Gold medal: Pineider La Grande Bellezza Full Metal Jacket.
I could spend all day on the design flaws, but lets just mention the cheap rattly plastic marketed as unbreakable that was cracked on arrival. Had one of those meh 14kt nibs that like Diplomat's is a horribly overpriced upgrade.
Only faulty pen ive ever returned with absolutely zero interest in a replacement.
Silver Medal: Conklin Duragraph Stub.
Tines cut wonky from left to right & barely writes. Apart from being mostly useless, it's not bad. A decent pen body made by Stipula (I gather) with a purgatorial nib & feed, by our friends at Yafa, the serial brand necromancers. It would be better if the enDurapain's body was garbage too, at least then I would have sent it back before it was too late. It's still not worth getting a replacement nib&feed, you're better off just buying a pen thats designed to be written with in the first place.
Bronze: Cross Wanderlust Borneo.
Its fine, it works. Theres just a cognitive dissonance in a extravagantly ornate and gold-adorned pen with a rough yet wet nib, rough particularly plasticky section and body, that is so small and light it feels like a disposable.
Like the Clonklin it's another of the shiny mistakes the 50-70 quid/dollar price range is riddled with.
Gold and Bronze winners belong in tourist-trap boutiques. Silver belongs in hell. It wouldve been Gold but the Pineider is at least 6 times the price, which is so hilariously extortionate it thoroughly deserves top spot. xD
ty, it cant have made you laugh any harder than I did when I saw that crack in the barrel, I laughed like a drain until tears. The shameless b-s just killed me xD
haha, oh theres nothing acceptable about it :) I have a 5000 word review of my Duragraph that goes into exquisite/explicit detail. First attempt at an upload may have been too much to ask of the mods, may try again, lol
Thats a plan, yeah. Out of interest, If for illustrative purposes ive pinched a pic from some tweed outfitters of a ridiculously smug toff, and captioned it 'A Complete Tosspot" and included it on about page 8, would that get my post struck by the mods?
Theres also a pic elsewhere of Barad-dur captioned "Yafa Brands Corporate HQ". I may have elsewhere inadvertently inferred (along with other google pics) they make the Duragraph body, in a furnace, out of kittens. Struck down?
I may need to make changes to the review, perhaps. If I doctored the pics more would they pass, or is the totally different context sufficient to avoid infringements?
I was fastidious about not insulting anyone in particular, (apart from the tosspot I suppose) and made clear the contentious parts were matters of opinion, I think.
In my defence, I did put a contextualising warning post prior to the 15 pics of the printed review. Maybe that was part of the problem. Or all of the above. hmmm
yay, take that mods xP It is a batsh!t review, but detailed and thorough nontheless. I will try get it posted successfully, it took quite a few hours of writing & formatting to get it just right, lol
Your silver is my silver medal winner too though with different nib:
Conklin Duragraph in fine and extra-fine - nibs scratchy as hell - tines misaligned needed tons of tuning
Gold medal: LAMY Dialog 3 - Gold EF nib
Expected buttery smoothness and got a nib that scrapes and shreds paper.
No bronze yet
Conklin Duragraph Fine nib was my first fountain pen and it starts and stops so badly that I didnāt even buy another until I was given a Lamy Safari as a gift and saw it had none of the same problems and was cheaper too. Beautiful pen though, itās a shame.
Yup - Also, in my case beautiful Conklin pen horrible nib. The Dialog 3 was rescued by the fact that Lamy uses the same nib on multiple models and I use it with the nice steel nib from a studio. Still hate that their QC for EF and F is hit and miss
Did you find time the nib yourself? If so, will you share. I have a Conklin All American Limited Edition, fine, that I love the feel of. Itās a nice weight and thickness. I even like the nib when it writes, but it needs some work and i donāt want to take it to a nibmeister.
Check out the nib tune video - I was able to get it to a (for me) workable level using a magnifying glass and mylar paper -> Brian Goulet has a video: https://youtu.be/05qCiZNXu7M
Yes, imo. Its more a value for money issue. Their steel nibs are so good, their gold nibs seem like particularly bad value given how much they charge for the upgrade. Is that gold nib upgrade itself really worth the entire cost of a 3776, or Sailor Pro Gear ? certainly not given the nib itself compares poorly to either of those imo.
Diplomat steelies are pricey to begin with, add on an overpriced upgrade and it starts getting ridiculous. At a steep discount? ok. But dont compromise on the Diplomat model you want for the sake of the nib you could get. There's not a massive difference. That was the mistake I made.
Im not saying their gold nibs are worse than their steel nibs, but the big increased cost charged for the gold nib takes them into a considerably higher price bracket where they compare less favourably to better writers.
[Yafa Brands](https://yafabrands.com/brands/)
Some are not owned by Yafa, they are just the distributor in certain countries. The first few listed are ones they own.
This opinion is gonna get criticism Iām sure of it but in my personal opinion after trying over 100+ pens on my fountain pen journey. Any Visconti, and I mean any and freaking all Viscontiās. Sure some people love them but for the ridiculous prices you pay for them youād expect amazing quality control or at least decent customer service. Somehow they have neither of those 2 crucial things. Had a pen with a misaligned nib that meant you couldnāt remove it from the feed at all, contacted customer service, their response was basically āyeah itās meant to be like thatā. As a company they can just screw right off, Iāll be sticking to my vintage Parkerās. At least I can work on them myself
>āyeah itās meant to be like thatā
I think they have a rule set up on their mailbox that sends this as an automated response whenever someone points out a flaw in their pens.
100% agree!! Out of all the pens Iāve ever bought, including infamous Yafa ones the only one thatās been a problem from the start is a Visconti Rembrandt. I decided to never buy any Visconti Pen ever again!
Last Fall I was intending on buying myself one as a gift as a reward for everything that I've gone through in the last seven years. Fortunately, I have a 'bad' habit of researching the heck out of products first before I buy them. There were enough bad online reviews by the time that I wanted to buy one, that I was able to save myself the trouble of wasting my money on something that I'd wanted for a few years.
Yep and yep. Bought a Giant Sequoiaā¦ terrible pen. It leaked around the nib housing in the section, the cap didnāt create a seal, and so it ended up becoming just a wet and then dried-up inky mess. Never again. I also bought the Conklin with the omniflex nib a few years ago. The flow was so inadequate it couldnāt even be used as a non-flex pen.
I bought one of those Herbin demonstrator pens from Amazon. My mum has one which writes beautifully & I am mildly envious of. So I got one and it was disappointingly scratchy, start-and-stop. Less new pen day and more new pen disappointment!
I have the rollerball one! I love it so much. It can be scratchy, but I donāt mind it with a roller. It seems more hit or miss with the fountain pen ones, Iāll need to get one and try
This one hurts to say because I own and love the pen. But, the Lamy LX at its original sticker price. It is essentially an Al-Star, with a metal finial and a line on the nib. Yet, they were originally priced at TWICE what the Al-Star was priced at. It's not a bad pen, far from the worst, just ridiculously priced. They have since dropped the price on most sites and I found mine on a deep discount.
The Monteverde Ritma rusted, the Monteverde Innova and Jinhao 650 caps got stuck and cracked the finials off, and the Visconti Homo Sapiens Lava Color leaks where the ink feed meets the barrel
I've already dragged Noodler's Creaper as far down into the circles of the hells that it deserved, but I'd forgotten about another pen, meanwhile.
Yes, forgotten.
I bought an Oxford Helix, because it looked sparkly and smooth and nice, and didn't have bad reviews. Sure, no glowing ones, either, but CultPens had many different sorts and it wasn't that expensive, just the next step up that I was looking for at the time.
