Are Penbbs 456 worth the £30 price?

[Leo_Luz]

On 1/13/2021 at 1:36 PM, InkNsap said:

True. But I have my mind on a Pilot C. 74. That company hasn’t disappointed me yet... Only wish I could try my hand at actually writing with one before committing to the purchase. 
 

 

I didn't buy any PenBBS...yet.

But I liked a lot write using a Pilot Metropolitan (same nib as 78G+) and bought a C74. That's a wonderful pen!

It has more feedback than 78G+ but it writes really good and now I understand why many people likes it too.

 

If you are thinking about trying cheaper pens before buying C74 I would recommend Platinum Preppy (or Shooting Star or Plaisir that has the same nib). It has more feedback than Pilot 78G/Metropolitan but it's a pleasant feedback.

[InkNsap]

Thank you Leo! I have a Preppy that writes really well, I need to refill the cartridge actually. I also have a Pilot 78g+ in extra Fine and a couple of Preras which I adore. I will save up for a 74, I’ll probably end up ordering from Japan. 
 

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On 1/15/2021 at 6:15 AM, Leo_Luz said:

I didn't buy any PenBBS...yet.

But I liked a lot write using a Pilot Metropolitan (same nib as 78G+) and bought a C74. That's a wonderful pen!

It has more feedback than 78G+ but it writes really good and now I understand why many people likes it too.

 

If you are thinking about trying cheaper pens before buying C74 I would recommend Platinum Preppy (or Shooting Star or Plaisir that has the same nib). It has more feedback than Pilot 78G/Metropolitan but it's a pleasant feedback.

 

 

[InkNsap]

Thank you! All great points. It’s a matter to consider, I do like changing inks in some of my pens, but others have a job and ink to go with it. I’ll need to think of a job for such a beautiful and high maintenance pen. 
 

I have just gotten in the mail a Wing Sung 601 that I had given up for lost in the post. I loved filling it, so quick, with one hand, and kinda James Bond-like with that blind cap. The nib writes ok, not amazing, not scratchy... will see how we get along. 
forgive my handwriting, that journal is for my morning pages and I don’t put much effort in my penmanship.

 

On 1/14/2021 at 1:26 AM, Antenociticus said:

Realise I didn't address your actual question at all.

 

Although it's not my favourite PenBBS model, I do think it's a good pen for the money. It certainly won't fall apart in your hand. It might involve a bit of dismantling and reassembly if you need to give it a good clean – more trouble than I want to go to, despite having stained one clear-barrelled 456 by foolishly inking it with Noodler's El Lawrence. And lot of other people do say that it's their favourite.

 

On 1/14/2021 at 1:48 AM, JonSzanto said:

Good pen, well made, material quality seems above average. I have had... four ot these, I think? I am well used to vac-fillers, as much of my collection is vintage and I have in service a number of Sheaffer vac-fills from the 30s-50s. Once restored, they last for decades, I would expect reasonable longevity from these pens. Yes: this is not a pen for swapping inks regularly, that is what c/c pens are for. 

A vac-fill or bulk fill (355/Conid) are made for picking and ink and just writing for days with it - why else would you pick a pen with a large-capacity ink supply? Beyond that, the ergonomics of a pen are wholly dependent on the user's own hand, so to even bring those aspects into the discussion seems unhelpful. Finally, is it worth 30 pounds? Is a sandwich worth the price? A car? The 'worth' of something is such a sliding value that only YOU can say whether it was worth the price. I have certainly paid more for lesser pen experiences, and I also have not been disappointed in any of the PenBBS nibs. In the end, as with any pen purchase you make where you don't actually handle and try the pen: YMMV.

 

[Leo_Luz]

4 hours ago, InkNsap said:

Thank you Leo! I have a Preppy that writes really well, I need to refill the cartridge actually. I also have a Pilot 78g+ in extra Fine and a couple of Preras which I adore. I will save up for a 74, I’ll probably end up ordering from Japan. 
 

