New Pelikan P200 not smooth

[ipadmister]

Hi everyone!

 

I recently picked up this Pelikan P200 for 90€ because I was looking for a great pen to use daily in university. I've been writing with pens since I was 6 years old and absolutely love writing with them. I used a cheap Pelikan Twist for years and it has never let me down. My P200 writes horribly bad compared to the Twist. I get a lot of skipping, poor ink flow, scratchiness. I've noticed that one side of the tip is a little ticker than the other. I guess this might be the problem? What is the best thing for me to do in this situation? 

Thanks in advance 

[hari317]

Is return or replacement an option? If yes then exercise that. Spare P200 nib units are not easily available. 

[ipadmister]

15 minutes ago, hari317 said:

Is return or replacement an option? If yes then exercise that. Spare P200 nib units are not easily available. 

 

I bought the pen on Amazon. It arrived 5 days ago. I guess my only option is to return it. Are there any other pens you would recommend to me? It has to work with international cartridges since I'll be using the pen constantly and taking it with me everywhere. 150€ euro (give or take) is what I'm willing to spend.

[A Smug Dill]

53 minutes ago, ipadmister said:

150€ euro (give or take) is what I'm willing to spend.

 

There are hundreds of pen models from which you can choose with that amount. What are your requirements, outside of it accepting ‘international standard’ ink cartridges? If you're only using the pen in university, and you're happy with the Pelikan Twist, then why not just use one of those?

 

Otherwise, you can buy a Faber-Castell Grip, Essentio, Loom, Ambition, e-Motion or Ondoro for that kind of money; they all take ink cartridges with 2.4mm inner diameter at the mouth, and F-C is considered to have some of the best steel nibs out-of-the-box (if your prefer smoothness to feedback, and forgiving as opposed to precise, I suppose). I have quite a number of F-C pens — and am still waiting on a couple more to arrive — and while they aren't my favourite pens in that price range, they aren't bad.

 

Diplomat is another brand with a reputation for offering some of the best steel nibs out-of-the-box, and it's not difficult to pick up an Aero or Excellence A2 with that budget.

 

€150 will buy you an Edison Collier (or Menlo), or Tibaldi Bononia (and some other models), when discounted. I haven't used my new Tibaldi Bononia enough to form a solid opinion, but I'm pretty happy with how the Edison Collier performs. I didn't have to pay VAT on it, but even with 20% or 21% VAT, the discounted price on offer at the time (not that long ago) would still be under €150.

 

On the other hand, I see no reason not to consider a Platinum #3776 Century and use an international standard cartridge adapter (which costs something like €2) with it, for that budget, and have your choice from six or seven different nib types, from Ultra Extra Fine to Coarse (equivalent to double Broad), or Soft Fine if you prefer. Their nibs will not be ‘smooth’ compared to, say, Faber-Castell nibs, though.

[ipadmister]

First of all, thank you for the comprehensive answer!

 

The reason I bought the P200 is because I've been writing with a Pelikan for years. I find my Pelikan much more pleasant to write with than, for example, my Lamy Safari.

 

I was looking for a very high quality pen that I could use for many years to come. The Pelikan Twist is not very solidly built, the paint comes off quite quickly and shows signs of use quickly. 

22 minutes ago, A Smug Dill said:

I see no reason not to consider a Platinum #3776 Century and use an international standard cartridge adapter

The Platinum #3776 Chenonceau White GT is discounted right now on a Dutch online store specialized in writing equipment. The medium nib goes for 119€ including taxes. 

 

That being said, I do love the feeling of the P200. It feels great in the hand and is easy to carry. I'm just disappointed that an almost 100€ pen arrived with a faulty nib. I would love to fix it, but I'm afraid I lack the knowledge to do it.

[A Smug Dill]

1 hour ago, ipadmister said:

The Platinum #3776 Chenonceau White GT is discounted right now on a Dutch online store specialized in writing equipment. The medium nib goes for 119€ including taxes. 

 

I know which retailer you're talking about; I just bought a Platinum #3776 Celluloid pen from them. If you look hard enough (which isn't really difficult, what with excellent web search engines these days), you'll easily find a site-wide discount code (or two) of long-standing that anyone can use to bring the effective price down further.