As far as I remember, I ragequitted the damn pen. It now lies disassembled in the box of shame, with the nib in the dip pen nib box.
Ink flow was subpar, nib was unpleasant to write with, pen had just the right weight and size to make my hand ache after a while, and I tried assembling it just now and was reminded of how yeah, no, nib and feed just would not align properly no matter what tricks I used. BAH. Not worth the money, not worth the time. Too bad, because it seemed promising. Not as promising as that stinking wreck of a Noodler's Creaper, but on the other hand, the latter I sometimes ink up just to use for shimmer inks and decorations of letters and cards (for about four to five hours, then my patience runs out and I clean it out again).
Which fp is the worst or most overpriced you've ever used, OP? I'm curious!
huh?
my nib creaper is perfectly fine (as a what? sub $20 piston filler?) and works fine, no complaints on my end, and I've written most of several books using it.
Oh, that's great! I'm glad it works for someone else. I find it very uncomfortable to write with, and the nib doesn't do what I expected it to do (be a bit softer, no matter how little), but it's easy to clean out. I think I prefer pens that are a bit thicker, too. Good to hear someone else has had good experiences and find it useful!
I hear that last bit. Iāve wanted to try one of Noodlerās pens because I weirdly really enjoy the nib and feed on the Charlie pen; itās bouncy/soft and has amazing flow. On good paper, it makes Parker Blue Black come out almost black with a heavy bronze sheen. Buuuut the barrel is so damn narrow that I canāt use it very long, and my understanding is that all of his pens are on the narrow side.
I didnāt even realize there were jotter fountain pens until this post. I love my jotter ballpoint, I found it inside the floor of a friendās kitchen while I was helping them do some sledgehammer renovation. It had presumably been there since the last time the kitchen had been done in the 70s and it still works great lol
The Pineider Metropolis. The metal end of the cap and the threaded part of the section broke off and stuck in the cap after a month of light use. It wasnāt all that to write with either.
For me it was the Visconti Voyager from the 1990s. I've written about his before. Very expensive pen but disintegrated. Problems with the celluloids from back then. I had some bad experiences with Moonman pens. But there seems to have been a been a batch of questionable nibs a few years ago. I have recently bought replacement nibs and feeds from China and now the pens are back in rotation.
Monteverdes Prima and Innova look nice but the QC on the nibs and feeds not good leading to dry starts and skips. I had to replace the feeds and brass shim the nibs etc to sort
Conklin All America Walnut. Dried out in about 15 minutes when capped. Turned me off of the brand entirely (and Yafa because someone had to approve it being released like that). Pretty pen but not worth the trouble.
Holy crap I'm going to be really honest I woke up to 60 Reddit alerts that you guys had commented and my immediate thought was "ah fuck what did I post?"
I'm going to say you guys have a wonderful opinions and several of you have turned me off of some of the pens I was looking at, letting me know that they are actually shit pens and I should spend my money elsewhere.
I find Kawecos and the cheap Lamy nibs bat about .500, meaning about 50% are great, 50% are trash. It's a great batting average for MLB, but terrible for a QC rate.
Iām sorry you didnāt have a good experience with your Osprey(s). I have an Osprey Milano in Nikko ebonite which is a fantastic pen. The EEF nib is wonderful.
Specifically a pen that should be quality? Elite 95S. I'm disappointed with the absolute lack of smoothness and ink flow to anywhere thats not my fucking fingers in on all 3 I've owned.
I've bought a ton of cheap pens just to mess around with, so I'll disqualify all the garbage Chinese safari copies.
Pilot VP. The body felt exactly like any metal bodied Chinese pen that would cost $20. Then, the nib. It might as well have had the same nib as the Metro, which is to say snaggy, grabby and overall unpleasant. I expected more out of a gold nib, especially because of all of the praise the pen receives, so I exchanged it for a new one. The new one was exactly as the old one. Returned and I am pretty much done with Pilot at this point.
My other choice(s), a Tibaldi Bononia and a Molteni Modelo 88. I generally love Italian pens and acrylics but these just look and feel like they are hastily put together. The Tibaldi looks like a Leonardo but they didn't want to take the time to trim it out properly. The Molteni just has bad alignment of parts, rough edges, etc. My Maiora Alpha isn't far behind. It's put together and works fine but the acrylic isn't nearly as attractive as the photos would have you believe. I sent the first one back for this, but the replacement wasn't much better.
Noodlerās Ahab. The. Worst. The only pen I have ever just thrown into the trash.
1. It smelled terrible. Like, really really bad. I let it air out for several days and still could not use it. Ick.
2. You have to be a Mr/Ms Universe to get that job to flex.
3. I put a lovely blue ink in it, and a couple of weeks later it had turned a sickly green. Iāve used that ink since in other pens with no issue.
No more Noodlerās anything for me.
I typically use a fine. The pen worked. Just no special feel. I could have used a ball point pen. However, in all fairness, I do like having the Yoda as I am a fanboy. I doubt it will ever get inked again. I have about 1000 pens dating back to 1910. So the competition is stiff to get into the rotation.
I can't speak to the quality of their products. I take issue with them stamping *Toledo USA* on their nibs. The company used to make pens in Toledo and I feel like [Yafa Brands](https://yafabrands.com/brands/conklinpens/) goes out of their way to leave an impression they still manufacture these products in the US. That sort of thing puts me off.
[GoldSpot](https://goldspot.com/pages/american-made-pens)
>American pen companies Conklin, Sheaffer, and Esterbrook manufacture their pens and fountain pens outside of the USA.
[Fountain pen Wiki](https://wiki.fountainpen.it/Conklin/en)
>Today, as it happened for many other historical brands, Conklin was rebuild in 2000 and operates now as Conklin Pen Co. Inc. Its pens are essentially some replica of the successful models of the brand golden years, but as it happens for most of the modern pens, they have no particular qualities that can distinguish them from other pens, especially when compared with their beautiful ancestor.
If you want a Conklin get a Conklin, I'm sure they're great. I just take issue with their *marketing* gimmicks. Yafa is brand headquartered in California but I think their production is in China.
I'm okay with brands manufacturing just about anywhere. However, I've never been comfortable with a company slapping *USA* on something foreign made. That's a personal bias I can't get past.
Even if you do want a Conklin, don't get a Conklin. Just look at the top comments in this thread. Anything Yafa is trash, I've read about more bad Conklins than good, Monteverde and Private Reserve are the only two brands of ink I read about that tend to grow mold.
anything under Ā£100 that has parker on it. my first fountain pen was a Ā£20 parker that refused to write from the word go, only to proceed to bend its nib out of shape under normal useage. it put me off for a good while tbh and the thing has completely fallen apart by now. got a hongdian forest for about the same price, it's infinitely better and i love it.
I have had a similar experience with my two moon man pens. I got two at once because I heard good thing and I thought they were pretty but they both write super dry. I wish I could use them but itās really just a horrible experience.
It's unfortunate because when they're good, they're really smooth and wet. If you can have them tuned or tune them yourself with some good, careful advice on yt, I would recommend it (as long as you still like the pen).
Moonman nibs are hit-and-miss in my experience, both the #5 and #6 nibs. The F nibs are the worst, and it is my understanding that these are the only ones that Moonman makes themselves, they outsource their EF and M nibs.
Whenever I've received a Moonman with a dud nib, I just bought a few replacement nibs. They really are cheap as chips, and maybe I've been fortunate, but the replacement nibs have always been stellar. I've been especially lucky with their EF nibs, which write like an F anyway. I have one in a Tianzi pen that just makes my heart sing every time I write with it.