 

I think buying a C74 will be a better choice. 

I bought mine on AliExpress. Try having a look about those prices.

[TSherbs]

On 1/12/2021 at 1:34 AM, OCArt said:

Take a look at the Wing Sung 699, a "copy"of the Pilot 823 and a very nice pen. Plenty of reviews to read, too.

 

 

 

Agreed. The 699 is half the price, and now made as both a vac filler or a piston filler. You get to pick.

[InkNsap]

Oh I did see that! I was a bit scared of buying something so expensive in AliExpress! Which store did you use? Good customer service? 
 

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17 hours ago, Leo_Luz said:

I think buying a C74 will be a better choice. 

I bought mine on AliExpress. Try having a look about those prices.

 

 

[sandy101]

For around £30 you can get a Faber Castell Loom or Basic - the best nibs for under £35 in my opinion. 

 

I've used some BBS pens - they are pretty - and you get an acryllic body that costs three times as much from other brands, but the nib is nowhere near as good as the Faber Castell ones at the same price. 

 

If you are looking for a great nib, I'd consider a Faber Castell.

 

Although, the FCs are not as nice looking as the pen BBS ones.  

 

If you want a gold nib - I'd keep on saving, but you are not far off from getting one. 

 

If you want to go vintage, A Parker 45 with a gold nib should be acheivable for £30 or less - and the fine nibs are excellent. A decent (vintage) Parker 51 can be had for £50 and an Irish rolled gold Cross Century (very slim) can be had for less than £30 - lots of folk won them as prizes or got them as gifts in the 80's and 90's and now there's a glut of the appearing on E-bay UK. 

 

The Platinum #3776 and Sailor pro-Gear Slim (both with 14K gold nibs) can be found for around £100 and make very nice writers.      

 

 

[Leo_Luz]

19 hours ago, InkNsap said:

Oh I did see that! I was a bit scared of buying something so expensive in AliExpress! Which store did you use? Good customer service? 
 

 

I bought many items from that store. Everything was ok.

https://m.pt.aliexpress.com/item/1005001504188081.html

[InkNsap]

Oh Thank you Leo! They are half the price there compared to Cult pens... the only thing I’d have to add is import taxes... 

what nib have you got? The EF looks super fine, but I feel it would be a journaling pen considering the price, so maybe a M. 

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48 minutes ago, Leo_Luz said:

I bought many items from that store. Everything was ok.

https://m.pt.aliexpress.com/item/1005001504188081.html

 

 

[InkNsap]

Hi Sandy! Thank you so much for the advice 

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18 hours ago, sandy101 said:

For around £30 you can get a Faber Castell Loom or Basic - the best nibs for under £35 in my opinion. 

 

I've used some BBS pens - they are pretty - and you get an acryllic body that costs three times as much from other brands, but the nib is nowhere near as good as the Faber Castell ones at the same price. 

 

If you are looking for a great nib, I'd consider a Faber Castell.

 

Although, the FCs are not as nice looking as the pen BBS ones.  

 

If you want a gold nib - I'd keep on saving, but you are not far off from getting one. 

 

If you want to go vintage, A Parker 45 with a gold nib should be acheivable for £30 or less - and the fine nibs are excellent. A decent (vintage) Parker 51 can be had for £50 and an Irish rolled gold Cross Century (very slim) can be had for less than £30 - lots of folk won them as prizes or got them as gifts in the 80's and 90's and now there's a glut of the appearing on E-bay UK. 

 

The Platinum #3776 and Sailor pro-Gear Slim (both with 14K gold nibs) can be found for around £100 and make very nice writers.      

 

 

 

 
I’m not a fan of the FC looks, I would consider changing the nib in the penbbs in if I don’t like it. 
 

