The pain and agony of Lamy 2000 nibs - the (M) is too broad

[Dusted]

I guess it comes down to personal taste. The Lamy 2000 was the first relatively expensive pen I bought. I got the EF nib but it is too broad for my style of writing. I do have some less expensive pens which have EF nibs that I like better.
 

Don’t get me wrong. I enjoy the feel of the Lamy and will keep it in my rotation, but I have a Platinum and Pilot pen on the way, which I am looking forward to trying.

[A Smug Dill]

On 4/16/2021 at 8:42 PM, Dione said:

If I got the chance I would happily swap my almost new Lamy 2000 F nib for any other broader nib. The pen is perfect and hardly ever used, so just a new nib would be nice but it is far too expensive to buy another.

 

EndlessPens have had the 14K gold Lamy 2000 nibs on offer for <US$60 apiece. Still too expensive?

 

1 hour ago, Dusted said:

I got the EF nib but it is too broad for my style of writing. I do have some less expensive pens which have EF nibs that I like better.

 

I feel much the same way.

[bunnspecial]

On 3/29/2021 at 11:35 PM, A Smug Dill said:

However, ‘M‘ or ‘Medium’ is not a technical or objective standard agreed and adopted by multiple fountain pen manufacturers; and, in fact, Lamy does not have a published standard as to what ‘M‘ or ’Medium’ means for its nibs across (or irrespective of) types and model

 

Richard Binder has a fairly comprehensive scale with details of how he measures it, and I believe it's derived from some extent to nib specs for the old American makers

http://www.richardspens.com/pdf/strokewidths.pdf , Older German pens are often sized similarly to American pens, although modern German gold tends to have widened up a bit(Pelikan M200/205 steel nibs are somewhat consistent with this chart IME).

 

With that said, it's certainly NOT a scale used by any manufacturer I'm aware of. Some vintage pen dealers do use it, but that's the extent(vintage nibs typically weren't marked with the size, and absent paperwork you really don't know what the manufacturer considered it).

 

Also, something to bear in mind that nibs are often "binned"(to borrow a semiconductor manufacturing term) based on where the tip size just happens to fall. Tolerances on what constitutes a particular size are somewhat wide and at least from what I think Ron Zorn reported from seeing the Sheaffer plant(before it was shut down) there's a bit of overlap between grades and a fat M, for example, could also be called a B, but just on the skinny side. Montblanc nibs tend to have distinctive profiles for every size(Lamy nibs share those to some extent, especially with the architect-like grind on EF) but the tip being ground to a certain shape doesn't necessarily guarantee an exact size. I know I've bought Montblancs in particular where the seller might describe a nib as something like "B+/BB-" or "Roughly a B width but with the stubiness of a BB".

 

In relative Lamy terms, I've noticed that the 2000 models of a given marked width do seem to be wider than other Lamy nibs. Still, though, I agree with you that Lamy has a set of standard of EF to BB for 2000 nibs. A nib that's wider than what they consider F and narrower than what they consider B could certainly properly be called an M.

[Dione]

5 hours ago, A Smug Dill said:

EndlessPens have had the 14K gold Lamy 2000 nibs on offer for <US$60 apiece. Still too expensive?

I've never bought from Endless Pens but if $60 is the start price and they happen to ship internationally then by the time they added tax plus shipping the total price would probably still be too expensive.

[Microgrs]

My L2K M nib is awesome!   Awesomely broad that is.    I read that the Lamy 27 model of FP, from the 1960’s I think, has a steel nib that fits the L2K.

Anyone ever hear of this?  I have searched for Lamy 27 FPs but no luck.

[A Smug Dill]

On 4/20/2021 at 4:31 PM, Dione said:

I've never bought from Endless Pens but if $60 is the start price and they happen to ship internationally then by the time they added tax plus shipping the total price would probably still be too expensive.

 

I bought both of my Lamy 2000 pens, including the blue Bauhaus limited edition, from EndlessPens for what I think are not-too-expensive prices, compared to other pens in the market as well as to the asking prices of those Lamy 2000 models in the market. The black Makrolon one is just sitting in a drawer never inked; I didn't want to pass up the opportunity to get it for <US$100 total out-of-pocket expense, even though I have no use for a second (but my original intention was to sell the Bauhaus L.E. and keep/use the more basic model… and then COVID-19 happened and all that, which makes selling predominantly to an overseas crowd trickier and with more procedural costs than before) and frankly don't enjoy using the pen that much, primarily because of its EF nib not being nearly fine enough.

[jungkind]

12 hours ago, Microgrs said:

My L2K M nib is awesome!   Awesomely broad that is.    I read that the Lamy 27 model of FP, from the 1960’s I think, has a steel nib that fits the L2K.

Anyone ever hear of this?  I have searched for Lamy 27 FPs but no luck.

 

[Brettman]

I have 3 Lamy 2000 pens, one of these is a stainless steel version with and EF nib, the other 2 are standard bodies with an OM and a BB. They are all wonderful to write with and remain inked for use each day. These 3 pens are accompanied with a matching MP and BP. These fountain pens are actually a few the only pieces out of my 137 pen collection that i have never had to touch/modify/polish the nibs.

[iap]

It was mentioned earlier that Lamy don't publish specs for the sizes of the nibs across all models. Well, they certainly seem to set an expectation - https://www.lamy.com/en/lamy-nib-guide/. 

 

 

[A Smug Dill]

3 hours ago, iap said:

Well, they certainly seem to set an expectation - https://www.lamy.com/en/lamy-nib-guide/. 

 

Thank you. I stand corrected on that point. Have you measured either the line widths (filling and writing with a Lamy ink as would match Lamy's own testing and QC procedures), or nib (tipping contact surface) widths, of those Lamy 2000 pens to see if they conform to the published information?