How I ended up with a Lamy Aion (Aion review, sort of)

[1nkulus]

On 7/25/2021 at 3:29 AM, arcfide said:

I think after you get to about $200 or so, I'm not sure how much more you're getting in terms of raw writing performance. I think maybe the exception to that rule might be Sailor's 21K KOP nibs, which really do feel special in a way that many others don't to me, but right around that $200 mark you have some amazing nibs, like Platinum's Music nib and the Pilot 912 line.

I agree.

 

Apart from L2K, all Lamy nibs are interchangeable with either steel/gold. The varied body styles on offer are a bonus.

Lamy is great for enjoying different nibs with different inks, without going too deep down the rabbit hole. 

[arcfide]

5 hours ago, 1nkulus said:

I agree.

 

Apart from L2K, all Lamy nibs are interchangeable with either steel/gold. The varied body styles on offer are a bonus.

Lamy is great for enjoying different nibs with different inks, without going too deep down the rabbit hole. 

 

I'd actually say that this is one of the "killer features" of Lamy. I don't know of any other maker that makes so many different nib styles and types as accessible and easy to play with as Lamy, especially with the very wide range of body types that you can pick from. This makes Lamy, for me, a bit of a tinkerer's pen compared to others. I'm less afraid of tinkering with a Lamy pen than any of my other pens, including cheaper pens like Platinum Preppies, simply because I have the confidence that I can "undo" my work at some point. 

 

One thing I am noticing, though, is that I do eventually go back to gold novelty nibs, such as Music, stub, flex, or other type of nibs. In this respect, Lamy does not offer any gold nibs with more interesting tipping. The best you can get from them is the stub/italic nibs in steel, which are good and useful, but IMO, not quite up to the standard of what others are doing with gold nibs of the same type. I think I'd like to see Lamy expand their range of gold nib offerings to include a wider range of tipping styles. This is something that the other two big German brands have over Lamy, Montblanc in particular, though at a *very* significant cost relative to what you get from Lamy. 🙂 

[Puddinhead]

On 8/6/2021 at 12:10 AM, arcfide said:

 

While I think I could agree that Lamy's can all be made to write reasonably well through user tweaking alone, I'm afraid that all three Lamy's that I have purchased for myself and extra nibs (2000, Aion, Dialog 3, extra nibs, both steel and gold) all did not write that well out of the box. The closest I got to writing well out of the box would be the Lamy 2000, but I'll be writing that up later when I get more time behind it. 

 

On the other hand, every single Platinum pen that I've had has worked flawlessly out of the box, as well as a number of other makers. 

Recently new to the Lamy threads on FPN, but enjoy reading the discussions about aesthetics and performance of Lamy pens and specifically the nibs. I have about 4 or 5 cursive black nibs that were ground for me about 12 or so years ago. They offer a nice style and are more fine than the Lamy produced caligraphy 1.1mm, 1.5mm, and 1.9mm nibs.

 

What I'm confused about is the thought that those caligraphy nibs have to be adjusted to write well. For me, because I have good penmanship - over the years quite a few have made unsolicited positive comments about my handwriting, in fact one of my board members asked if I used a rubber stamp for my signature because, he said, it is very consistent. The point is, I find the caligraphy nibs (Lamy) to be good writers right off the bat.

 

I am currently considering the purchase of my first Aion because of the aesthetics and that I can change out the nibs. It seems to approach the size and weight and dimensions of the Studio, which I already own, but has a matte finish on the section which I would prefer over the Studio's shiny (read slippery) section.

[inkstainedruth]

On 8/6/2021 at 2:38 AM, bayindirh said:

 

Strange. All of the Lamy pens I have, and I have quite a few of them, wrote well out of the box, including all the replacement nibs I got.

That has been my experience with the Safaris and al-Stars, plus one LX, I own as well.  The only nib I had any issues with was an EF nib at a table at a pen show -- I thought that one was a little scratchy (but I tend to not like EF nibs all that much in general.   Between the three models I have nine at this point (all SE colors except the LX) and with nibs ranging from F to 1.1 mm, with a hanzi nib replacing the M nib on one of the al-Stars.  

