Hello and welcome to episode 95 of the Panetic Podcast, the weekly show where we discuss pens, paper, and the analog tools that we love so dearly. My name is Mike Hurley and I am joined by a guy who in school, he definitely wasn't that dumb, in fact, he was quite sharpy. [Laughter] Spread downy. [Laughter] That was horrible, I know. So it's just getting so difficult now. That was great. I'm so sorry everyone, I'm really sorry. [Laughter] Oh, good grief. Oh, Brad, we're so useless. Do you know, two weeks ago, we've been doing the show for two years. I know, can you believe that? I mean, we don't even keep up with our own anniversaries, someone hit us up on Twitter, said, "Hey, congrats on two years," we're like, "Hey, all right, wait." [Laughter] I just want to check it, yeah, I remember getting that tweet now, I just want to check it then, because obviously, we're approaching a bigger milestone. That's right, more to come on that soon. How are you? I'm good, sir, how about you? I'm good, I fixed my Mont Blanc. That's awesome, I'm so excited for you, and it turned out it wasn't necessarily a noob problem, right? Well, I mean, as long-term listeners want to know, I have a Mont Blanc that I was given for my 18th birthday, and one day I dropped it, and since that day, it didn't work properly. And I've kind of just left it. It was taken to a store, the store criticized the fact that the pen had never been cleaned, because this was before my pen addict days. I've just been using it, and you know, kind of dried up, and I thought to myself, "Why don't I just try and clean it?" So I spent some time over the weekend, it honestly took about 30 minutes to clean, just to run enough water through it, and through the converter and stuff like that, to clean it out, you know, so there's no blank ink left. And it's now working like a dream. I think maybe what had happened was, there was like a lot of dried ink in the mechanism under the nib, and when I dropped it, it's lodged it, and therefore was kind of blocking ink flow. And was maybe sort of maybe like holding the nib in a bad position or something, because now it's writing like an absolute dream. That's awesome. And I'm just happy because it was a gift, and I'm just really happy that I'm able to use it again. Yeah, good fountain pen hygiene is key. Yep, and I believe, I believe, I'm trying to find it for the show notes, that I have a Mozart, a Mont Blanc Mozart. Okay. Nice. Which is, I don't even know if I'm able to find it, but I remember there being a picture of Mozart on the box. Gotcha. Gotcha, and one ink went into it. I put a Roshi Zuku compaki. There you go. Perfect. I think, I think, I found it. Hang on. No, this isn't my one. I know they did some with, I'm not a Mont Blanc guru, but they did a lot of, you know, special names, you know, a lot of literary figures, I know, and different people. It's from this Mozart line. Okay. But I can't find the exact one that is mine. Meister stuck. Well, that's one of their, that's one of their common names. Homage Mozart. Cool. There you go. I want to see it. Do you have to put that in the show notes for everyone to see? Yeah, I'll try and find the one that I have. So, yeah. So, I just went to... Excellent. I'm excited for you. It's not really too much, you know, I'm kind of pleased that it's back. Yeah, for sure. I mean, heck, I mean, I'd be very pleased that that pin was back. So, that's good. I'm glad to see that you cleaned it up and it's good to go. That's awesome. So, we had an interesting episode last week, Mike, I felt. You know, I was a little rambly. I was a little confused, you know, was a little bit unsure about the topic I was mentioning, and it generated probably, I don't know, maybe the most feedback that I've ever gotten on any single episode in my inbox. So, I got lots of emails kind of on both sides of the discussion. You know, generally, if anyone hasn't just happened to jump in in this episode and last episode was just me kind of talking about the state of the pin industry and like of innovation and if, you know, certain types of pins have been solved and there's nothing else we need to look at in those certain areas. And I don't believe that's the case. And that was kind of my point in bringing up the topic, but I got some really good feedback and I wanted to share a couple of things from both sides of the ledger, if you will. I think the best email I got was from Abby, she's from Australia. And, you know, she pretty much wholeheartedly disagreed and was pretty disappointed with the episode as a whole. So, let me read, let me read, it was a, I copied what I put in the show notes, Mike, is probably one third of the email that she sent. So, she did an awesome job putting her ideas down. And I'm going to talk about that at the end. But let me go through some of the points that she made. And I think they really hit home with me and it was a great email. So, let me look at this, let me go through this real quick. She says, "Hey Brad, I'm most of the way through listening to your