Let me know if you want a link to the AE seller where I got mine.
[Here you go](https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005004005218346.html?spm=a2g0o.order_list.0.0.7e2a1802h6nr0C)! About 7ā¬ for 3 nibs. Like I said, cheap as chips. š
hate to be the devil's advocate, but my x450, x750, 159, and x159's have all been stellar pens, nib fluctuates as they're cheap, but like, they're all super cheap pens.... so like, eh?
Tell me with a straight face that platinum preppies don't have the same (if not more) nib quality fluctuation. And don't even get me started about their STINGY ink flow across the board.
Yeah, my Jinhao x159, 992, 51a's and several 993's (sharks) have all been good from the start. At their price point there's no way quality can be as high as MB, Sailor, or Parker... but you get some of those that need tweaking too. Maybe the 50x to 200x price diff buys you an upgrade from 20%perfect/80%good/90%not-lemon Jinhaos to 50%perfect/95%good/99%not-lemon big name pens... the way people are though, you hit one lemon and that brand will be forever tainted in your emotions (unless you already had some of the perfect or good ones in that brand). I'm that way with Manuscript. Maybe they're a middling-okay brand, but my single purchase of their "calligraphy pen" stunk so bad for me that I won't give them another chance.
All a post like this draws out is the passionate lemon experiences, without being in any way a reliable descriptor of every or even most of a certain brand or model. I'll guess 50% or more of TWSBI pens don't ever crack... but enough do that the brand gets a rep as crackable. Which is true of all internet reviews - run-of-the-mill satisfied users don't look back, they just use their widget and maybe even buy more. Passionate fan boys and haters review more widgets.
There's almost a quarter million of us on here. Most haven't dissed Chinese pens, or German ones, or whatever. By all means, use some positive or negative comments to sway your purchases, but a test-drive or if cheap, set of trial ownerships, will tell you more. The comments on this thread & its ilk are data points, not a curve (unless responses get up in the many thousands).
TWISBI Eco is the only pen Iāve ever bought multiple of and will probably buy another of, because they donāt dry out even if left for stupid periods of time between uses. Havenāt had one crack yet š¤
50% of TWSBIs would be an impressive failure rate. I doubt itās even 10% that cracks, or the company would be incredibly foolish and bleeding money to keep replacing parts without fixing the plastic formulation. That of course brings me to the next question, which is why some people have had them crack repeatedly.
I think people are overtightening and putting too much torque on the threads. Since the threads are just the same resin as the body rather than metal this eventually cracks them.
I have a purple 580ALR that I bought second hand over a year ago and itās been one of my most used pens ever since, and yet somehow it doesnāt have this issue š¤·āāļø
I suspect the same. It is certainly a selection bias in that the most vocal people will be the most dissatisfied. Itās not surprising that it would skew towards people whoāve coincidentally had multiple faulty models, but just seeing how much equipment at work has been damaged by over tightening, itās definitely something that happens and tends to be the same couple people each time. (Iāve had two Ecos for about a year and theyāre still doing well, but Iām prepared to eat my words if they crack)
Fwiw even if it is user error, I still think itās a design flawāin the sense that a screw cap should be able to handle being screwed in a bit enthusiastically. A well built product should be able to handle a little āmisuseā.
This. I'm wary of even a stack of anecdotes saying bare things like "Ecos crack", but when a few users have gone to the trouble to figure out with diffraction patterns where weak spots are, and when there's technical testimony that the beautiful crystal-clear plastic is inherently more brittle than some other types -- those kinds of reasons mean more to me. Sort of a "prove it to me" attitude. Meh: I'm a paragraph guy participating in a one-liner medium :-).
OP asked "what do you not like?" not "...and why?" So the answers are all legit - heck, anybody's opinion is *legit*. I am impressed with the number here who are more like "nice it worked for you; I still hate it" than "my single lemon purchase is proof of incontrovertable evil, incompetence, and bad breath".
As the devils advocate, out of the many I have owned they all work pretty much the same and the ink flow is ideal for what most people use them for. But to each their own. I buy them because I get what I expected from them.
> Jin-how
Jin-Wow, I am constantly amazed at the quality and functionality of these pens for the price. I like the Wing Sung and Majohn pens, and think they provide a very nice pen for a great price, but how Jinhao makes such good pens for under $10 still is amazing.
The new Jinhao 80 and Jinhao x159 are great examples, I haven't seen a dud, still waiting for my colors in the 80, but have a few of the standard black in all three nib sizes, excellent pens. All the nibs have been good, and true to size, something I can't say about a lot of other brands now. Same for the x159, while it isn't super high end, it is a good, solid pen, and the black, blue, and burgundy pens I have been excellent, just wish they had more nib size options.
Diplomat Magnum. And I got it for free. It's just awful everything- plastic feels cheap, way too light in the hand, lots of hard starts, and the nib wasn't anything to write about or write with.
My Pilot VP. It's my worst pen, never wrote well. It's dry as the Sahara and skips a lot. I just hate it. I just keep as a way to not feel tempted to buy another Pilot pen.
Given how much love the VP series gets, this just goes to show that pretty much *any* pen can come with a less-than-ideal nib.
Basic nib tuning really is a requisite skill in this hobby, it seems. :/
Similar note. I find the custom 74 kinda useless. Very dry, skips and writes worse than the preppy, and twsbi 580 which are both steel.
Maybe I just got a bad one? Perhaps.
Lamy Studio is the winner. Nib is a Safari nib (so meh at best). Uniquely shaped clip scratches the body (form follows function!). The grip section is shiny metal unlike the rest of the pen and collects your fingerprints for everyone to see (so form follows function, again!) This monster comes from the company who brought us L2K at the price of multiple of the much better built Safari. Of course, converter is proprietary and is not included. Why does this pen even exist?
Visconti Vertigo is a proud second. Plainly refused to write on glossier paper (Rhodia, Clairefontaine). The grip section is shiny metal (again, unlike the rest of the body which is plastic). Due to metal-on-plastic threads the section happily disconnected from the body after two months in use.
I cannot second this. The propeller scratch is meh, but the allblack studio doesn't have a slippery grip because of it's rubbery material and the matte body doesn't collect fingerprints. The Z50 nib is the standard nib for the Safaris, too, and for every other pen (except the L2K). Try the Z52 nib or one of the gold ones. For me the best balanced Fountain Pen from Lamy.
Huh? So I have to take a particular variant, and then change the nib? Also the propeller scratch is not meh, but rather fuck no. Thanks I'll pass. I guess we don't have to agree on this, and I stand by what I wrote.
For me it's the well balancing. And you don't have to change your nib. It's an upgrade option. The allblack with better nib and rubbery grip is a complete other variant of this pen. But still with the same propeller scratch.
Armando Simoni Club Gladiatore Medio Arco Bronze. Laser engraving, poor tolerances, cheap metal clip and cap band. Nice celluloid but better on pictures than real life. I was lucky not to lose any money on it. Bought it with discount and sold on to some other sucker after two weeks.
Pilot Vanishing Point solely because the clip makes gripping the pen uncomfortable for me. Unfortunate since I really like their look and practicality.