Ohh give me all the tips in vintage pens please! I do want to dip my toes in it, but I’m scared of buying something that I won’t enjoy writing with or too precious and delicate to use. I do like the look of Parker 51 I’ll take a look at the other ones. Do you have a preferred retailer for vintage pens? I have been looking around in some ‘bigger’ shops online but they are always out of my budget. Any retailers on eBay that you trust? 
 

thank you so much! 

[InkNsap]

I have considered it as well. But the acrylics don’t speak to me as much, which is the one good point penbbs has... Are their nibs good? In that WS 699? 
 

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On 1/16/2021 at 7:56 PM, Quentin said:

 

Agreed. The 699 is half the price, and now made as both a vac filler or a piston filler. You get to pick.

 

 

[Leo_Luz]

30 minutes ago, InkNsap said:

Oh Thank you Leo! They are half the price there compared to Cult pens... the only thing I’d have to add is import taxes... 

what nib have you got? The EF looks super fine, but I feel it would be a journaling pen considering the price, so maybe a M. 

 

I'd get Fine. Just be careful that many people complains about C74 Medium writing down more like a Broad line.

That's why I bought Fine. Should I have bought a FM nib instead? Maybe.

[A Smug Dill]

1 hour ago, InkNsap said:

Are their nibs good? In that WS 699?

 

Not to my taste, so I'm sure I've already reground it myself (but I never keep records or notes of to which nibs I've done what); but I vaguely remember one of the reasons why the WS 699 is popular (outside of being a vac-filler, which is of no value or appeal to me and being relatively cheap, which was why I thought I'd give it a go anyway, just to confirm I it a bore) with the type of hobbyists who haunt fountain pen forums, is that you could jam a JoWo(?) #6 nib into it as replacement.

[InkNsap]

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8 minutes ago, A Smug Dill said:

 

Not to my taste, so I'm sure I've already reground it myself (but I never keep records or notes of to which nibs I've done what); but I vaguely remember one of the reasons why the WS 699 is popular (outside of being a vac-filler, which is of no value or appeal to me and being relatively cheap, which was why I thought I'd give it a go anyway, just to confirm I it a bore) with the type of hobbyists who haunt fountain pen forums, is that you could jam a JoWo(?) #6 nib into it as replacement.

 

That was my original idea. But then it would be a £60 fountain pen, which it’s cool, but I might rather save up for a pilot C74. I’m still considering it. 

[A Smug Dill]

1 minute ago, InkNsap said:

That was my original idea. But then it would be a £60 fountain pen,

 

Hmm. I bought mine in September 2019 on eBay, and — yes, by then Australia had already started doing that thing where the Australian Tax Office demands that overseas retailers, forwarding shipping services, as well as ‘electronic distribution platforms’ such as eBay, to collect GST (i.e. consumption tax, or VAT) from the end-consumer and hand it over to the ATO — the WS 699 cost me A$30.79, so around £16.70 using the exchange rate of the day. If the consumption tax rate was 20% instead of 10%, that'd have come to about £18.22. How much is a JoWo nib?

 

In any case...

 

Considering that a Pilot Custom 74 and a Platinum #3776 Century have about the same standing in their respective manufacturer's product line-up, and are in generally the same price range, I'd go for the latter instead any day, not that I'm a fan of single-hued translucent plastics as material for a fountain pen's body. I bought my most recent Platinum #3776 Century Bourgogne from Cult Pens, which discounts Platinum products brand-wide by 10% (as it is doing right now) from time to time; and if you're able to find a 10% or 15% site-wide discount code to stack on top of that, it's a clear win.

[InkNsap]

Why do you prefer the Platinum? I have heard the Pilot nib (any nibs) are smoother than the 3776... that’s one of the reasons I haven’t considered it. 

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9 hours ago, A Smug Dill said:

 

Hmm. I bought mine in September 2019 on eBay, and — yes, by then Australia had already started doing that thing where the Australian Tax Office demands that overseas retailers, forwarding shipping services, as well as ‘electronic distribution platforms’ such as eBay, to collect GST (i.e. consumption tax, or VAT) from the end-consumer and hand it over to the ATO — the WS 699 cost me A$30.79, so around £16.70 using the exchange rate of the day. If the consumption tax rate was 20% instead of 10%, that'd have come to about £18.22. How much is a JoWo nib?