podcast and I had to stop and write something because this is the second week in a row I felt someone left out because of the types of pins I love and rely on." This is a long one, but hopefully may be worthwhile. I know you love your fountain pins, but your podcast is slowly but surely getting out of the realm of relevancy to me. That makes me sad as I really do enjoy listening to you guys. My everyday pin for as long as I can recall has been a Lamy logo ballpoint. Admittedly, not the best writing experience, especially since I could only find a medium refill, but an incredibly reliable workhorse that is never, that never has a "yeah, but" moment when I need it to work on the first try or smudges on the back of the credit card. I know what you said was that you were bored stiff reviewing them because it's the same old stuff, but what I heard was that my workhorse pin choice isn't worth bothering with and real pin addicts have long ago moved on. I'm guessing that wasn't what you meant, but it was still a bit of a kick in the guts. And that's definitely what I did in me. I actually wrote a long reply back to Abigun agreeing with most of her points. And that's absolutely what I didn't mean. But this next point she makes really kind of gets at what I was trying to get at last week. She says, "If you base your idea of the pin experience on the idea of it being a linear progression and keep poking people towards the top end, then don't be too surprised when people can't follow you there. Not everyone can love fountain pins, not because they don't see the beauty in the instrument, but because not everyone's everyday writing situation is a fountain pin situation. Some people stop at ballpoints, not because they aren't informed, but because that's what they love. Some people stop at ballpoints because they simply cannot crowbar in a writing situation that will be suitable for anything else." I think that strikes it really the point I was trying to make last week was I don't want that to happen. I don't want there to be this linear progression in pushing people the right way. I think my whole concern last week was I don't want to do these things. I want to keep talking about these new ballpoint pins and new gel ink pins and new rollerball pins and things like that. And I was worried that I wasn't. And this kind of hit home to me kind of like, well, that's kind of what I was feeling in the back of my head that I'm kind of losing track a little bit. Of covering everything. And that was my underlying fear that maybe I did or didn't get across last week. That I don't want to force this fountain pin experience that I'm having right now down people's throats. And I want to make sure that I'm talking about and writing about pins for everybody. And, you know, maybe that didn't come off like crystal clear in last week's episode. But, you know, in the way Abby laid out her email, that's exactly what I was worried about that people, you know, were not enjoying the show or the blog anymore. If it became too focused on one thing, in this case, maybe fountain pins. So, I guess last week's episode actually probably came from a little place of fear for me that I was getting to pigeon hold. And I want to do all these other things. But maybe I was a little scared to or maybe I wasn't excited enough about the products to do them justice and things like that. So, you know, she went on and made a couple other good points. And, you know, she says, you know, don't worry about helping people move on from a G2 or move up to a retro 50-51. Don't be the pin app ambassador, be the pin Somalia, help them find the perfect pin to go with their life, their task and their budget. And I think I did make that point last week that, you know, I want to help people find the pin that's right for their situation because not everyone's situation's the same. So, anyway, I thought Abby made some great points. And it really hit home with the email because that was the kind of things I was worried about when I started down that road in last week's episode. So, you know, with what she said on that side of the ledger, I actually got a greater quantity of emails like this one from JP, who's @notsomodernman on Twitter. So, JP says, there are, as you stated, people who love their pilot G2s and cannot imagine how a pin could get better, especially the .38. I recently noticed that a client's desk had no less than 10 G2s and the .38 on her desk. That is too specific to be happenstance. Through discussion, we reveal to each other that we both share an affinity for pins, even though our preferences differ greatly. She uses nothing but the pilot G2. And her reason is it's the best pin she's ever used, exactly. This is the way it is with most people. He says, poor, misguided souls, which is a little unfair. They just don't know what they're missing because unless you're actually searching past Walmart and Staples, the pilot G2 could very well be the best pin you've ever used. I don't know why pilot and uni and others don't import more to the