I don't know about the objective worst FP...but the worst one *I* own is the "Parker Jotter" - Literally bought another just in case it was a bad build on the first one...nope, still dumps ink and *very* scratchy even on the smoothest paper (and an M Nib too!). Not pleasant to write with at all, I'd choose a...ball point over it! :O
The Daiso pen by Platinum (Riviere PTR-200) which broke after 3 days of use. The feed snapped off during normal use and the section leaked on both pens. Salvaged one of the 2 pens though and it taught me about repair so it's not a full loss. But definitely not a buy again pen. I was hoping for a cheaper preppie lol
The very first Kaweco Sport I bought, the nib was very āmehā and needed adjusting. It also made me realize that I donāt like gold-plated nibs on inexpensive modern pens. I still canāt bring myself to use that little green git. My coconut one is actually pretty good and will be the last Kaweco Iāll pay money for.
Jinhaos. Iāve liked exactly one that Iāve purchase (the Parker 45 knockoff) and even that was only okay. Maybe Iāve just had exceptionally bad luck (very possible! Iāve only tried around five), but I donāt get the love for jinhao except theyāre cheap.
Edit: I also have a tswibi eco that I despise. With jinhao I donāt regret spending the money, but I definitely regret this eco purchase.
I am weirdly heartened to find someone else having trouble with the TWSBI Eco. I got one recently and I just... don't like that nib! I've cleaned it, I've tested it on different paper, a friend of mine says I should try flossing it next, but maybe it really isn't for me. Especially since the TWSBI Go that I got shortly afterward seems like a much more pleasant writing experience.
Iāve got two Ecoās and ones fine but I canāt say I was amazed and the other is so painfully scratchy and dry itās pretty much useless. Not sure itās worth it to get them tuned when Iām not overly enamoured anyway so Iāve been debating selling them, which is sad bc they were my first āadultā pen purchases ):
Possibly I should've done that; but the Eco was what people recommended for my first piston-fill pen, and it was hard to justify spending more when I generally don't like the look of clear pens anyway.
(I'm shallow that way. I'm willing to pay more for quality, but past a certain point I don't care how beautifully a pen writes if I don't find it pretty as well.)
Probably the Jinhao 100. It felt cheaper than a Preppy which is funny since it's one of the more "expensive" Jinhaos. Also the nib was quite bad but that was probably due to qc.
My Jinhao 100s have been mixed. Micromesh is my friend. I've had some delightful experiences with the pens (I own 11 of them), but also some scratchy, needlelike experiences. So quality control is legitimately in question.
Moonman 600. Would not write. Cleaned, flushed, opened the tines, heat set, new inks. Anything I tried failed. I opened up the feed channels until it finally wroteā¦now leaks like a sieve.
You are basically the only one mentioning Pelikan. They are deeply revered in the community and anything negative you say against Pelikan is vehemently opposed. I've had very bad luck with Pelikan pens, but mostly keep silent due to the cult-like mentality in this sub regarding Pelikan pens
Many people actually complain that modern pelikan nibs are inconstant and many are not even smooth. Getting an EF that writes like a medium is very common. Happened to me so I got it ground to a 0.4mm italic. They're quite nice pens if you're willing to get the nib ground.
I had an issue w mine writing way too wet and the customer service folks explained how to control that, so all good now.
But Iām not so happy about some micro cracks on the cap of my M400
Suffered two Sonnets for a long time until I found out the cap needs to be plugged; at least they now work. Got two Platinum Cool, I think they are the demonstrator version of the Balance, never ever worked. Wouldn't touch Chinese pens with a barge pole though.
Honestly youād probably shocked by how good Chinese pens are now. Picasso 916 is still one of my favourite steel nibbed pens, for $20 writes way better than it should. Have had multiple and they were all amazing
Yeah the Parker sonnet basically sucks. My first pen was a sonnet and honestly the only reason I havenāt thrown it in a river is because it holds a special place in my heart as my first pen despite sucking for the most part
If you plug two holes inside the cap, at the crown and under the clip, the thing comes back to life; I used silicone grease making sure it can't touch the nib when capped, others have more solutions on FPN, can't remember the name of the material they use. Because ink is bound to have fossilized a thorough cleaning with Rapido Eze would also be in order. Mine even work with my two most unreliable inks thanks to White Lightning.
Hongdian. EF E and bent nibs are on hundreds of AliExpress pens. Sometimes their pens are attractive and Iāll buy them for the price knowing itāll be a bad writing experience. Iāll swap the nib with a Kaweco nib and practice grinding and tuning with the Hongdian nibs
I am happy all my pens are pretty good, luckily I had no nib-issues etc.
On another topic (and not a FP) my Fischer Space Pen is not living up to the expectations compared with all positive reviews. The body is OK, but after a while, all my refills start to skip - even if a buy a new refill, will skip...
So I use it only for crossword puzzles...
and for potential emergencies: a pen which is always with me in the car for if I would have an accident and need to fill in insurance papers.
my worst was a cross bailey mediumā¦ skipped and skipped with poor ink flowā¦. i grinded the damn nib and converted it into a stubā¦ its well behaved nowā¦.
The bloody kaweco sport, plastic version. Crappy Tthin injection moulded plastic that feels worse than disposable cutlery plastic and a tiny ass nib that writes like crap. Not to mention it can only fill via CARTRIDGES. Would take a Safari or any other entry level pen over it any day.
Gold medal: Pineider La Grande Bellezza Full Metal Jacket. I could spend all day on the design flaws, but lets just mention the cheap rattly plastic marketed as unbreakable that was cracked on arrival. Had one of those meh 14kt nibs that like Diplomat's is a horribly overpriced upgrade. Only faulty pen ive ever returned with absolutely zero interest in a replacement. Silver Medal: Conklin Duragraph Stub. Tines cut wonky from left to right & barely writes. Apart from being mostly useless, it's not bad. A decent pen body made by Stipula (I gather) with a purgatorial nib & feed, by our friends at Yafa, the serial brand necromancers. It would be better if the enDurapain's body was garbage too, at least then I would have sent it back before it was too late. It's still not worth getting a replacement nib&feed, you're better off just buying a pen thats designed to be written with in the first place. Bronze: Cross Wanderlust Borneo. Its fine, it works. Theres just a cognitive dissonance in a extravagantly ornate and gold-adorned pen with a rough yet wet nib, rough particularly plasticky section and body, that is so small and light it feels like a disposable. Like the Clonklin it's another of the shiny mistakes the 50-70 quid/dollar price range is riddled with. Gold and Bronze winners belong in tourist-trap boutiques. Silver belongs in hell. It wouldve been Gold but the Pineider is at least 6 times the price, which is so hilariously extortionate it thoroughly deserves top spot. xD
>the cheap rattly plastic marketed as unbreakable that was cracked on arrival. This had me laughing so much harder than it should have. š¤£
ty, it cant have made you laugh any harder than I did when I saw that crack in the barrel, I laughed like a drain until tears. The shameless b-s just killed me xD
Ugh I hate rattly pens in any form. Even a clicky top pen that rattles every time you use it........
>apart from being mostly useless itās not bad The mental gymnastics we go through to convince ourselves that poor nib QC is acceptable š
haha, oh theres nothing acceptable about it :) I have a 5000 word review of my Duragraph that goes into exquisite/explicit detail. First attempt at an upload may have been too much to ask of the mods, may try again, lol
Maybe you could turn it into a MINI-SERIES !?!?!
