 9105 and Jinhao 51A/699/911 pens — each costing less than A$10 — and I didn't have to inspect the nib on any of them under magnification to get it to write properly. If flossing between the tines and aligning them by firmly pressing the nib upside down on a notepad didn't work, I'd have just chucked the pen in the bin.

[nishikori]

I've been rethinking getting a Custom 74 recently because of things like this.

[JonSzanto]

I think you're terribly overstating the importance or even relevance of a loupe, or the willingness to inspect and tune a nib, to "anyone using a fountain pen", considering the huge number of users of sub-$10 Chinese fountain pens in China (and elsewhere too).

 

Not to mention the millions of users, over the many decades in the past, that simply used their pens and didn't tinker with them.

[nishikori]

 

Not to mention the millions of users, over the many decades in the past, that simply used their pens and didn't tinker with them.

Agree with this immensely. Tuning would've been a very niche action.

[A Smug Dill]

In my experience the Nib Nook tool is not very helpful since you don't have any frame of reference.

I must disagree with your statement because of the clause in which you gave your reasoning. Users of Goulet's Nib Nook all have been given the exact same frame of reference:

 

These writing samples are representative, and standardized upon Noodler's Black ink on 80g white Rhodia dotPad paper, all written by Brian Goulet.

That is a well-defined frame of reference. It is irrelevant whether the particular ink, the particular type of paper, and the handwriting style and technique differ from what the individual user would choose, and it does not matter if what she (or he) really wants to know is how a pen would is how it would write in 5mm-tall Chinese kaishu script with Sailor Shikiori doyou ink on Maruman m.memo 60g/m² notepad paper. The user does not get to choose a different frame of reference to which she can better anchor her information requirements, but must adapt to the frame of reference chosen by the provider and offered to everyone else.

 

Then there is the 5mm dot grid clearly shown in the background of each writing sample, to give an absolute scale against which line width can be measured. That, again, is a part of the frame of reference.

 

I need to have it in front of me to actually tell the differences. Computer screens don't cut it.

The user can scale the image such that the dots as they appear on her computer display (or tablet screen) are exactly 5mm apart. I often scale writing sample scans I upload to FPN so that they are true to size when displayed on the screen of my 13-inch MacBook Pro.

 

 

Last but not least, for users who cannot effectively work with absolute scales and measurements, but must get their bearings exclusively from, "How does it compare with..._?" the tool does allow the user to choose one or more nibs with which she feels familiar and want to use as a frame of reference against which to compare line widths written with other nibs; just not her ink of choice, or 6.5mm-ruled line markings as opposed to a 5mm dot grid, and so on.

[DonM]

I must disagree with your statement because of the clause in which you gave your reasoning. Users of Goulet's Nib Nook all have been given the exact same frame of reference:

 

These writing samples are representative, and standardized upon Noodler's Black ink on 80g white Rhodia dotPad paper, all written by Brian Goulet.

That is a well-defined frame of reference. It is irrelevant whether the particular ink, the particular type of paper, and the handwriting style and technique differ from what the individual user would choose, and it does not matter if what she (or he) really wants to know is how a pen would is how it would write in 5mm-tall Chinese kaishu script with Sailor Shikiori doyou ink on Maruman m.memo 60g/m² notepad paper. The user does not get to choose a different frame of reference to which she can better anchor her information requirements, but must adapt to the frame of reference chosen by the provider and offered to everyone else.

 

Then there is the 5mm dot grid clearly shown in the background of each writing sample, to give an absolute scale against which line width can be measured. That, again, is a part of the frame of reference.

 

The user can scale the image such that the dots as they appear on her computer display (or tablet screen) are exactly 5mm apart. I often scale writing sample scans I upload to FPN so that they are true to size when displayed on the screen of my 13-inch MacBook Pro.