 

In any case...

 

Considering that a Pilot Custom 74 and a Platinum #3776 Century have about the same standing in their respective manufacturer's product line-up, and are in generally the same price range, I'd go for the latter instead any day, not that I'm a fan of single-hued translucent plastics as material for a fountain pen's body. I bought my most recent Platinum #3776 Century Bourgogne from Cult Pens, which discounts Platinum products brand-wide by 10% (as it is doing right now) from time to time; and if you're able to find a 10% or 15% site-wide discount code to stack on top of that, it's a clear win.

 

 

[TSherbs]

12 hours ago, InkNsap said:

I have considered it as well. But the acrylics don’t speak to me as much, which is the one good point penbbs has... Are their nibs good? In that WS 699? 
 

 

 

Plenty good for me. The Wing Sung 699 and the Jinhao 100 have nibs, to my mind, as good as PenBBS. They are big steel nibs that write smoothly and consistently. Again, we are talking <$25. The Jinhao 100 gets you into some of those nice acrylic patterns.

[A Smug Dill]

8 hours ago, InkNsap said:

Why do you prefer the Platinum? I have heard the Pilot nib (any nibs) are smoother than the 3776... that’s one of the reasons I haven’t considered it. 

 

Primarily because I don't like the shape and ergonomics of the Pilot Custom 74 one bit.

 

I can't tell you whether Pilot 14K gold #5 F nibs (on the Custom 74 and Custom Heritage 91/92 models) are smoother than the Platinum #3776 14K gold F nib, because I haven't used the former; but I have used more than a few of the latter, and while stiff and precise they write smoothly enough for my requirements.

 

The SF nib on the Pilot Custom 74 is smoother than the SF nib on the Platinum #3776 Century, in my experience, but the former doesn't write finely and consistently enough at minimum line width (with ‘no’ pressure) for my tastes; and, as far as I'm concerned, it is/was too ‘wet’.

 

Platinum's heavily marketed Slip & Seal mechanism works very well; not that the cap on any Pilot Custom is a slouch with regard to preventing ink evaporation. My main reservation with the ‘basic’ Platinum #3776 Century (PNB-13000) models is that clear or translucent single-hued ‘resins’ always seem like ‘cheap’ materials — not that the plain black on the entry-level Pilot Custom and Sailor Profit models are any better. I only bought the gold-trimmed Bourgogne from Cult Pens last year because the UEF nib isn't available on #3776 models with other finishes such as Kanazawa-haku (and I already have all three variants of that available to date).

 

I personally just don't like the Pilot Custom product line much; the only one I really like is the Pilot Custom Kaede, which is the equivalent of a wooden-barrelled Custom 742 (but, if I'm not mistaken, the pen body is actually resin-impregnated maple wood, which to its advantage makes it the only wooden-capped pen not to have a problem with ink evaporation in my experience; and there are user reports that the 14K gold #10 nib on the Custom Kaede is subtly different to and softer than the #10 nib on the Custom 742).

[Leo_Luz]

46 minutes ago, A Smug Dill said:

 

Primarily because I don't like the shape and ergonomics of the Pilot Custom 74 one bit.

 

I can't tell you whether Pilot 14K gold #5 F nibs (on the Custom 74 and Custom Heritage 91/92 models) are smoother than the Platinum #3776 14K gold F nib, because I haven't used the former; but I have used more than a few of the latter, and while stiff and precise they write smoothly enough for my requirements.

 

The SF nib on the Pilot Custom 74 is smoother than the SF nib on the Platinum #3776 Century, in my experience, but the former doesn't write finely and consistently enough at minimum line width (with ‘no’ pressure) for my tastes; and, as far as I'm concerned, it is/was too ‘wet’.

