Totally agree, I bought 2 Monteverde. Great looking, kind of LEs but not good writers. I decided no more money goes to them. They could probably be worked on but just did not do it. They will just sit I guess.
Sandy
We don't know what we don't know
Two Jinhaos: an x750 and a 159. Both were good writers, especially after upgrading them with a Goulet nib. However, both fell apart within months.
Most disappointing for me is probably a Visconti Opera Master Demonstrator. The size of the pen might not have been so bad if not for the stainless steel knob used to unscrew and operate the vacuum filler. It added so much weight to the end of the pen that it tried to torque itself out of my hand while writing. Posting would have made it useless. I bought it, owned it for two weeks, sold it, and saw that buyer put it back up for sale a few weeks later.
Detman101 (September 1st, 2020), kaisnowbird (November 19th, 2017)
Definitely the Noodlers Ahab.
Tinker-fest...and it smells horrid too.
Disgusting.
"I can only improve my self, not the world."
Indeed.
Love my Pelikan M805 clear demo, especially with the used medium cursive italic nib that I bought used on this site.
And my used MB Jules Verne.
Bob
Making the world a more peaceful place, one fine art print and one handwritten letter at a time.
“If ‘To hold a pen is to be at war’ as Voltaire said, Montblanc suggests you show up in full dress uniform, ready to go down like an officer and a gentleman among the Bic-wielding hordes.” - Chris Wright
Paper cuts through the noise – Richard Moross, MOO CEO
www.bobsoltys.net/fountainpens
Platinum 3776
Had high hopes for it, I thought the problem was me and my handwriting but after a year of trying I gave up
Unix is user-friendly ; it's just picky about who it's friends are -
Holy Thread Necromancy, Batman! At least it's on-topic.
The Noodler's Ahab is a disappointing pen, not because of the tinkering, which I enjoyed, but because of the leaking which I couldn't manage to fix. But most disappointing for me was the Airmail 71J. The nib felt good, but it would simply stop writing after a word or two. I cleaned it, put it back together, heat-set the feed... hard-starts, and feed starvation (from an eyedropper!), then leaks from around the feed. No thanks.
Back to my Pilot and Lamy pens.
"The world will little note, nor long remember, what we say here..." -- Abraham Lincoln, 1863
Detman101 (December 10th, 2021)
I guess if we're aiming at most disappointment coming down from high expectations :
Visconti Divina Desert Springs Limited Edition
Beautiful material, lovely feel, large like a dream to handle.
But writing and flow was abysmal, even after sending it out 3 times.
Ended up selling it at a loss, and the new owner did finally manage to get someone to least tune it to the way they liked. Would have loved the pen if it could just write right, as I'm a user, not just a collector. Similar experience with the Visconti Homo Sapiens Steel Age Maxi I had, it wasn't bad with the 23K Pd M nib, but it was still kind of 'meh' on the writing experience.
Or a serial disappointer: all of my Conklins. I get it, the Victory’s cheap, and the Duragraph is kind of a fancier kind of cheap, but a brass Mark Twain came out YOW! I bought one, and you know, it skips and barfs and hard starts just like the other ones. Fool me once… or for or five times, and boy oh boy…
Lloyd (December 12th, 2021)
Did I already say this here: Diplomat Magnum.
Yes, and that is understandable. I personally like the Magnum for what it is; an inexpensive, workaday pen that I can carry, use, and even lose. It produces a good line, and it is compact. I won't shed any tear if I lose or loan it and never see it again. Are there better pens that fill that bill just as well or better? Definitely. Some would suggest a Lamy Safari, a pen I wanted to like, fills the bill nicely. And yet, the Safari has been completely disappointing for me. It now sits un-inked and unloved on a pen holder waiting to be gifted at the earliest opportunity.
In the end, what is the most disappointing pen one has ever is very much a personal experience and choice.
This P50 is very comfortable in the hand but if I use a wet ink in it it does flow too quickly. This is the only Conklin I have so I don't know it it is more general but this one does prefer something with slightly higher surface tension.
conklP50.jpg
Scrawler, now that's my kind of pen!
Scrawler (December 13th, 2021)
Oh, the old ones, YES! Although, my skill with a flexible nib is less “Spencerian” that “Steadmantonian”
Using a vintage pen does not have anything to do with whether you are skilled with flex nibs or for you to even like them.
Plenty of vintage pens have nail-like nibs, and the good ones are so very nice to write with.
And when they are restored properly, you can have better ink flow than some out-of-factory (modern) pens.
It is true. I have mostly early pens. Pens were made for different purposes, not just to show the status of the user. The needs of an accountant going about his business were very different to those whiling away long Canadian winter nights in correspondence. For most pens and most users flex was incidental to their use. It mattered to hand writing experts looking for fraud more than it did to a writer trying to put character into their writing. I find super flex nibs like on my Swans a pain to write with, but love the extra little prettiness semi-flex Watermans #2 can give. My pens suitable for Spencerian are also the plainest least prepossessing items I have and probably the last thing most collectors would be looking for.
Very true, All the vintage pen are very different form pen to pen. It is very rare to get two pens from a same model which have similar charters in writing. Some pens have hard Nibs ( they named it as manifold Nibs/Pens) and some pens has Ef point and springy soft nibs. I think Vintage pens were never used for spencerian writing. But I guess fountain pens were used to write BUSINESS HAND which was a mono line writing. Yes, now a days some people use fountain pens to write Spencerian and that is an skill that is already developed from dip pens. Most of the vintage pens are great on writing Cursive scripts. They are very SOFT SPRINGY and have a certain feed back to "sing" on all papers just like the dip nib do.
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