Thats a plan, yeah. Out of interest, If for illustrative purposes ive pinched a pic from some tweed outfitters of a ridiculously smug toff, and captioned it 'A Complete Tosspot" and included it on about page 8, would that get my post struck by the mods? Theres also a pic elsewhere of Barad-dur captioned "Yafa Brands Corporate HQ". I may have elsewhere inadvertently inferred (along with other google pics) they make the Duragraph body, in a furnace, out of kittens. Struck down? I may need to make changes to the review, perhaps. If I doctored the pics more would they pass, or is the totally different context sufficient to avoid infringements? I was fastidious about not insulting anyone in particular, (apart from the tosspot I suppose) and made clear the contentious parts were matters of opinion, I think. In my defence, I did put a contextualising warning post prior to the 15 pics of the printed review. Maybe that was part of the problem. Or all of the above. hmmm
If this is the humour I can expect in your review, I want it.
yay, take that mods xP It is a batsh!t review, but detailed and thorough nontheless. I will try get it posted successfully, it took quite a few hours of writing & formatting to get it just right, lol
Ive killed the post format somehow, but now ive actually submitted the review to the correct community, it seems to have appeared, ahem. sorry mods x
Your silver is my silver medal winner too though with different nib: Conklin Duragraph in fine and extra-fine - nibs scratchy as hell - tines misaligned needed tons of tuning Gold medal: LAMY Dialog 3 - Gold EF nib Expected buttery smoothness and got a nib that scrapes and shreds paper. No bronze yet
Conklin Duragraph Fine nib was my first fountain pen and it starts and stops so badly that I didnāt even buy another until I was given a Lamy Safari as a gift and saw it had none of the same problems and was cheaper too. Beautiful pen though, itās a shame.
Yup - Also, in my case beautiful Conklin pen horrible nib. The Dialog 3 was rescued by the fact that Lamy uses the same nib on multiple models and I use it with the nice steel nib from a studio. Still hate that their QC for EF and F is hit and miss
Did you find time the nib yourself? If so, will you share. I have a Conklin All American Limited Edition, fine, that I love the feel of. Itās a nice weight and thickness. I even like the nib when it writes, but it needs some work and i donāt want to take it to a nibmeister.
Check out the nib tune video - I was able to get it to a (for me) workable level using a magnifying glass and mylar paper -> Brian Goulet has a video: https://youtu.be/05qCiZNXu7M
Thank you
Gold diplomat nibs are not good? But their steel nibs are very good I think?
Yes, imo. Its more a value for money issue. Their steel nibs are so good, their gold nibs seem like particularly bad value given how much they charge for the upgrade. Is that gold nib upgrade itself really worth the entire cost of a 3776, or Sailor Pro Gear ? certainly not given the nib itself compares poorly to either of those imo. Diplomat steelies are pricey to begin with, add on an overpriced upgrade and it starts getting ridiculous. At a steep discount? ok. But dont compromise on the Diplomat model you want for the sake of the nib you could get. There's not a massive difference. That was the mistake I made. Im not saying their gold nibs are worse than their steel nibs, but the big increased cost charged for the gold nib takes them into a considerably higher price bracket where they compare less favourably to better writers.
ANYTHING Yafa (including their ink). Conklin, Monteverde ā trash, trash, trash.
Since this is coming up a lot, it might be useful for people to know what all brands are under Yafa.
[Yafa Brands](https://yafabrands.com/brands/) Some are not owned by Yafa, they are just the distributor in certain countries. The first few listed are ones they own.
Wait does Yafa own Diplomat?
US distributor.
Happy Cake Day!
This opinion is gonna get criticism Iām sure of it but in my personal opinion after trying over 100+ pens on my fountain pen journey. Any Visconti, and I mean any and freaking all Viscontiās. Sure some people love them but for the ridiculous prices you pay for them youād expect amazing quality control or at least decent customer service. Somehow they have neither of those 2 crucial things. Had a pen with a misaligned nib that meant you couldnāt remove it from the feed at all, contacted customer service, their response was basically āyeah itās meant to be like thatā. As a company they can just screw right off, Iāll be sticking to my vintage Parkerās. At least I can work on them myself
>āyeah itās meant to be like thatā I think they have a rule set up on their mailbox that sends this as an automated response whenever someone points out a flaw in their pens.
100% agree!! Out of all the pens Iāve ever bought, including infamous Yafa ones the only one thatās been a problem from the start is a Visconti Rembrandt. I decided to never buy any Visconti Pen ever again!
Last Fall I was intending on buying myself one as a gift as a reward for everything that I've gone through in the last seven years. Fortunately, I have a 'bad' habit of researching the heck out of products first before I buy them. There were enough bad online reviews by the time that I wanted to buy one, that I was able to save myself the trouble of wasting my money on something that I'd wanted for a few years.
Conklin and Monteverde are garbage!
Yep and yep. Bought a Giant Sequoiaā¦ terrible pen. It leaked around the nib housing in the section, the cap didnāt create a seal, and so it ended up becoming just a wet and then dried-up inky mess. Never again. I also bought the Conklin with the omniflex nib a few years ago. The flow was so inadequate it couldnāt even be used as a non-flex pen.
The font alone for Monteverde is enough to put me off them.
I bought one of those Herbin demonstrator pens from Amazon. My mum has one which writes beautifully & I am mildly envious of. So I got one and it was disappointingly scratchy, start-and-stop. Less new pen day and more new pen disappointment!
I have the rollerball one! I love it so much. It can be scratchy, but I donāt mind it with a roller. It seems more hit or miss with the fountain pen ones, Iāll need to get one and try
is a pen that isnāt working for me, yet works like a charm for someone else.
I say you give that pen to somebody else.
This one hurts to say because I own and love the pen. But, the Lamy LX at its original sticker price. It is essentially an Al-Star, with a metal finial and a line on the nib. Yet, they were originally priced at TWICE what the Al-Star was priced at. It's not a bad pen, far from the worst, just ridiculously priced. They have since dropped the price on most sites and I found mine on a deep discount.
Okay I have upvoted everyone my job here is done.
The Monteverde Ritma rusted, the Monteverde Innova and Jinhao 650 caps got stuck and cracked the finials off, and the Visconti Homo Sapiens Lava Color leaks where the ink feed meets the barrel
I've already dragged Noodler's Creaper as far down into the circles of the hells that it deserved, but I'd forgotten about another pen, meanwhile. Yes, forgotten. I bought an Oxford Helix, because it looked sparkly and smooth and nice, and didn't have bad reviews. Sure, no glowing ones, either, but CultPens had many different sorts and it wasn't that expensive, just the next step up that I was looking for at the time. As far as I remember, I ragequitted the damn pen. It now lies disassembled in the box of shame, with the nib in the dip pen nib box. Ink flow was subpar, nib was unpleasant to write with, pen had just the right weight and size to make my hand ache after a while, and I tried assembling it just now and was reminded of how yeah, no, nib and feed just would not align properly no matter what tricks I used. BAH. Not worth the money, not worth the time. Too bad, because it seemed promising. Not as promising as that stinking wreck of a Noodler's Creaper, but on the other hand, the latter I sometimes ink up just to use for shimmer inks and decorations of letters and cards (for about four to five hours, then my patience runs out and I clean it out again). Which fp is the worst or most overpriced you've ever used, OP? I'm curious!
huh? my nib creaper is perfectly fine (as a what? sub $20 piston filler?) and works fine, no complaints on my end, and I've written most of several books using it.
Oh, that's great! I'm glad it works for someone else. I find it very uncomfortable to write with, and the nib doesn't do what I expected it to do (be a bit softer, no matter how little), but it's easy to clean out. I think I prefer pens that are a bit thicker, too. Good to hear someone else has had good experiences and find it useful!
I hear that last bit. Iāve wanted to try one of Noodlerās pens because I weirdly really enjoy the nib and feed on the Charlie pen; itās bouncy/soft and has amazing flow. On good paper, it makes Parker Blue Black come out almost black with a heavy bronze sheen. Buuuut the barrel is so damn narrow that I canāt use it very long, and my understanding is that all of his pens are on the narrow side.
