I wanted to follow-up on an earlier post and say, firstly, thanks to everyone that chimed-in on my ask for advice regarding italic and stub nibs. I also wanted to report that I've kinda settled on some options that I've found to work well.
Many of you recommended the Masuyama-ground cursive italic nib from Franklin-Christoph. I had tried one of their Stub-Italic-Gradient (SIG) nibs, and found it not to be to my liking, despite absolutely loving the pen itself -- I mean the quality and beauty is absolutely superb. I'd ordered the pen with an spare nib -- one of their stock extra-fine, in a no. 6. I really, really liked that nib, so decided to go ahead and order another pen, this time with a Masuyama cursive italic - in medium. And I have to say: ya'll were right, I absolutely love it. It's perfect -- exactly what I was looking for. It's hands-down my favorite of all the stub/italic nibs I've tried to date. The only problem: now I'm totally addicted to F-C pens and am going to have to own one, each, of the CI nibs, in fine, medium, and broad. That's a bit of an expensive proposition, but -- my goodness -- are those ever beautiful pens! Definitely a cut above!
In case anyone else is interested and/or going through some of the same conundrums in finding a nice, subtle italic effect for their cursive writing, here are some of the nibs I tried, and my personal observations:
Franklin-Cristoph, Cursive Italic ground by Mike Masuyama: top choice; absolutely perfect
Pilot "CM" (cursive medium) nib: at around 1/10th the price of an FC pen, if you get it attached to a Metropolitan, it's pretty darn nice. Not as smooth or crisp as the Masuyama, but still ver nice.
Lamy 1.1mm stub: really nice to write with -- offers pretty easy control and good line variation. For everyday cursive, however, the line variation is a bit much.
Nemosine 0.6, 0.8, and 1.1mm stubs: Didn't really care for these, I must say -- and I had high hopes. Maybe it's mostly the feed, I don't know, but they are very wet, and not easy to control. I didn't get much line variation out of them.
Goulet (JoWo) 1.1mm stub: Not bad, but I didn't like it as well as the Lamy 1.1. Just kinda meh in terms of line variation -- writes more like a double-broad, really.
Fountain Pen Revolution 1.0mm stub: Nope. I don't even know why this is called a "stub," at all. It writes like a 4X-broad -- basically just dump gallons of ink all over the page. And I like FPR pens, too -- I have a couple, and the EF nibs are pretty darn nice. But the stub is definitely not my thing.
That's what I've tried to date. Thanks again for all the advice. I LOVE my F-C pens!!
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