 

 

Last but not least, for users who cannot effectively work with absolute scales and measurements, but must get their bearings exclusively from, "How does it compare with..._?" the tool does allow the user to choose one or more nibs with which she feels familiar and want to use as a frame of reference against which to compare line widths written with other nibs; just not her ink of choice, or 6.5mm-ruled line markings as opposed to a 5mm dot grid, and so on.

 

Glad you find it useful. It is of little use to me.

[JonSzanto]

Glad you find it useful. It is of little use to me.

 

Short of having each and every one of those nibs in front of you and being able to physically write with them, the tool is about as close as a comparative viewpoint as one can get. Maybe you need to consider it again in a new light. And if it really does not, somehow, give you at least a bit of a handle on nib size and use, what would you suggest?

[YonathanZ]

Brian mentions in one of his videos that different people wrote the different samples, which is why the Metropolitan M and the C74 F look similar - he specifically mentioned that the C74 is his own writing, which is heavier and at a lower angle, while the Metropolitan is someone elses - and indeed in reality the C74 Fine is nowhere near the Metro M.

 

That variable of who writes what makes the tool, in my opinion, only good for comparison of different nibs of the same pen model.

[DonM]

 

Short of having each and every one of those nibs in front of you and being able to physically write with them, the tool is about as close as a comparative viewpoint as one can get. Maybe you need to consider it again in a new light. And if it really does not, somehow, give you at least a bit of a handle on nib size and use, what would you suggest?

 

For some reason it seems that A Smug Dill wants to school me on frame of reference and you want to challenge my opinion (which is all this is, by the way).

 

The frame of reference I'm referring to is a known (to me) nib width when compared to an individual pen. That means that, yes, I have to have them both in my hands, inked with the same ink on the same sheet of paper on the same day at the same time while I do my best to apply the same pressure as I write with each pen.

 

I don't find the Goulet comparisons useful because with gold nibs there is simply too much variation from nib to nib. I suspect that there is also variation in pressure applied, etc., even if Brian does his best to remain consistent. This is not a criticism of him in case you think that's what I am implying. It's always a roll of the dice as to what nib width you will actually get, based on my personal experience.

 

Again, this is my personal opinion based on my personal experience. So I'm happy to explain the basis for it, but your opinion and experience may differ and that's fine with me.

[A Smug Dill]

In my experience the Nib Nook tool is not very helpful since youⁱ don't have anyⁱⁱ frame of reference.

 

For some reason it seems that A Smug Dill wants to school me on frame of reference and you want to challenge my opinion (which is all this is, by the way).

_...‹snip›...

The frame of reference I'm referring to is a known (to me) nib width when compared to an individual pen.

Again, this is my personal opinion based on my personal experience. So I'm happy to explain the basis for it, but your opinion and experience may differ and that's fine with me.

 

Just to be clear, I think you're perfectly entitled to your opinion, and I don't particularly want to change your mind about the Nib Nook's usefulness to you. Like I said, I was challenging the validity of your statement, because you were framing it as what the reader — "you", which includes but is not limited to me — of that statement would think or get, and then implied no other frames of reference exist than your preferred one. So, for the benefit of other readers and participants in this discussion, I wanted to open up what "frame of reference" for evaluating something means. The only frame of reference that you "have to have", or prefer to use, is not what all that anyone else can or will use.

 

Brian mentions in one of his videos that different people wrote the different samples, which is why the Metropolitan M and the C74 F look similar - he specifically mentioned that the C74 is his own writing, which is heavier and at a lower angle, while the Metropolitan is someone elses -

That's surprising. Thanks for pointing that out, since I personally prefer not to watch any video clips as sources of information about the hobby (unless the dynamic nature of some test or phenomenon cannot be shown in still images or adequately described otherwise), and so I'd never have encountered Brian's statement you mentioned.

 

I took the written statement published on Goulet's web site right there on the Nib Nook page to be authoritative and true. That was obviously my mistake.

[Honeybadgers]

While I agree about the general QC aspect and the need to tinker, Im not so sure about Pilot.

