Diplomat and gold-nibs

January 9, 2021

Not many reviews out there of Diplomat's gold nibs... perhaps because their steel nibs are already so good.

Has anybody tried a gold-nibbed pen from Diplomat? I'm thinking particularly of the Aero. I imagine there's bit more ink flow, making them also write slightly broader. How about the feel?

January 10, 2021

I have an Aero extra fine steel, and an Excellence A2, 14k extra fine. Out of the box, the steel ef was perfect. The 14k, not so. Spent a lot of time carefully tweaking the nib and feed. It's good now, but if I got another Excellence it would be with a steel fine. Gold nibs without air holes - like my Imporium- have been too dry for me. Very difficult to open up.

January 10, 2021

3 hours ago, tim77 said:

Has anybody tried a gold-nibbed pen from Diplomat?

Third post below yours in the Diplomat Aero Unboxing and Review thread:

Oh, that's right, I see you started a thread to ask essentially the same thing, some weeks later in the same month after CraigN posted the above. No wonder it seems vaguely familiar.

January 10, 2021

20 hours ago, evan-houseman said:

Gold nibs without air holes - like my Imporium- have been too dry for me. Very difficult to open up.

Thanks, Evan. Good to know.

(and thanks also for not mentioning that I raised the same topic 17 months ago!)

January 14, 2021

OK,

The Brownish one is a 18 K gold nib Diplomat, @ 1990 or '93 along with all the others of the lot, I won at a live auction.

It is a Large pen, so is heavy posted, resting in the pit of the thumb.

The nib says M....but I'd eyeball it to an EEF....EF at thickest. I'm not into narrow nibs, but because you asked. The nib is a regular flex. I had to take a Sunshine polish cloth to the mono-tone nib, after sitting for 30 years the nib had tarnished a bit.

Has a very nice looking converter.

Is a push-pull pen, not screw on.

It being regular flex, has that springy ride expected...there is if one pushes the nib a tine spread of 3 X a light line. One really can't write when one pushes a regular flex to max.

Regular flex a Pelikan 200 or what the Japanese call 'soft'. Some Esterbrooks, Wearevers and (some) Shaffer and others than Parker made regular flex nibs as regular issue. I don't know American pens well, living in Germany..and in the US, back in the day of B&W TV...we were ignorant of most of what is known today.

From '82 to '97 Pelikan made regular flex (200 and new post 2010 1000's are now). Think MB did also. Some 'modern' '70-90's MB's (were mostly semi-flex from the '50-70) today are still as of 2006 and My Virginia Woolf were regular flex.

Just because a nib is gold does not mean it is regular flex. I have semi-nail & nail gold nibs.........................of course semi-flex and regular flex.

So it depends on the era....and who is making nibs for Diplomat....though it could be they still do it in house........it's not normally worth the labor, when Bock is in Germany.

All Diplomat says is their nibs are made with precision. Bock makes the nib to specks of the buyer (could be JoWo for all I know)....Pelikan nibs were made exactly to Pelikan 'new' post '97 specs....no one (many) liked Bock's fat and blobby stiffer nib, even when Pelikan took making the nibs back In-House...........after all Bock made them to Pelikan Specs. The exact same complaints were heard as when Bock made Pelikan's nibs.

They are made in Saxony, so I expect mine, with the 18K nib was made just after the Wall fell to get into the W.German market....could have been made for Export in old East Germany.

Now they have 14 K nibs and steel ones.

I have a silver plated nail that 'belongs' to my wife who don't write with a fountain pen. I once had a light metal Diplomat, that balanced so well, I still think of it fondly, but sold it because it had a steel nail nib.

I went looking for a bright blue ink, considering how narrow I think the nib is..........but it is no way in hell a M................I think it's thinner than Japanese M.

I will ink it with vintage Koh-I-Noor Document blue ink, made the Czech Republic, which means the ink is not as old as I though. Founded in '93. Don't know here or when I got the ink, but had not used it until now.

On my best papers it writes to an F perhaps EF, lays down the brilliant blue I had hoped for, fades to Pelikan blue fairly quickly.

January 19, 2021

Well after inking the pen, it writes more to a F.....and was made in W.Germany, as the marking on the cap lip band says. So they moved either back or over to old East Germany after the Wall Fell.

Regular classic nib with a small breather hole and slit that goes to the hole 1/3 up the nib.

March 16, 2023

On 1/9/2021 at 7:41 PM, fkyu said:

I have an Aero extra fine steel, and an Excellence A2, 14k extra fine. Out of the box, the steel ef was perfect. The 14k, not so. Spent a lot of time carefully tweaking the nib and feed. It's good now, but if I got another Excellence it would be with a steel fine. Gold nibs without air holes - like my Imporium- have been too dry for me. Very difficult to open up.

EXACTLY my experience --- I loved the Aero SS medium and fin nibs so much wanted to try the 14K gold Fine-- but it is so terribly dry and stiff. I have tried my novice best to make it better and I use it compulsively hoping it might adjust itself, but I have to say, not worth the money at all for me.

March 16, 2023

My two other diplomats....this is silver plated....when I buy a pen, the picture comes with it, and his light made it look gold.

There is a tennis one like this with a net in the final and a racket for the clip.

This one is an older Diplomat, could be maxi-semi-flex so 1970 or before. It has the old Maltese Cross markings. Nib and pen....whoops, is stainless steel instead of the gold I 'remembered'. It seems a maxi-semi-flex nib....(could be made by Degussa) And is a much darker blue almost Navy, ...Old camera trash-canned and I don't feel like learning all the steps of my wife's handi/cell phone. To do all this again.

nib is so marked

Diplomat

Maltese Cross..

...Iridium point.

