My first upscale Pilot - Custom Heritage 92 demonstrator

[amk]

I've been using this pen for a couple of months now and it's become a regular friend on my desk. I'm finding that while aesthetically it doesn't please me as much as my Platinum 3776s, in terms of the writing experience it's up there with the best. In fact, it offers a lot of what I like in Pelikans - a piston fill, a reasonably bouncy/springy nib that writes fairly wet, and a good feel in the hand.



Ir's not the best looking demonstrator I've ever had. There's quite a lot of black in the mix because that's the colour of the piston mech, and the top of the cap is thick enough that it appears dark, too. As with many demonstrators, an opaque inner cap stops the ink drying out, but at the cost of being unable to see the nib through the cap.And the design seems a bit clunky to me, with two separate steps from barrel to piston knob.

On the other hand the decision to make the furniture silver (including the rhodium plated gold nib) is great. It shines subtly, particularly in the rings between piston knob and barrel, and between barrel and section.

The piston is one of the nicest I've had. Very smooth, and the pen always fills 100%.

The screw-on cap is secure, three twists on, three twists off - just about right, making the pen a good EDC but equally at home on the desk for note taking.

Now; the nib. This one is an FM in 14k gold, and to my surprise it's definitely on the M side of fine, even for a European nib. There's no 'bite' to it at all, it glides over the paper and is nicely springy. Again, it feels to me much more like a (modern) Pelikan than anything else! By contrast my Platinum 3776s give me more feedback and a much sharper feel when I write.

All in all, this is a fantastic little pen and I'm enjoying it far more than I'd expected. I'm definitely considering getting the other colours (smoke, orange and blue) at some point. At a retail price of $133 (Jetpens) it's one of the cheaper ways of getting a gold nib and that seems to me a pretty good price for a good pen - even better, I got this one secondhand at about half the price, and that now turns out to be one of my best buys last year.

[Driften]

I have one of the blue models and like it. My FM nib writes just like my western F pens. The M is wet western M and seems even better, but I have gotten into M and wider pens.

I wish the 92 came in more nib options, but you can use the nib/feed from a 74 or 91 as well. In general all of the parts interchange between those three pens. You can't swap sections with the 92, but you can between the 74 and 91. I have actually thought about picking up a 74 with music nib and swapping it into my 92 so I can have a piston filled version.

[amk]

Thank you for the information. Yes, a music-nibbed 92 would be a really neat pen!

[Driften]

Thank you for the information. Yes, a music-nibbed 92 would be a really neat pen!

I might still do that, but I decided to pick up a Platinum 3776 with music nib first. I should have it in a couple of days. It would be great to give my 92 with some other options. So far I have used F, FM, and M nibs in it. Right now my 91 was the FM, and the 92 M, and 74 the F.

[matteob]

Definitely worth a look if I can get a good deal direct from Japan. The 100 pound plus that the British dealers charge for these Japanese pens are a bit too much for me (£60 for my 3776 from Japan compared to £110 from UK)