What Pens Wouldn't You Buy Again?

[Arkanabar]

[jvr]

Monteverde always disappointed me. No Parker ever worked well for me either. I have bought with later regret too many cheap Chinese pens. I no longer buy thin pens, no matter how nice they look. They just don’t feel right in my hand.

 

But I like pens that others here don’t, so to each his/her own.

 

And I’m ignoring pens I that just don’t appeal to me and that I’ve never even tried. I’m looking at Cross here...

[KingsCountyWriter]

LAMY Safari. Feels cheap, unreliable writer. At least the one I had was. 
 

MUJI aluminum FP. Scratchiest nib ever. I’m not a fan but I do love the brand. 
 

Sailor Profit (?). It was on sale at Kingdom Note and I waited for my MIL to send it from Japan. It got here after 8 months and the feedback drives me crazy. I tried to sell it immediately the next day, to no avail...

 

 

[Addertooth]

1. Any fountain pen found in a blister pack at a home-office store.  I did coax one to be an excellent writer, but it's cheap appearance never inspired me. 

2. Any modern steel-nib flex pens.  Once you have used a great vintage flex nib, the modern steel ones require a lot of work to get them "in the ballpark".  Even so, they still seem to be missing something. 

3. Ring pens, but not for the reason you expect.  Most are very ornate and eye catching, many have wonderful and flexible nibs.   Yes, they are too small for my hands (and posting will eventually scuff the surface), but... I have way too many of them, as they were like crack to me for a period of time.  

4. Celluloid pens which show a hint of color shift on the end.  With that purchase, you have bought something which has endured for decades, only to die on your doorstep.  You adopted an orphan with stage 4 cancer.  There may be some good days ahead, but it is likely to end in only one way. 

[sgphototn]

I've added a pen I wouldn't buy again, and one pen 'color' I'd never buy.

 

Noodler Ahabs- I don't think they're bad pens at all. The smell doesn't bother me, the price is less than $25.00, and all the ones I've had have written without difficulty. I don't care for the pump converter, but even that's not even a deal killer.

 

I don't like the flex nibs. They write well enough, but require me to consciously apply pressure if I want flex. I don't like that. It's not just a little pressure, it's a lot. Same goes for the Neponset and Triple Tail music nibs. I cannot write without thinking about "Is this the time and place where I apply pressure?" Pens that require me to think about the writing style of the nib slow down my writing thoughts.

 

Unlike vintage flex where it doesn't require an inordinate pressure, the Noodler nibs do. So I have three Ahabs in my give-away drawer. I've kept the Neponset as I've changed out the flex nib for a JoWo 1.1 stub.

 

But if someone wants a flex nib to play with, the Ahab isn't a bad deal. Plus, they can be fun to experiment with, heat-set nibs, and learn about pens. I'm just over the 'modern flex' nibs.

 

The pens I would never buy are 'white' pens. Purely from an aesthetic choice, I find white (cream, beige, etc.) colored pens simply not my cup of tea. Even expensive 'white' pens like Pelikan and various urushi pens leave me cold.  Like demonstrators, white pens seem unfinished and in my mind subject to staining.

 

Idiosyncrasies make the world go round. 

 

 

[ParramattaPaul]

I have to say that I'm not fond of white or light coloured pens, even grey ones. To me, they look cheap no matter the pen's make or cost.

[Ink Stained Wretch]

On 12/22/2020 at 1:32 PM, DianaMurray said:

I'm so annoyed with myself and I want some hand-holding. 

 

I rarely impulse buy. I haven't been doing the fountain pen thing for over a year. Got back into it. Needed new pens. Old pens missing in action or dysfunctional....

 

So I went on Goulet and saw what seemed to be a nice re-starter kit: the Monteverde Monza 3. Three pens (medium, fine, flex) for $34 altogether.

 

Then I did a YouTube review search and discovered that this pen is the exact same as a Jinhao 992, which you can get half a dozen for $12. 

 

So annoying! I'm grumpy. Yes, chalk it up to education, experience, the university of life, and I can afford it, it's not going to put me out on the street, but still.

 

Six 992s for $12 beats three for $34 any day. 

 

🤥😰

 

Yeah, I got the 15 pack of 992s for $27 USD back in 2017. I was amazed a couple of months later when I saw the exact same fountain pen being marketed as a much more expensive pen. I looked and looked and could see no difference. And then word started to leak onto FPN about how exactly the same they were. Not only was I glad that I had gotten the 992s at a good price but for the first time ever a bulk pack of pens from mainland China worked 100% for me. I did not find a dud in the bunch, although others say that the plastic will disintegrate eventually. I have always wondered if the Monteverde company got snookered on this deal. Did their design, and maybe even a part of their factory, get pirated 🤔?