states. Perhaps pilot and others would like to do that. But why question why Staples is ordering G2s by the pilot? People really don't know what they might be missing. One of my favorite things is to truly listen to what someone wants in a pin, such as Mike talked about in episode 91. That was when we were going through, you know, your list of, okay, you know, I have a friend that wants a fountain pen and these are the exact requirements. That's what he's referencing to. Says, "and bring a person a pin which fits what was described. This brings such great smiles from friends and family. I cannot tell you what a $4 pin does to brighten the day of a crossword or who can't seem to keep the letters in the boxes anymore. For business, there's nothing quite like the unique gesture of bird-dogging that perfect pen for a client or a colleague. Even if it's a cheap plastic pen, the fact that you listened is never forgotten. Before I left the lady who loves the G2s and will not have any other pin, I gave her a uni Sano Ultra Micro 207 just to try. I received a text two days later. I love my pin. Thank you. And I haven't even put in my jet pins order for her yet. So to sum up this quick comment, none are solved. The difference is we panatics are aware of this. So I thought both of those emails provided great perspective on kind of the points I was trying to make last week and Abby's email really struck home with me because I was kind of, I don't know how it came across last week. But that's kind of what I was getting at. There was like this deep-seated feeling in me. Like, am I going down a path where kind of getting off like the real core of what I want the panatic to be? So yeah, I took those emails to heart and it was some really good stuff. And, you know, I just want to make sure to cover everything that everyone wants to wants to know about because that's really, that's how the panatic got started. It was basically about discovery for me, right? Discovering that, hey, there are better things out there. There are better things out there that fit for me. And maybe there's some things out there that are better fit for you. So, you know, I'm definitely don't want to alienate anybody going, you know, deep diving into fountain pens or something like that. And that's certainly not going to happen because I love other pens way, way too much to, you know, totally discount any other pens. So thank you, Abby and JP and everyone else who sent emails, you know, the quantity and of the quality of the conversation around last episode was excellent. You know, we have some great listeners that take their time to write thousand word emails, Mike, that's pretty awesome. I mean, I think that on all sides, that was awesome feedback. It's definitely something to think about. It makes me sad a little bit to make someone unhappy with the show. So for anybody that maybe hasn't enjoyed the show as much or whatever, I apologize, like, you know, I don't want that. For me personally, like, this is kind of just where my head is at, you know, with with pens. My interests now lie in fountain pens and the odd thing breaks through. But for me, really, my pen money is going on fountain pens. I guess you're the, you know, the one of us that's always been a little bit more widespread, I think. So I guess we just need to make sure that we try and, I don't know, keep things rolling and keep trying to make sure we're trying out new stuff for people. But I do apologize if the show hasn't been as enjoyable for some. Although, you know, but it's like, it's like six of one, half dozen of another. Some people love the, you know, you can't win. Right. Yeah. And we're not trying to win. I just want to, I think last episode was honestly coming from a place of, you know, confusion, if not fear in my head, that, you know, I could see the kind of the writing on the wall that I'm getting a little heavy in certain areas on the blog and the podcast. And so maybe it came from me, you know, worrying about that a little bit. You know, am I, you know, going down the right path, doing the right thing? And it was just good to have that conversation to kind of get, kind of get a feel from what the listeners and readers were thinking. So, I mean, I thought it was totally good. I mean, it's, I guess eye opening a little bit. Just, you know, I just want to make sure that, you know, this is a huge, huge topic we talk about. You know, the world of pens is massive and we don't get to everything every week. And just know that we, and especially me, are working on, you know, covering, reviewing, discussing all kinds of pens and maybe even pencils. Which is a whole another, that's a whole another episode. But, yeah. So, no, everything will be covered. And, you know, sometimes we get on tangents. It's funny if you look, kind of look back at our history mic on the, on the podcast. Our topics tend to run for like two, three, four episodes. You know, there's kind of like a thread between a handful of episodes. And then it kind of goes into this other thread. Yeah. So, it's cool. You know, it's, it was all good. I was happy to get the feedback and it was, it was really good stuff. So, we will move on from there and, and try to keep doing a good job and doing an even better job. So, thank you everyone for their feedback on, on last week's episode. It was awesome. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you everyone. Thank you. Yes, very much. And, um, speaking of feedback and your, your Mont Blanc mic that you just fixed, you may have to shelve it because we found the, the pen for you. Oh, yeah. This is from, yeah, this is your pen. This is from Keith Keethover on, uh, on Twitter sent me this link. So, this is the Omos Limited Edition Phoenix Plated Fountain Pen with Diamonds and it can be yours, Mike. Yeah. For only $48,000. Well, Amazon tells me that I'm going to save $12,000. I get a 20% discount. So, that's good at least, right? Yeah. I mean, this is a deal. And not only that, the reviews of this pen are amazing. I mean, if you're not going to buy this pen, just because of saving 20%, I mean, that's deal enough alone. Just listen to some of these reviews. Yeah. You know, it says, uh, sorry, it says, you know, this, this pen is the perfect tool. I use this pen to write my monthly $10 check to sponsor a starving child in Africa. It's the least I can do. Um, what a screaming deal. I can't tell you how long I've been waiting for this pen to go on sale. 60 grand is a little steep, even for me, and it saved $12,000 at that, put my kid through college. If that dad is getting a pen. Why no pack of five option? This pen is amazing, but I lose them all the time. And the fact I can't buy them in a pack of five is outrageous. This means I have to buy them all separate and spend $5 on shipping per pen. So yeah, it's pretty great. Is this a good pen from Mark Zuckerberg to write the $16 billion check to the WhatsApp people? It seems like it would be right. I'd love to know what sort of pen CEOs use. Yeah, it's all like, Zuck already has a pen crafted from the souls of candy crush players. So the answer to answer your query now. So I will, I've been, I've started watching house of cards on Netflix. And when they seem, it seems, I didn't know this, but it seems to be that when a bill is signed into, into law in the United States, there are commemorative pens that are given out to the bill writers and other key members of people that are involved in the making of the bill. I would love to know what those pens are. Yeah, that's a good question. And that's come up a few times over the years where I've gotten a picture of, you know, someone said, you know, what, what pen is Barack Obama using here, or they'll show a picture of actually him signing something, and there'll be a tray of like 20 pens, right? Well, he'll just use one for one signature and then set it off. And then those are all gifts for people or, or something like that. So there's been a few different articles over the years about what actually pens they are. And I can't remember off the top of my head. For some reason, I think crosses somehow involved, but I could be totally wrong on that. But anyway, hang on a second found an article here. The longest continuously running presidential pen is an inexpensive all-metal ballpoint originally made by auto point, generally gold, but sometimes silver turns and imprinted into a signature and occasionally a seal. These pens were first used by LBJ in at least five varieties, including a silver and gold turned one for his ranch. They cost $3 each. The pen that is used today by President Obama is the black lacquered cross-towns and rollable pens, or rolling ball pens, as this says here, rollable pens at a cost of around $130 each. Wow. Cool. Okay. So there you go. I'll put that in the show. It's wherever it's correct or not, but some googling found it. So that will work for me. So anyway, back to this Omos limited edition. We just put that in there because of the reviews. It's like the big ballpoint or the, was it the big for women one, which has just thousands and thousands of reviews. If you have some time to kill and need a good laugh, just go check out the reviews on this $48,000 pen that's 20% off, and it's pretty amazing and thanks for Keith for sending that. The cross-towns and this looks quite a lot like the one that they use in House of Clats. Okay. Yeah. So maybe that's a pretty, you know, very business-y, business-y looking. Yeah. Just getting free, right? Yeah. Yeah. Um, I stumbled across last night. I had actually put the show notes together and then I just happened to be going through some of my feeds last night. And Chad Doane from Doane Paper has come out with the product that I've been waiting for for a long time. He told me about his intentions to make something along the lines of a composition-style sized notebook, and it's finally getting ready to come out March 1st. He put a link out. It's called the Large Utility Notebook, and it's five inches by seven inches staple-bound margin. Well, composition. So in the U.S., it's like