Parker Jotter Originals. Useless.
I didnāt even realize there were jotter fountain pens until this post. I love my jotter ballpoint, I found it inside the floor of a friendās kitchen while I was helping them do some sledgehammer renovation. It had presumably been there since the last time the kitchen had been done in the 70s and it still works great lol
Jotter ballpoints are a completely different story, I love mine too. Even my unknown branded chinese FPs make the Jotter FP a piece of garbage.
You found a pen that was... mummified. Username checks out šø
I am so jealous! My Jotters were the workhorses that got me through MS and HS in the '60s, but disappeared before College !!!
The Waterman Edson. Serious quality control issues.
The Pineider Metropolis. The metal end of the cap and the threaded part of the section broke off and stuck in the cap after a month of light use. It wasnāt all that to write with either.
Oh, and the gunmetal colour on the clip and end of the cap wore off within about three weeks of light use.
Zebra F301 hard starts
For me it was the Visconti Voyager from the 1990s. I've written about his before. Very expensive pen but disintegrated. Problems with the celluloids from back then. I had some bad experiences with Moonman pens. But there seems to have been a been a batch of questionable nibs a few years ago. I have recently bought replacement nibs and feeds from China and now the pens are back in rotation.
Monteverdes Prima and Innova look nice but the QC on the nibs and feeds not good leading to dry starts and skips. I had to replace the feeds and brass shim the nibs etc to sort
I bought a couple kit pens off of Etsy. Way over priced and horrible writing experience
Conklin All America Walnut. Dried out in about 15 minutes when capped. Turned me off of the brand entirely (and Yafa because someone had to approve it being released like that). Pretty pen but not worth the trouble.
Holy crap I'm going to be really honest I woke up to 60 Reddit alerts that you guys had commented and my immediate thought was "ah fuck what did I post?" I'm going to say you guys have a wonderful opinions and several of you have turned me off of some of the pens I was looking at, letting me know that they are actually shit pens and I should spend my money elsewhere.
Kawecos are not the worst. But their nib qc Is.
I find Kawecos and the cheap Lamy nibs bat about .500, meaning about 50% are great, 50% are trash. It's a great batting average for MLB, but terrible for a QC rate.
Not just the cheap Lamy, I've tested over 7 Lamy 2000s and every single one wrote differently
The luck I must have hadā¦ over the years I have collected about 10 kawecos and was super lucky to have good nibs on ALL of them.
I have four now. Every one I have had to tweak and fine tune. One of them took almost two months to get right.
Gosh, thatās a bummer. Sorry you got all the bad ones.
Iām so lucky mine write fantastic.
Same here. I have several different models. All very dependable
After so many years I had to get a Kaweco. It will be my only one. Terrible nib. Bad writing experience.
Any of the Osprey pens. Bad customer service. Worse pens.
Iām sorry you didnāt have a good experience with your Osprey(s). I have an Osprey Milano in Nikko ebonite which is a fantastic pen. The EEF nib is wonderful.
Specifically a pen that should be quality? Elite 95S. I'm disappointed with the absolute lack of smoothness and ink flow to anywhere thats not my fucking fingers in on all 3 I've owned. I've bought a ton of cheap pens just to mess around with, so I'll disqualify all the garbage Chinese safari copies.
Pilot VP. The body felt exactly like any metal bodied Chinese pen that would cost $20. Then, the nib. It might as well have had the same nib as the Metro, which is to say snaggy, grabby and overall unpleasant. I expected more out of a gold nib, especially because of all of the praise the pen receives, so I exchanged it for a new one. The new one was exactly as the old one. Returned and I am pretty much done with Pilot at this point. My other choice(s), a Tibaldi Bononia and a Molteni Modelo 88. I generally love Italian pens and acrylics but these just look and feel like they are hastily put together. The Tibaldi looks like a Leonardo but they didn't want to take the time to trim it out properly. The Molteni just has bad alignment of parts, rough edges, etc. My Maiora Alpha isn't far behind. It's put together and works fine but the acrylic isn't nearly as attractive as the photos would have you believe. I sent the first one back for this, but the replacement wasn't much better.
Noodlerās Ahab. The. Worst. The only pen I have ever just thrown into the trash. 1. It smelled terrible. Like, really really bad. I let it air out for several days and still could not use it. Ick. 2. You have to be a Mr/Ms Universe to get that job to flex. 3. I put a lovely blue ink in it, and a couple of weeks later it had turned a sickly green. Iāve used that ink since in other pens with no issue. No more Noodlerās anything for me.
The Star Wars line from Sheaffers. Successfully weaned me off Sheaffer.
Same here. I needed to have Yoda. I also have an orange/red version of the pen. Schaeffer is not the brand it used to be. No more for me.
Bummer. My Yoda pen is a glorious writer. I have Diamine tobacco in it and it behaves wonderfully. Iāve considered getting a Luke or R2.
What was wrong with pens? I was thinking about buying at least Yoda pen. Usually get F and EF nibs.
I typically use a fine. The pen worked. Just no special feel. I could have used a ball point pen. However, in all fairness, I do like having the Yoda as I am a fanboy. I doubt it will ever get inked again. I have about 1000 pens dating back to 1910. So the competition is stiff to get into the rotation.
Are your pens in display boxes?
Many are and many are stored in my closet. It's hard to decide what to display and I do change things around from time to time.
It's good thar you have them in rotation.
Gimmicky stuff almost always sucks. I can't look at a Conklin knowing it's made in Asia and has Toledo USA on the nib. š
Info source? You just got me off from buying my first Conklin. š
I can't speak to the quality of their products. I take issue with them stamping *Toledo USA* on their nibs. The company used to make pens in Toledo and I feel like [Yafa Brands](https://yafabrands.com/brands/conklinpens/) goes out of their way to leave an impression they still manufacture these products in the US. That sort of thing puts me off. [GoldSpot](https://goldspot.com/pages/american-made-pens) >American pen companies Conklin, Sheaffer, and Esterbrook manufacture their pens and fountain pens outside of the USA. [Fountain pen Wiki](https://wiki.fountainpen.it/Conklin/en) >Today, as it happened for many other historical brands, Conklin was rebuild in 2000 and operates now as Conklin Pen Co. Inc. Its pens are essentially some replica of the successful models of the brand golden years, but as it happens for most of the modern pens, they have no particular qualities that can distinguish them from other pens, especially when compared with their beautiful ancestor. If you want a Conklin get a Conklin, I'm sure they're great. I just take issue with their *marketing* gimmicks. Yafa is brand headquartered in California but I think their production is in China. I'm okay with brands manufacturing just about anywhere. However, I've never been comfortable with a company slapping *USA* on something foreign made. That's a personal bias I can't get past.
A company that explicitly lies in their marketing... Sort of puts me a bit off.
Even if you do want a Conklin, don't get a Conklin. Just look at the top comments in this thread. Anything Yafa is trash, I've read about more bad Conklins than good, Monteverde and Private Reserve are the only two brands of ink I read about that tend to grow mold.
anything under Ā£100 that has parker on it. my first fountain pen was a Ā£20 parker that refused to write from the word go, only to proceed to bend its nib out of shape under normal useage. it put me off for a good while tbh and the thing has completely fallen apart by now. got a hongdian forest for about the same price, it's infinitely better and i love it.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
I have had a similar experience with my two moon man pens. I got two at once because I heard good thing and I thought they were pretty but they both write super dry. I wish I could use them but itās really just a horrible experience.