[inkstainedruth]

17 hours ago, jvr said:

Monteverde always disappointed me. No Parker ever worked well for me either. I have bought with later regret too many cheap Chinese pens. I no longer buy thin pens, no matter how nice they look. They just don’t feel right in my hand.

 

But I like pens that others here don’t, so to each his/her own.

 

And I’m ignoring pens I that just don’t appeal to me and that I’ve never even tried. I’m looking at Cross here...

I really like my Cross Solos (at least one of which is marked as being made in Japan, and I think I read someplace that they were made for Cross by Pilot).  So, relatively inexpensive, but the quality is there.

The Cross Verve, OTOH?  Ehhhhhhhh... not so much.  But it did only cost me a buck (and someone then gave me a converter for it).  I would probably be a LOT less generous in my opinion if I'd paid the nosebleed prices I've seen on eBay for them, though....

Ruth Morrisson aka inkstainedruth

[Arkanabar]

[stephanos]

My "wouldn't buy again" is a recent purchase: A Sailor ProGear Slim, mini. I usually love Sailors, I have several ProGears and ProGear Slims (Sapporo) and I really like them. I had been eyeing a Mini for ages. But when mine arrived, it was underwhelming. The cap posts by screwing onto the barrel and I have found that one has to be careful otherwise the clip ends up in the wrong place (like the TWSBI Mini), and I have to be careful to not cross-thread it. Yes, I know that the newer models don't screw on, but the reason I bought the version that I did is that it was substantially reduced in price: I simply couldn't justify the full (online) retail price, which is eye-watering in Europe.

Worse, the writing experience is nothing special. It feels nothing like the other Sailors that I have. Usually I have a crisp, precise writing experience that feels gentle in the hand and is a joy to use; this nib feels slightly mushy, with an imprecise line.

I'll keep the pen for the sake of completeness (I now have the full size range in ProGears), but I don't expect to use it very often at all.

[sgphototn]

3 minutes ago, Arkanabar said:

Thanks. I am aware of the FPR nib, and while I haven't used it, I've seen videos and it does appear to be easier to flex. 

 

Then again, maybe I am not a 'flexy' guy with modern nibs. I no longer even feel the desire to take a regular modern nib and see what kind of line variation I can get because it's not something I'll use in writing. Certainly with gold nibs I wouldn't try.

 

That may be the reason I prefer stubs and italic nibs to get line variation as I don't need to think about it when I write.

 

As you say, the best modern flex nibs still aren't like many vintage nibs where flex is concerned, and may never be.

 

I appreciate your thoughts. Thanks.

[ParramattaPaul]

I mentioned this pen previously; a Pelikan Twist is at the top 'do not buy' list.  It is a nice pen.  There are others here who like it.  It has a unique style to it, and is not over priced.  For me, it just doesn't suit how I hold a pen or write.

 

It will be the next pen I give away -- most likely to my eldest grandson or his brother.

[A Smug Dill]

6 hours ago, stephanos said:

My "wouldn't buy again" is a recent purchase: A Sailor ProGear Slim, mini. I usually love Sailors, I have several ProGears and ProGear Slims (Sapporo) and I really like them. I had been eyeing a Mini for ages. But when mine arrived, it was underwhelming. The cap posts by screwing onto the barrel and I have found that one has to be careful otherwise the clip ends up in the wrong place (like the TWSBI Mini), and I have to be careful to not cross-thread it. Yes, I know that the newer models don't screw on,

 

I guess that just goes to prove the adage, “different strokes for different folks.” I love Sailor as a fountain pen and ink brand, but I think I got to the point — after more than two dozen Sailor pens and over fifty bottles of Sailor ink, I just stopped counting — where I feel overfull with its products, and passed on some as-low-as-I've-seen discounted offers on pens that still remain on my watchlist out of sheer laziness. Nevertheless, I bought two Pro Gear Slim Mini pens (one for myself and one for my wife) recently, ”for the sake of completeness” as you say and now that converters are available for that model; and we like them so much that it's the pen model for which I'm slapping myself for not snapping up more colours of it at the price.