a school- Oh, I know these. They've got the weird colors on the covers. Yeah. Like the marble cover. Yeah. So it's just called a composition book. It's kind of a generic term, but actually I think Mead, the manufacturer Mead just calls on the composition book. And they're in that general dimension. And they're always like either staple-bound or glue-bound on the left edge of the binding. And I've always enjoyed that format. Before I started writing the pen addict, we're probably 10 or 15 years ago, when I'm working in an office, that's all I used was composition books for notebooks. I wouldn't use legal pads or steno books or anything like that. I just had composition book after composition book, and then all of a sudden the composition book turned into a search, and I found a graph paper composition books and I was in heaven. So this is going to be a big product for me. So I don't know if anyone else is into this size or not, but I'm excited about it. This is going to be a heavy rotation product for me just because the format size is perfect for me. So stay tuned. I will be ordering come March 1st, and I'll put up a review and we'll go from there. But I know Chad has had this on the radar for a long time, so I'm glad to see it come out. And when I posted it on Twitter, a bunch of other people were pretty excited about this too. So pretty cool, pretty cool stuff. All right, so I've got a few pen reviews I want to talk about, Mike, so why don't you talk about our friends at Squarespace? Sounds like a great idea, Brad. So I want to take a quick moment to thank our friends over at Squarespace for supporting this week's episode of the Panadict. They are the all-in-one platform that make it easy and fast to create your own website. For a free trial and 10% off, go to squarespace.com and use the offer code 'TallyHoe2'. Squarespace are constantly updating their platform with new features, designs and more support. They have beautiful templates for you to get started with and tons of style options for you to adjust, so you can really create your own space online. Everything in Squarespace is drag and drop, so it's easy to add content from your desktop and even rearrange elements of your content within a page or within the web browser. Squarespace makes it super easy to make sure that your site looks beautiful on all devices because every site, every Squarespace design, every Squarespace layouts and template features its own responsive, unique mobile web design, so you don't have to do anything, it just does it automatically. It can't get much easier than that. You can easily connect Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Instagram, Google and many, many more web and social services to Squarespace to have content pulled in and content pushed out. Squarespace also has e-commerce in their platform, so if you want to set up a shop and sell things in just a few minutes, well Squarespace Commerce will let you do that and you can now set up Squarespace Commerce on any Squarespace plan. It's incredibly easy to use but if you need any help, over 70 Squarespace employees are on the customer care team based in New York City. They're available for live chat during the week and have super fast email support throughout the day and night. You can try out Squarespace for free, there's no credit card required to do this and if you decide to purchase, it starts at just $8 a month and includes a domain name if you sign up for a year. Make sure that you get 10% off and support this show by using the code tally-ho too. But before I finish today, if you are an engineer or a designer, well, this could be the time for you. Squarespace are looking to hire 30 engineers and designers by March 15th. This means they're inviting potential candidates which could be you and their spouses to be New Yorkers for a weekend completely on them. So if you want to go hang out with the Squarespace crew and check out New York City, well, go to be a part of it.squarespace.com to learn more. Thank you so much to Squarespace for supporting 5x5 and the pan addict. Thank you Squarespace. Ta-da. And dude, I can't tell you how much their iOS apps have improved. You keep telling me that, right? They're so good. But you're really, really getting a good time with it, right? Yeah. I mean, it's helping me with some administration stuff, you know? So it's and it works and it's great. So very happy with the improvements they did on that. They basically tore it down, started from scratch and build something useful. So it's great. Very handy. Good. All right. It's been a week. Also. This guy. Sorry. I said awesome. Everything is awesome. Oh, man. It's such a good movie. It is. I think I might have to go again this weekend with the kids. I loved it so much. Yeah. The Lego movie. Everyone. Yeah. Lego movie is great. It's awesome. Everything is awesome. Yep. So this guy, this is George from my supply room and his blog goes away back and I have a special place in my heart for George because he reached out to me long, long ago. When I was