 

This has not been my personal experience. Not with Pilot, not with Visconti and not with Pelikan. To some degree someones personal experience with a brand depends on luck, but still. Id rate Sailor much higher than Pilot because in my personal experience their QC is much better, the variance in how their nibs perform and feel is much smaller and how a Sailor writes evokes much more passion and emotion in me.

 

I wonder if there is such a thing as _the_ feel of a Pilot nib. Most Capless nibs that Ive tried (a dozen or so) where supersmooth but felt dull and lifeless, as if there is something that somehow detaches me from the actual writing experience, as if I am controlling a joystick on a computer which then controls the actual pen. Something like that. The F nib in my former C823 performed very well from a technical point of view but felt awful. The cheaper Metro uses steel nibs that perform well but do nothing for me; as with the Capless they usually feel dull and lifeless to me. The Falcon was very interesting, but felt somewhat unpleasant and totally sterile to me in comparison to one of my vintage pens that has a semi-flex nib. So sterile, in fact, that I would probably never have used it and instead would always have picked up the vintage pen to enjoy its amazing tactile respons. Last but not least, I acquired a Justus 95 recently because I like the size of the pen, its softness control feature and (most of all) it showed the potential for emotion. As for the nib..? The exterior of the nib was smoothed to perfection (too much, really) but the edges of the inner tines were not smoothed at all. Result: intense, unpleasant, rough feedback and the occasional paper snag. This on a pen that retails for close to 300 euros! I bought it, because it gives me a platform to tune the nib to my liking. But to summarize, Ive experienced so much variation in Pilot nibs that I wonder if there is such a thing as _the_ Pilot feel. With Sailor, whole different ballgame.

 

 

Sailor and pilot are very much on equal footing in the QC department. Pelikan can occasionally over-polish their broader nibs, and visconti is absolutely famous for their appalling nib quality control. I've had 4 out of the 6 I've gotten come with nibs that were literally unusable with how badly they hard started.

 

That said, based on our previous conversations, I think you have a tendency to seriously over-think things. It seems like you very much prefer pens to write a very certain way (something that is perfectly acceptable) and to that extent, I think if you want to really keep collecting pens, it would be prudent to just get a handful of super cheap chinese pens (Dill likes the WS 3008, and for the purposes of this experiment, I would concur) and just practice with micro mesh in the 8-12k range until you get that perfect sensation of drag, and then just apply it to other pens. It'll also go a long way in making you feel like you can do something about that shiny new M1000 that is both too smooth and a little overpolished so it hard starts, instead of being at the whims of potentially getting another dud (like I did three times in a row from visconti, back before I was comfortable dealing with baby's bottom myself)

 

 

Short of having each and every one of those nibs in front of you and being able to physically write with them, the tool is about as close as a comparative viewpoint as one can get. Maybe you need to consider it again in a new light. And if it really does not, somehow, give you at least a bit of a handle on nib size and use, what would you suggest?

 

I also agree that it's not useful for me. It's very abstract and not representative of much because handwriting pressure can completely change how wide a line is. Some pens just FIREHOSE down a line of ink with a little pressure, others do not. Unless Goulet also made sure that the pens were writing under nothing more than their own weight, I would argue that it's not a very useful (though better than nothing) metric.

 

It also doesn't really do much to show you how it would look with your own handwriting. David, from Figboot, for example, writes with a VERY heavy hand, and his writing samples are completely unrepresentative of how it would look with my handwriting. His downstrokes on D's and S's get an actual meaningful amount of line variation out of a steel JoWo nib. which is really, really heavy

 

 

Granted, I don't want goulet to stop doing it, but for me, personally, I would argue that anyone saying it's an objective measurement is just talking nonsense. It's full of confounding potential errors, the least of which just flat out grind inconsistencies. I've had four 3776 UEF's, and two were ground horribly and didn't write at all. another was ground so fine it popped the tipping off after about six months (and I have an extremely light hand)

Edited July 26, 2019 by Honeybadgers