My husband had him get me a standard blue Safari last spring with an EF nib, and he liked it but seems to have misplaced it in his office...  (so at the moment he's using one of my Snorkels with an EF nib, along with the Pilot Vanishing Point -- also with an EF nib -- that I picked up used a few years ago but found too large and awkward for me (Decimos are a better size for my hand) and gave to him.  And AFAIK, he didn't have a problem with the EF nib on his Snorkel, because I'm sure he would have said something to me about it if he had.

Ruth Morrisson aka inkstainedruth

 

[jah1138]

Well, since this thread has been reopened, I might as well chime in!  

 

I've had only good experience with LAMY's interchangeable steel nibs. I've always been surprised that they're such good writers right out of the box, being, you know, interchangeable steel clip-on nibs. 

 

Both my LAMY 2000s (F, M) wrote very well out of the box. The M was my first 2000, and I bought it new. When I first started writing with it I found it to be very smooth, but I was troubled by inconsistent flow. What I soon discovered is that the 2000 is very sensitive to rotation: just a degree of rotation interferes with flow. When I'm disciplined about keeping the tines level on the paper (which really isn't difficult) the 2000 M is arguably the smoothest writer I own. And, really, "smooth" doesn't really describe the feeling sufficiently. I have lots of very smooth writers. The LAMY is luxurious.  I have nothing else like it. I've had it for years and it's almost always in my current rotation, a status none of my other pens can boast, no matter how wonderful they are in their own right. The 2000 is my definition of a go-to pen, or a workhorse. However you want to describe it. 

 

So, the Aion. I bought the Aion when it was launched in 2017. I disliked it, reboxed it, and put in the the stash of pens I intended to sell someday. Now 7 years later I'd forgotten all about the Aion until someone mentioned it a couple of days ago. I thought "That name sounds familiar. Did I buy an Aion?" Sure enough, I checked my stash and found the box, and now I'm looking forward to getting it out and trying it again! If I recall, what I didn't like about it was the size and curvature of the section. I think I found it unpleasant to hold. I haven't seen that as a criticism from any other reviewer, so I'm curious what I'll think about it now. 

 

If there's a moral to this story, it's that the LAMY 2000 is the bomb.   

[arcfide]

As I've spent more and more time with my pens, I've become more and more picky with my nibs, to the point now where I tune and adjust almost every single pen that I get, including the ones that write objectively well out of the box. 

 

The reason is simply that what I want out of a pen is not what most makers tune their nibs to do out of the box. I like the wettest line that I can get away with while still having absolutely reliable first stroke consistency with essentially zero pressure, and I tune the pens to get as close as I can to that. The challenge is that I like this on pens that are very much on the B - BB side of things, preferably with a touch of stubbish quality to them. I've learned that this is one of the least likely combinations to come "out of the box" with pen makers. Indeed, none of that done so. 

 

This means that my need to tinker with putting the perfect nib on an Aion is just the same amount of work, maybe a bit less, than I would need to spend on a higher end pen, because either way, the nib is almost certain to require tuning from me before I am satisfied with it. And the build quality of the Aion and ergonomics are easily the equal of many other pens costing much more. 

 

I do find that the smoother aluminum is maybe not as friendly to writing as resin or lacquered pens, but the Aion is still quite friendly in this regard. 

[jah1138]

49 minutes ago, arcfide said:

I tune and adjust almost every single pen that I get ... what I want out of a pen is not what most makers tune their nibs to do out of the box.

 

That makes a lot of sense! The ability to customize the writing experience to suit personal preference is one of the benefits of using fountain pens. And if you're a tinkerer, fiddling with nibs is simply a lot of fun. Just don't use your MB 149 as a platform for learning nib grinding -- not that I know anyone who would ever do such a dumb thing. (Whistles nonchalantly.)

 

I would agree that aluminum seems to be the riskiest material, mostly because it's easy to make an aluminum section far too slippery. I have pens made of every conceivable material, it seems, and I like them all, including aluminum pens. The Muji fountain pen is an example of a well-executed aluminum pen, and is one of the best budget fountain pens I've tried. (I love budget pens, and I use them as frequently as I do my high end pens -- each has its role!)