starting my blog and he said he was a reader and he's got this crazy collection of pens in his garage or basement or some room in his house and he wanted a place to, you know, he thought he should start a blog and have some place to show and talk about these pens because he's, you know, he's passionate about it. He's a collector of old, old and vintage pens. So, you know, we had some conversations in the beginning about getting him started. So I've always followed George, not just for that reason, but because the guy's collection is out of hand amazing and it's mostly from a vintage aspect and I say vintage, I'll clarify that. It's mostly like 60s and 70s, pens and pencils and erasers and paper and he sent me some things over the years from his collection and then he goes all the way up to, you know, the present day stuff, you know, he's, if you scroll back through his blog, you'll see some pictures that will just blow your mind. Now one of the crazy things that happened to George after he started this blog and I've mentioned this on the podcast before for a long time listeners might have caught me mention this, but once he started putting out all these old pens, like from the 60s, certain Hollywood types reached out for a, from the prop department show you may have heard of called a madman, Mike. No way. Yeah. So George provides the pen props to madman out of his collection. That's so awesome. Yep. Wow. Yep. Yes. So how cool is that? That's a small world, man. Yep. And he doesn't talk about it very much. He's, you know, he keeps it pretty much on the down though. He's mentioned it a couple of times because they gifted him like a big display unit one time for, you know, sending them some pens. They got him like an old, you know, like an old retro, you know, I can remember it might have been like a Parker display or Shafer display, something, you know, they, he talked about, you know, with my work with the show and they gave me this and so that was pretty cool. Um, if you want to see a very cool pin collection and learn something about, you know, where the lot of pens we're using today, like, you know, the big clicks and, and some of the traditional ballpoints and, you know, one of his recent posts, he's got an old paper mate flair, which I mean, this thing looks like it's from the 60s, yeah, his 1966 paper mate flair, which, you know, is still in use today. So you can learn a lot of good history from his site and you should definitely check it out. That's George, uh, his blog is my supply room and we'll have the link. It's my supply room blogspot.com and, um, we'll have that link in the show notes and make sure you have some time to kill because, um, once you start scrolling through the links, you're going to be lost there for a little bit. So I did a few reviews in the past couple of weeks that we haven't, uh, had time to cover and I always like to, I now like to at least mention those on the podcast. So sometimes, you know, I get a little bit of feedback on the reviews or, you know, it's good to not just hear or not just read the words about the, uh, the pen, but to kind of have a little bit deeper explain, explanation and conversation. And one of the ones I wanted to talk about was the uni, you need jet stream prime three color ballpoint and what this is, it's a multi pin and jet stream uni is cranking on the jet stream line in Japan. I mean, they make all different colors, all different sizes. They make tons of different multi pins. I was actually, this one, I was actually surprised this one came out because it's like a high end multi pin, this is like a metal barrel, business, desk, I don't know, just a real nice, nicely done jet stream multi pen. And I was actually, I was excited to review it. It's pretty expensive. All things considered. It's $45 at jet pins, which is real expensive, but some people want a nicer barrel pin, you know, for whatever reason, for work or for durability, who knows. And the one I chose is really cool looking. It's a black and chrome two tone barrel. It's really nice. The refills are great. The jet stream refills. The good thing about them is their standard D one size refills. And if you're not familiar with the D one refill, it's a real small metal refill that actually fits in a lot of pens. It's kind of a universal size. And you can mix and match different D one refills, like I could use this jet stream barrel and I could use the D one refill of the Zebra Charbo gel point four millimeter. And it would fit right in this pen. No questions asked. So that's a great feature about this pen. But they did one thing on this pen that kind of blew my mind and kind of throws it off for me. I really think they've kind of gone on the Lamy design path here, which is good. It's a very German looking pen from a Japanese companies, these sleek lines and, and you know, this black and chrome look. It really, if you told me it was a Lamy, I would, I would almost believe you until you look at the end of the clip. And there's this little faux plastic blue jewel on the