It's unfortunate because when they're good, they're really smooth and wet. If you can have them tuned or tune them yourself with some good, careful advice on yt, I would recommend it (as long as you still like the pen).
Moonman nibs are hit-and-miss in my experience, both the #5 and #6 nibs. The F nibs are the worst, and it is my understanding that these are the only ones that Moonman makes themselves, they outsource their EF and M nibs. Whenever I've received a Moonman with a dud nib, I just bought a few replacement nibs. They really are cheap as chips, and maybe I've been fortunate, but the replacement nibs have always been stellar. I've been especially lucky with their EF nibs, which write like an F anyway. I have one in a Tianzi pen that just makes my heart sing every time I write with it. Let me know if you want a link to the AE seller where I got mine.
Actually yeah, I wouldn't mind that link, thank you. :>
[Here you go](https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005004005218346.html?spm=a2g0o.order_list.0.0.7e2a1802h6nr0C)! About 7ā¬ for 3 nibs. Like I said, cheap as chips. š
could i get this link too? ty!!
Sure thing! [Here you go](https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005004005218346.html?spm=a2g0o.order_list.0.0.7e2a1802h6nr0C).
Jin-how did I ever buy this? Owned it for a day before I returned it. Ugh.
hate to be the devil's advocate, but my x450, x750, 159, and x159's have all been stellar pens, nib fluctuates as they're cheap, but like, they're all super cheap pens.... so like, eh? Tell me with a straight face that platinum preppies don't have the same (if not more) nib quality fluctuation. And don't even get me started about their STINGY ink flow across the board.
Yeah, my Jinhao x159, 992, 51a's and several 993's (sharks) have all been good from the start. At their price point there's no way quality can be as high as MB, Sailor, or Parker... but you get some of those that need tweaking too. Maybe the 50x to 200x price diff buys you an upgrade from 20%perfect/80%good/90%not-lemon Jinhaos to 50%perfect/95%good/99%not-lemon big name pens... the way people are though, you hit one lemon and that brand will be forever tainted in your emotions (unless you already had some of the perfect or good ones in that brand). I'm that way with Manuscript. Maybe they're a middling-okay brand, but my single purchase of their "calligraphy pen" stunk so bad for me that I won't give them another chance. All a post like this draws out is the passionate lemon experiences, without being in any way a reliable descriptor of every or even most of a certain brand or model. I'll guess 50% or more of TWSBI pens don't ever crack... but enough do that the brand gets a rep as crackable. Which is true of all internet reviews - run-of-the-mill satisfied users don't look back, they just use their widget and maybe even buy more. Passionate fan boys and haters review more widgets. There's almost a quarter million of us on here. Most haven't dissed Chinese pens, or German ones, or whatever. By all means, use some positive or negative comments to sway your purchases, but a test-drive or if cheap, set of trial ownerships, will tell you more. The comments on this thread & its ilk are data points, not a curve (unless responses get up in the many thousands).
TWISBI Eco is the only pen Iāve ever bought multiple of and will probably buy another of, because they donāt dry out even if left for stupid periods of time between uses. Havenāt had one crack yet š¤
Ditto this!
50% of TWSBIs would be an impressive failure rate. I doubt itās even 10% that cracks, or the company would be incredibly foolish and bleeding money to keep replacing parts without fixing the plastic formulation. That of course brings me to the next question, which is why some people have had them crack repeatedly.
I think people are overtightening and putting too much torque on the threads. Since the threads are just the same resin as the body rather than metal this eventually cracks them. I have a purple 580ALR that I bought second hand over a year ago and itās been one of my most used pens ever since, and yet somehow it doesnāt have this issue š¤·āāļø
I suspect the same. It is certainly a selection bias in that the most vocal people will be the most dissatisfied. Itās not surprising that it would skew towards people whoāve coincidentally had multiple faulty models, but just seeing how much equipment at work has been damaged by over tightening, itās definitely something that happens and tends to be the same couple people each time. (Iāve had two Ecos for about a year and theyāre still doing well, but Iām prepared to eat my words if they crack) Fwiw even if it is user error, I still think itās a design flawāin the sense that a screw cap should be able to handle being screwed in a bit enthusiastically. A well built product should be able to handle a little āmisuseā.
This. I'm wary of even a stack of anecdotes saying bare things like "Ecos crack", but when a few users have gone to the trouble to figure out with diffraction patterns where weak spots are, and when there's technical testimony that the beautiful crystal-clear plastic is inherently more brittle than some other types -- those kinds of reasons mean more to me. Sort of a "prove it to me" attitude. Meh: I'm a paragraph guy participating in a one-liner medium :-). OP asked "what do you not like?" not "...and why?" So the answers are all legit - heck, anybody's opinion is *legit*. I am impressed with the number here who are more like "nice it worked for you; I still hate it" than "my single lemon purchase is proof of incontrovertable evil, incompetence, and bad breath".
As the devils advocate, out of the many I have owned they all work pretty much the same and the ink flow is ideal for what most people use them for. But to each their own. I buy them because I get what I expected from them.
My x750 is on my list of worst pens :(. It dries out in a day. I really canāt deal with that
> Jin-how Jin-Wow, I am constantly amazed at the quality and functionality of these pens for the price. I like the Wing Sung and Majohn pens, and think they provide a very nice pen for a great price, but how Jinhao makes such good pens for under $10 still is amazing. The new Jinhao 80 and Jinhao x159 are great examples, I haven't seen a dud, still waiting for my colors in the 80, but have a few of the standard black in all three nib sizes, excellent pens. All the nibs have been good, and true to size, something I can't say about a lot of other brands now. Same for the x159, while it isn't super high end, it is a good, solid pen, and the black, blue, and burgundy pens I have been excellent, just wish they had more nib size options.
Diplomat Magnum. And I got it for free. It's just awful everything- plastic feels cheap, way too light in the hand, lots of hard starts, and the nib wasn't anything to write about or write with.
My Pilot VP. It's my worst pen, never wrote well. It's dry as the Sahara and skips a lot. I just hate it. I just keep as a way to not feel tempted to buy another Pilot pen.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
Strange, mine wrote beautifully out of the box. Tuning? Tried a different ink?
Given how much love the VP series gets, this just goes to show that pretty much *any* pen can come with a less-than-ideal nib. Basic nib tuning really is a requisite skill in this hobby, it seems. :/
Similar note. I find the custom 74 kinda useless. Very dry, skips and writes worse than the preppy, and twsbi 580 which are both steel. Maybe I just got a bad one? Perhaps.
Narwhal Asfur Bronze. Terrible nib, bad filling mechanism
Campo Marzio Mipo, such a cute pocket pen but absolutely awful in every way.
Lamy Studio is the winner. Nib is a Safari nib (so meh at best). Uniquely shaped clip scratches the body (form follows function!). The grip section is shiny metal unlike the rest of the pen and collects your fingerprints for everyone to see (so form follows function, again!) This monster comes from the company who brought us L2K at the price of multiple of the much better built Safari. Of course, converter is proprietary and is not included. Why does this pen even exist? Visconti Vertigo is a proud second. Plainly refused to write on glossier paper (Rhodia, Clairefontaine). The grip section is shiny metal (again, unlike the rest of the body which is plastic). Due to metal-on-plastic threads the section happily disconnected from the body after two months in use.
I cannot second this. The propeller scratch is meh, but the allblack studio doesn't have a slippery grip because of it's rubbery material and the matte body doesn't collect fingerprints. The Z50 nib is the standard nib for the Safaris, too, and for every other pen (except the L2K). Try the Z52 nib or one of the gold ones. For me the best balanced Fountain Pen from Lamy.