 

Platinum's heavily marketed Slip & Seal mechanism works very well; not that the cap on any Pilot Custom is a slouch with regard to preventing ink evaporation. My main reservation with the ‘basic’ Platinum #3776 Century (PNB-13000) models is that clear or translucent single-hued ‘resins’ always seem like ‘cheap’ materials — not that the plain black on the entry-level Pilot Custom and Sailor Profit models are any better. I only bought the gold-trimmed Bourgogne from Cult Pens last year because the UEF nib isn't available on #3776 models with other finishes such as Kanazawa-haku (and I already have all three variants of that available to date).

 

I personally just don't like the Pilot Custom product line much; the only one I really like is the Pilot Custom Kaede, which is the equivalent of a wooden-barrelled Custom 742 (but, if I'm not mistaken, the pen body is actually resin-impregnated maple wood, which to its advantage makes it the only wooden-capped pen not to have a problem with ink evaporation in my experience; and there are user reports that the 14K gold #10 nib on the Custom Kaede is subtly different to and softer than the #10 nib on the Custom 742).

I really miss something like Platinum's Slip & Seal on Pilot C74 😥

 

About Platinum #3776 seeming like cheap materials, translucent Pilot C74 seems like it too, right?

 

Unfortunately Pilot C74 Fine has more feedback than I would like. So I gave up buying a Platinum #3776 Bourgogne Medium. I will try a Pelikan M205 first.

[InkNsap]

This is one of the reasons I wish I could try them first. In a store, with the nib I want and good paper. I just don’t want to cash out +100£ on a pen and regret it. 😕 

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2 hours ago, A Smug Dill said:

 

Primarily because I don't like the shape and ergonomics of the Pilot Custom 74 one bit.

 

I can't tell you whether Pilot 14K gold #5 F nibs (on the Custom 74 and Custom Heritage 91/92 models) are smoother than the Platinum #3776 14K gold F nib, because I haven't used the former; but I have used more than a few of the latter, and while stiff and precise they write smoothly enough for my requirements.

 

The SF nib on the Pilot Custom 74 is smoother than the SF nib on the Platinum #3776 Century, in my experience, but the former doesn't write finely and consistently enough at minimum line width (with ‘no’ pressure) for my tastes; and, as far as I'm concerned, it is/was too ‘wet’.

 

Platinum's heavily marketed Slip & Seal mechanism works very well; not that the cap on any Pilot Custom is a slouch with regard to preventing ink evaporation. My main reservation with the ‘basic’ Platinum #3776 Century (PNB-13000) models is that clear or translucent single-hued ‘resins’ always seem like ‘cheap’ materials — not that the plain black on the entry-level Pilot Custom and Sailor Profit models are any better. I only bought the gold-trimmed Bourgogne from Cult Pens last year because the UEF nib isn't available on #3776 models with other finishes such as Kanazawa-haku (and I already have all three variants of that available to date).

 

I personally just don't like the Pilot Custom product line much; the only one I really like is the Pilot Custom Kaede, which is the equivalent of a wooden-barrelled Custom 742 (but, if I'm not mistaken, the pen body is actually resin-impregnated maple wood, which to its advantage makes it the only wooden-capped pen not to have a problem with ink evaporation in my experience; and there are user reports that the 14K gold #10 nib on the Custom Kaede is subtly different to and softer than the #10 nib on the Custom 742).

 

2 hours ago, Leo_Luz said:

I really miss something like Platinum's Slip & Seal on Pilot C74 😥

 

About Platinum #3776 seeming like cheap materials, translucent Pilot C74 seems like it too, right?

 

Unfortunately Pilot C74 Fine has more feedback than I would like. So I gave up buying a Platinum #3776 Bourgogne Medium. I will try a Pelikan M205 first.

 

I might need to wait to visit Japan some day in one of those heavenly stationary stores with walls of FP and displays of notebooks to try.