Helps to have a better camera, or understand light, there is a Maltese Cross on the clip.

Forgot to photo the top, with it's Maltese Cross. The end of the world happened and I didn't notice. Maltese Crosses on the cap band.

March 31, 2023

I'll resurrect this thread as there are limited responses here and almost no other posts about Diplomat 14K nibs. Over the last 5-7 years I've migrated in and out of my FP community participation and enthusiasm... now revisiting for just about the 1st time since the first year of the pandemic, although I have had fountain pens inked and in use during the whole time.

I'll admit, I became a gold nib snob over the years. Despite having some very good writers that are steel, they always saw limited use, so when I wanted to see what the Diplomat hub-bub was about I sprung for 14K nib. A European vendor had a good deal on this pen in February '20. In looking at my records I paid €208, which included some discounts. The same Excellence A with 14K nib from the same vendor today costs €357. Yikes. Anyway, when I got it, the Medium nib was a real mess... Very dry and really like an EF line thickness. Some of the posts above suggest QC issues with the Diplomat 14K nibs. I spent weeks massaging and adjusting the nib to try to restore the nib to its intended writing capability, careful not to put any ripples or significant scratches in the nib face. At some point I put the pen in my pen case. Three years later I could not remember my resolution with the nib, but when I have a pen with a troubled nib I generally will work on it obsessively for days or weeks until it writes and looks great, or I have destroyed it. I was hoping the former.

I inked my Marrakesh (brown) Excellence A with Sailor Shikiori Doyou brown ink after 3 years, hoping for a silky smooth writing experience. I had recently watch a Diplomat review and was reminded why I bought a Diplomat in the first place... precise, smooth writing. Unfortunately, when I wrote my first few sentences, it appears I got the ink flow and line width issues corrected, but it just felt like it was giving more feedback than I was expecting... not scratchy, but a little rough. I capped the pen and moved on. This morning, the Excellence A was sitting next to my journal and I decided to give it another try. Wow, what a difference a day makes. I forget some times that a newly inked pen can take some time to settle in. In this case I had syringe-filled the converter and spritzed a little ink into the nib fins... likely not enough. But after a day of sitting, the pen normalized itself. This nib is now writing a fantastic, tight, smooth Medium line. Very precise. It is somewhat reminiscent of a Pelikan 800 experience, but more precise, like with a Sailor nib, since the tines seem more extended from the shoulders than on a Pelikan. Now that I have been playing around with it all morning, I am very impressed. It is a very clinical nib. On one hand, it does not feel like a nail, but on the other, there is essentially no flex. Take it for what you will. I also remembered I'm not a huge fan of metal pens, but I believe the black section on this is plastic, so I can appreciate this pen a lot more. Anyway, I'm very happy with the nib and pen now. With the challenges I went through, hard to say whether I recommend paying the 14K premium.

March 24

On 3/31/2023 at 9:13 AM, Tseg said:

I'll resurrect this thread as there are limited responses here and almost no other posts about Diplomat 14K nibs. Over the last 5-7 years I've migrated in and out of my FP community participation and enthusiasm... now revisiting for just about the 1st time since the first year of the pandemic, although I have had fountain pens inked and in use during the whole time.

I'll admit, I became a gold nib snob over the years. Despite having some very good writers that are steel, they always saw limited use, so when I wanted to see what the Diplomat hub-bub was about I sprung for 14K nib. A European vendor had a good deal on this pen in February '20. In looking at my records I paid €208, which included some discounts. The same Excellence A with 14K nib from the same vendor today costs €357. Yikes. Anyway, when I got it, the Medium nib was a real mess... Very dry and really like an EF line thickness. Some of the posts above suggest QC issues with the Diplomat 14K nibs. I spent weeks massaging and adjusting the nib to try to restore the nib to its intended writing capability, careful not to put any ripples or significant scratches in the nib face. At some point I put the pen in my pen case. Three years later I could not remember my resolution with the nib, but when I have a pen with a troubled nib I generally will work on it obsessively for days or weeks until it writes and looks great, or I have destroyed it. I was hoping the former.

I inked my Marrakesh (brown) Excellence A with Sailor Shikiori Doyou brown ink after 3 years, hoping for a silky smooth writing experience. I had recently watch a Diplomat review and was reminded why I bought a Diplomat in the first place... precise, smooth writing. Unfortunately, when I wrote my first few sentences, it appears I got the ink flow and line width issues corrected, but it just felt like it was giving more feedback than I was expecting... not scratchy, but a little rough. I capped the pen and moved on. This morning, the Excellence A was sitting next to my journal and I decided to give it another try. Wow, what a difference a day makes. I forget some times that a newly inked pen can take some time to settle in. In this case I had syringe-filled the converter and spritzed a little ink into the nib fins... likely not enough. But after a day of sitting, the pen normalized itself. This nib is now writing a fantastic, tight, smooth Medium line. Very precise. It is somewhat reminiscent of a Pelikan 800 experience, but more precise, like with a Sailor nib, since the tines seem more extended from the shoulders than on a Pelikan. Now that I have been playing around with it all morning, I am very impressed. It is a very clinical nib. On one hand, it does not feel like a nail, but on the other, there is essentially no flex. Take it for what you will. I also remembered I'm not a huge fan of metal pens, but I believe the black section on this is plastic, so I can appreciate this pen a lot more. Anyway, I'm very happy with the nib and pen now. With the challenges I went through, hard to say whether I recommend paying the 14K premium.

Happy to hear that you could tweek this nib - essentially writing like a nail - to your liking. I had to smile because I will do the same - obsessively trying to make a pen work for hours until it gives in or I do. I have gotten to a point that the 14k nib works OK but over all, the Diplomat SS nibs are superior writers 🙂