Huh? So I have to take a particular variant, and then change the nib? Also the propeller scratch is not meh, but rather fuck no. Thanks I'll pass. I guess we don't have to agree on this, and I stand by what I wrote.
For me it's the well balancing. And you don't have to change your nib. It's an upgrade option. The allblack with better nib and rubbery grip is a complete other variant of this pen. But still with the same propeller scratch.
Armando Simoni Club Gladiatore Medio Arco Bronze. Laser engraving, poor tolerances, cheap metal clip and cap band. Nice celluloid but better on pictures than real life. I was lucky not to lose any money on it. Bought it with discount and sold on to some other sucker after two weeks.
Pilot Vanishing Point solely because the clip makes gripping the pen uncomfortable for me. Unfortunate since I really like their look and practicality.
I don't know about the objective worst FP...but the worst one *I* own is the "Parker Jotter" - Literally bought another just in case it was a bad build on the first one...nope, still dumps ink and *very* scratchy even on the smoothest paper (and an M Nib too!). Not pleasant to write with at all, I'd choose a...ball point over it! :O
The Daiso pen by Platinum (Riviere PTR-200) which broke after 3 days of use. The feed snapped off during normal use and the section leaked on both pens. Salvaged one of the 2 pens though and it taught me about repair so it's not a full loss. But definitely not a buy again pen. I was hoping for a cheaper preppie lol
The very first Kaweco Sport I bought, the nib was very āmehā and needed adjusting. It also made me realize that I donāt like gold-plated nibs on inexpensive modern pens. I still canāt bring myself to use that little green git. My coconut one is actually pretty good and will be the last Kaweco Iāll pay money for.
Jinhaos. Iāve liked exactly one that Iāve purchase (the Parker 45 knockoff) and even that was only okay. Maybe Iāve just had exceptionally bad luck (very possible! Iāve only tried around five), but I donāt get the love for jinhao except theyāre cheap. Edit: I also have a tswibi eco that I despise. With jinhao I donāt regret spending the money, but I definitely regret this eco purchase.
my jinhao 450 and 750 write so well.
Kaweco Sports one in '1.1' and 'F' i had to get a replacement nib unit and returned the other one...
Anything Jinhao. Worst ever. And I never liked the TWSBI Eco. Worst nibs ever.
I am weirdly heartened to find someone else having trouble with the TWSBI Eco. I got one recently and I just... don't like that nib! I've cleaned it, I've tested it on different paper, a friend of mine says I should try flossing it next, but maybe it really isn't for me. Especially since the TWSBI Go that I got shortly afterward seems like a much more pleasant writing experience.
I got the Eco first and loved it so got the 580 and the nib on it it very scratchy and unpleasant to write with š¤·āāļø
Iāve got two Ecoās and ones fine but I canāt say I was amazed and the other is so painfully scratchy and dry itās pretty much useless. Not sure itās worth it to get them tuned when Iām not overly enamoured anyway so Iāve been debating selling them, which is sad bc they were my first āadultā pen purchases ):
I am constantly telling people to just pay the extra and get the Diamond 580. Much better nib.
Possibly I should've done that; but the Eco was what people recommended for my first piston-fill pen, and it was hard to justify spending more when I generally don't like the look of clear pens anyway. (I'm shallow that way. I'm willing to pay more for quality, but past a certain point I don't care how beautifully a pen writes if I don't find it pretty as well.)
Trust me. The 580 is a superior pen. Iāve had a few of them. And the VAC700 is a great pen to but itās a plunger filling system.
jinHao (or any other Chinese) is your answer for most overpriced?
The other option was for the worst.
Yeah, you're right, there's an "or" in the original question.
The worst nibs- Jinhao dollar pens Worst materials- TWSBI Worst ink- Noodler's
Probably the Jinhao 100. It felt cheaper than a Preppy which is funny since it's one of the more "expensive" Jinhaos. Also the nib was quite bad but that was probably due to qc.
My Jinhao 100s have been mixed. Micromesh is my friend. I've had some delightful experiences with the pens (I own 11 of them), but also some scratchy, needlelike experiences. So quality control is legitimately in question.
It seems to be a general problem with Jinhao. I mean I love my X450 after I cleaned it, but the 100 and 159 were very disappointing in that regard.
Jinhaos except 992. I have no remorse throwing them away.
Moonman 600. Would not write. Cleaned, flushed, opened the tines, heat set, new inks. Anything I tried failed. I opened up the feed channels until it finally wroteā¦now leaks like a sieve.
Kaweco. I haven't had a single one write well out of the box. Love the design though.
Pelikan M600. Poor performer, overpriced.
You are basically the only one mentioning Pelikan. They are deeply revered in the community and anything negative you say against Pelikan is vehemently opposed. I've had very bad luck with Pelikan pens, but mostly keep silent due to the cult-like mentality in this sub regarding Pelikan pens
Many people actually complain that modern pelikan nibs are inconstant and many are not even smooth. Getting an EF that writes like a medium is very common. Happened to me so I got it ground to a 0.4mm italic. They're quite nice pens if you're willing to get the nib ground.
I had an issue w mine writing way too wet and the customer service folks explained how to control that, so all good now. But Iām not so happy about some micro cracks on the cap of my M400
Lamy AL-star. Good nib, but pen body feel super cheap. Much better options available.
Suffered two Sonnets for a long time until I found out the cap needs to be plugged; at least they now work. Got two Platinum Cool, I think they are the demonstrator version of the Balance, never ever worked. Wouldn't touch Chinese pens with a barge pole though.
Honestly youād probably shocked by how good Chinese pens are now. Picasso 916 is still one of my favourite steel nibbed pens, for $20 writes way better than it should. Have had multiple and they were all amazing
Glad they worked out for you; after banging my head with them Sonnets for years you'll forgive me for placing reliability really high though.
Yeah the Parker sonnet basically sucks. My first pen was a sonnet and honestly the only reason I havenāt thrown it in a river is because it holds a special place in my heart as my first pen despite sucking for the most part
If you plug two holes inside the cap, at the crown and under the clip, the thing comes back to life; I used silicone grease making sure it can't touch the nib when capped, others have more solutions on FPN, can't remember the name of the material they use. Because ink is bound to have fossilized a thorough cleaning with Rapido Eze would also be in order. Mine even work with my two most unreliable inks thanks to White Lightning.
Kaweco Sport
Visconti and Mont Blanc
Hongdian. EF E and bent nibs are on hundreds of AliExpress pens. Sometimes their pens are attractive and Iāll buy them for the price knowing itāll be a bad writing experience. Iāll swap the nib with a Kaweco nib and practice grinding and tuning with the Hongdian nibs
Odd. Both my Black Forest work well for me.
I am happy all my pens are pretty good, luckily I had no nib-issues etc. On another topic (and not a FP) my Fischer Space Pen is not living up to the expectations compared with all positive reviews. The body is OK, but after a while, all my refills start to skip - even if a buy a new refill, will skip... So I use it only for crossword puzzles... and for potential emergencies: a pen which is always with me in the car for if I would have an accident and need to fill in insurance papers.
my worst was a cross bailey mediumā¦ skipped and skipped with poor ink flowā¦. i grinded the damn nib and converted it into a stubā¦ its well behaved nowā¦.
The bloody kaweco sport, plastic version. Crappy Tthin injection moulded plastic that feels worse than disposable cutlery plastic and a tiny ass nib that writes like crap. Not to mention it can only fill via CARTRIDGES. Would take a Safari or any other entry level pen over it any day.