 

I generally don't post the cap on the barrel when I write with a fountain pen (i.e. I don't like or enjoy doing so), and apart from few models (e.g. Pilot Elite 95S, Lamy cp1) it feels ‘wrong’ to my hand. Not so the Sailor PGSM; my wife and I both love ours, and doubly so because we have the model that has threads near the end of the barrel to secure the cap when posting (and avoid scuffing the barrel from friction-fitting the cap). Some long-time members and habitual cap-posters here bleat frequently about the qualitative need to post the cap securely in a well-balanced configuration; and this ticks those boxes perfectly, more so than any other pen with threads on the barrel for posting the cap (that I've bought and tried), and also more than any other Sailor pen. Caveat: The act of posting the cap of this pen neither yields a ‘satisfying’ click, nor is a snug friction-fit with a firm push of the cap onto the barrel, but a gentle screwing action that takes 5+ seconds (and 5+ seconds to undo); it requires deliberate and mindful (and “careful”) action on the part of the user to do so and get ready mentally for writing, and rewards the user with as secure a fit of the cap on the barrel as one can reasonably imagine. We can't get that even if we bought the PGSM in second-release colours for the same discounted price, because they lack the threads on the barrel.

 

For quite deployment, I'd use my Pilot Elite 95S (which I love) or any of my Pilot Capless Vanishing Point pens instead. But the Sailor PGSM is something special, and (I feel) in a prime position to ‘demand’ attention and careful user action when put to service.

[peroride]

15 hours ago, sgphototn said:

I cannot write without thinking about "Is this the time and place where I apply pressure?" Pens that require me to think about the writing style of the nib slow down my writing thoughts.

🤣 Hilarious indeed, you've read my mind many a time from using  Omni-flex, Noodler flex and other like promoted marketing flex pens

[AndrewG]

I'm a bit wary of Monteverde. Both of mine (Prima and Innova 20th Anniversary), needed extensive tweaking to get them writing properly. The Innova, in particular, arrived with a very dry and unpleasant feel and I spent hours getting it right. I know they aren't especially expensive, but...

[AndrewG]

On 12/23/2020 at 9:37 AM, ljz said:

Like you, I too possess three 149s and unfortunately none of their nibs lives up to my expectations. I own a few Solitaire 146s as well because I prefer a fairly greater weight when writing with fountain pen. Nevertheless, their nibs are just so-so. Sending them back to MB for inspection oftentimes brings no improvement to the nib quality. So far as I’m concerned, M200s outperform all of them. The steel nib on Pelikan provides the kind of springiness and wetness just the way I like. I wish one day Pelikan will produce a larger chassis for their steel nib. Last but not least, I still love Montblanc in terms of their traditions and never-ending design ventures but sadly not writing performance.

I like my M200 very much, although I have found that the material used is very soft and marks easily despite my taking extra care with it. After just a couple of weeks the barrel was marked and scored from posting the cap. Probably not so obvious with the coloured models but mine is black and it's very apparent. I wish the build was a little more 'substantial', but I do understand it's essentially Pelikan's 'entry level' pen, albeit a somewhat pricey one, so corners need to be cut somewhere. 

Edited December 30, 2020 by AndrewG

[ibrahim]

On 12/30/2020 at 7:20 AM, AndrewG said:

  On 12/23/2020 at 4:37 AM, ljz said:

Like you, I too possess three 149s and unfortunately none of their nibs lives up to my expectations. I own a few Solitaire 146s as well because I prefer

May I ask about what kind of issues you had to deal with in the Mont Blanc nibs? Aren’t they smooth, fine writers? In my conception, they are flagship pens and they write like a dream. Don’t they?

 

[nm4]

16 hours ago, ibrahim said:

May I ask about what kind of issues you had to deal with in the Mont Blanc nibs? Aren’t they smooth, fine writers? In my conception, they are flagship pens and they write like a dream. Don’t they?

 

Mine hard started, had more feedback than expected, and even after trips to nibmeisters and MB just didn’t perform very well.  I did have an MB Boheme stub that was excellent but that probably reflected Mike Masuyama’s work more than MBs. 
 

Cheers,

NM

[Kho]

Pilot Kakuno EF. Too scratchy. Inexpensive pen so no harm done 

[senzen]

Parker Sonnets evaporate like crazy, which made my two always have starting problems; had to resort to wax on the cap, I know there are prettier solutions but can't get old of the materials. These problems kept me away from fountain pens for years.

 

Waterman Laureat: emptied ink onto its cap, a section transplant didn't help.

 

Waterman Concorde, I was aware of its issues but would I listen? Noooo. After a month the section threads went with the converter onto the barrel; metal converter, poor plastic section, bad idea.

 

Platinum Cool, one always had starting problems no matter what I did, and I tried everything.