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Buying a Pilot 743 F , Stock or Tuned ?


rosa_m

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This model is not available in USA market , so nibs.com or nib smith.com is not an option .

Should I just buy it stock from a reliable vendor such as pensachi.com for better price and cheaper shipping or pay the premium from Tokyo Pen Shop Quill , and have it tuned ?

 

 

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Why would you 'need' to have a Pilot gold nib tuned (as opposed to reground, to make it into something it isn't as the manufacturer designed)? I've never received a Pilot gold F nib that is misaligned or scratchy, and the ink flow out-of-the-box was always pretty much what I expected from a Pilot pen. 

I endeavour to be frank and truthful in what I write, show or otherwise present, when I relate my first-hand experiences that are not independently verifiable; and link to third-party content where I can, when I make a claim or refute a statement of fact in a thread. If there is something you can verify for yourself, I entreat you to do so, and judge for yourself what is right, correct, and valid. I may be wrong, and my position or say-so is no more authoritative and carries no more weight than anyone else's here.

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Two gold-nibbed Platinum pens I ordered from ‘reliable‘ vendors based in Japan arrived with slightly misaligned tines out-of-the-box. One wrote scratchy for years, until I eventually inspected the nib under a loupe; the other I inspected prior to first inking. (Both were easily fixed after the issue was spotted.

 

A Platinum Vicoh PTL-5000A with a gold EF nib was scratchy (which I fixed abrasively) and (still) writes relatively dry, even for Platinum pens; the latter aspect does not make it ‘bad’, as I now primarily use that pen for drawing extremely fine lines, to rival or even surpass what a stock UEF nib puts down. One out of three SF-nibbed Platinum #3776 Century pens I ordered in the same quarter seemed to have had a particle of grit or some such stuck between the nib and feed, which affected ink flow.

 

To put it into perspective, that makes four pens that could have been better if someone had inspected and ‘tuned’ it for me prior to arrival, out of twenty-odd Platinum (not counting cheap Plaisir and Preppy) pens I bought, and so my confidence in the brand is still very high.

 

As for Sailor, I don't think I've ever had a problem with a Sailor gold nib out-of-the-box, out of thirty or so pens; it's my favourite Japanese brand (although my most prized Japanese fountain pen is a Pilot, which is the brand I like least out of the ‘Big Three’). On the other hand, some of the brand's steel-nibbed pens on the lowest end were scratchy pieces of junk; so I'd never recommend anyone buy something ‘lower’ than a Procolor 500 (nominally ¥5,000+tax, but the MSRP for that class of pens may have changed in the past couple years; I gotta check) if they're just getting into Sailor pens and want to get a good sense of how they perform.

I endeavour to be frank and truthful in what I write, show or otherwise present, when I relate my first-hand experiences that are not independently verifiable; and link to third-party content where I can, when I make a claim or refute a statement of fact in a thread. If there is something you can verify for yourself, I entreat you to do so, and judge for yourself what is right, correct, and valid. I may be wrong, and my position or say-so is no more authoritative and carries no more weight than anyone else's here.

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I have pens from each of the Japanese Big 3 and Sailor is also my favorite ; a Kagero Green 1911 L . 

It was a store exclusive color from Pen Boutique but stock nib .

Wrote beautifully out of the box and writes beautifully . 

A Sailor Pro Gear MF purchased from a site that inspects and tunes the pen before shipping , arrived writing scratchy .

I sent it back .

 

 

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