 

It had two Diplomat Aero pens on clearance a couple of days ago, one with a steel Medium nib and the other with a gold Fine nib. The price of the steel-nibbed one would be well within your stated budget; alas, it's gone now. I would be quite inclined to buy it at the clearance price if it came with a steel EF nib; I love the one (in orange) I have.

 

By the way, as far as I know, the Chenonceau White isn't being discontinued by Platinum; the retailer just likes to refresh its stock once in a while, at a discount if need be for what takes a little ‘promotional’ pushing to move. It just has a unit of the CW with a Medium nib that hasn't been getting sold all by itself at the ticket price. After it gets sold, I'm sure you can still order one of those if you really wanted one, just not at a discount.

 

Personally I'd be tempted to get the Sailor Pro Gear Slim Mini in Puff Brown at the discounted price, if I didn't already have two Sailor (or three, if you count my wife's) PGSM pens; and this (current) model doesn't have the external thread on the barrel near the finial for secure posting of the cap, which is what I prefer. Of course, that pen only takes proprietary Sailor ink cartridges, or the smaller converter made specifically for the pen model. With three excellent nano-pigment inks, six colours of dye ink in its ‘basic’ range, and twenty colours in the Shikiori range all available in cartridges, I don't think anyone would feel too limited in terms of which colours they can write in if they only stuck with proprietary ink cartridges for convenience and ease of carrying back-up ink.

[A Smug Dill]

1 hour ago, ipadmister said:

I was looking for a very high quality pen that I could use for many years to come. The Pelikan Twist is not very solidly built, the paint comes off quite quickly and shows signs of use quickly.

 

I see the retailer, to which we referred earlier, has two Fine Writing International Planets series pens (both with EF nibs) in stock. They're good pens, especially at that price point, and I bought three of those in different colours (all with EF nibs) from that retailer. They take ‘international standard’ cartridges; their manufacturer boasts that their clear barrels and near unbreakable; and they're fitted with spring-loaded inner caps for excellent sealing effectiveness. (They're also designed to accommodate being eyedropper-filled, and already have O-rings in all the right places, for users who demand a large ink reservoir capacity.) I'm not a big fan of see-through pens, and even less so pens with a see-through barrel but coloured, patterned and/or opaque caps and end finials; but I thought them worthy enough that, after buying the first of mine on clearance special, I bought two more even though they weren't offered at an incidental discount (other than the use of a site-wide discount code). I like the EF nibs they come fitted with, but you may not necessarily enjoy how crisp and hard those nibs are. At the tax-inclusive ticket price of EUR 59, they're high-quality pens, but I suppose just not classy pens in terms of looks or sporting gold nibs.

[7is]

I agree with A Smug Dill that Platinum 3776 is a great pen, possibly even better, but it's not exactly straight alternative if you like Pelikan P200. Platinum is bigger and much heavier. Also, it takes almost two full turns to unscrew the cap. However, I'm a Pelikan fan and always pick one over competition

[hari317]

5 hours ago, ipadmister said:

 

I bought the pen on Amazon. It arrived 5 days ago. I guess my only option is to return it. Are there any other pens you would recommend to me? It has to work with international cartridges since I'll be using the pen constantly and taking it with me everywhere. 150€ euro (give or take) is what I'm willing to spend.

If you prefer Pelikan, have a look at the Pura. Your existing purchase is also a good choice but for the nib which was bad luck.  You can always return it and buy again if straight replacement is not an option. 

[chromantic]

Seller in Taiwan has NOS Epoch in Titanium for $110.

\https://www.ebay.com/itm/142779647635?hash=item213e548693:g:JFAAAOSw5MBa6aYL

If it was the Sapphire, I'd jump on it in a minute.

[sansenri]

The P200 is a rather nice pen, the cartridge version of the M200.

The nib, especially an M, should not be scratchy at all, so you either have a misaligned or a defective nib.

Ask the seller to immediately replace the nib, or the whole pen!

Lots of suggested alternatives, but to be honest if I had to replace a P200 my first choice would be an M200!

(in the long run a piston filler is more desirable than a cartridge filler, once you start buying ink bottles...)

I believe you have been very unlucky, a defective Pelikan M nib is a rare event. A scratchy EF slightly more frequent, but not an M!

Nibs are not interchangeable between the P200 and the M200 (or M400), and this is another reason for choosing an M200 if possible, many more nib options more easily available.

An M200 (or P200) with a nib in good working order is a great pen to use daily in university, as you expect!