clip. I don't know where the heck this came from. It's so random. And it really confuses the design of the pen completely. It just breaks up the whole design. I mean, it loses, it's drawing the design of it. It's very, very strange. And I don't know what to make of it because the pen is great looking otherwise, but that little jewel, and it's not, I mean, you can tell it's just a little cheap piece of plastic. It's, in my opinion, it's a poor design decision. People may like it, you know, whatever, but it kind of overrides what's normally or what I think is actually a pretty good pen, although I really think, you know, if you're looking for a jet stream multi pen, I think some of the lower end models are, are just as good if not better than this, that you can get for anywhere from like seven to $15. The jet stream multi pens that I've used are really, really good. And do you have any feeling about the multi pen versus the standard, like, do they run out quicker that you've noticed anything like that? Yeah, they'll definitely run out quicker. So they're thinner, are they the? Yeah. So you can pretty much just one of the safe assumptions you can always make is a multi pen refill will run out quicker than a standard ink refill, just because they can't put the full size in cartridges in the multi pens. So you can pretty much always assume that. And then when you get into gel multi pens, you burn through those like crazy. So you have to be prepared. Like with the Kalito, you know, if you're a heavy user of the pilot high-tech C Kalito, you need to have like, um, refills handy to swap in because you will run out at a moments notice. But, you know, for a lot of people, myself included, they're worth it just because they write great. So anyway, I just wanted to, I want to talk about that jet stream because it was, I thought it was a great addition to the product line, but it's a little pricey and it's a little bit thrown off design-wise on what could be a lot better design, I think. One pen I do like the design of, and I just posted this review yesterday is the Sailor Regulus fountain pen. This pen's been on the radar for ages. I finally got one from Jet Pen's late last year and I reviewed it, I don't know, a while back, and I never posted it, you know, I try to keep things backlogged, you know, um, so when I have time, you know, I'll go through what needs to be posted and posted. So this one just took me a while to get to, um, because I hadn't written it up, I'd done the handwritten review and the photographs and things like that. And sometimes it just takes me a while to write it up. This is a great pen. I'm very happy with this pen, um, obviously went with the orange barrel. I mean, that was kind of a no-brainer, it's like got, uh, black, blue, and gray. But I was actually, the pictures look awesome with the orange barrel. In person, it's a little bit lighter and a little bit more sparkly than I'd like. I think I'd actually maybe prefer one of the darker ones. But this pen writes so well and the combination of it and the Sailor Nano Ultra Black cartridges, which if anyone's familiar with that ink or not familiar with that ink, it's like it's up one of the high end Sailor inks, it's just this rich black pigmented ink. I mean, it takes a little bit of extra maintenance. You got to clean it a lot, you know, between cartridges, you know, you need to clean it because it'll, it'll kind of, um, dry out quicker. But the writing experience is awesome. I mean, the pen just glides across the page. I've just taken a look at the image and now like I've looked on the flicker and I've zoomed it in, I can kind of see what you mean by sparkly. I couldn't see the sparkliness before. Right. And like the product pages on the JetPens, you can't see it at all. In person, this pen looks a little bit different than it does in the way it photographs. Like the way I photographed it, it looks, I mean, as weak as my photography skills are, it looks exactly like the JetPens photographs. In person, it doesn't look like that. So yeah, you can expand on the pictures and maybe you can see the little glimmer it has. But it's not bad. Totally. I use this pen a lot just because it's, it's, it's the right size. The nib is amazing. I love the ink. So it's just one of those pens where I'm dead set on, all right, this pen gets this ink cartridge and I know this is the writing experience I'm going to have. Like this pen, I don't play around with much. I don't have a converter for it. I'm not doing all kinds of different inks. This is it. This, this combination is done for me. I ink up, I ink it up just like this and go to town because I love it. I've actually burned through a couple cartridges on this. I've written with it so much here in the, in the past few weeks or so. So it's really cool. And I kind of liken it to the, the Pelican M205 from a price point perspective. It's not a cheap pen by any stretch. It's $115 and the Pelican M205 is around 130 and they're kind of that in between no man's land zone, right where it's hard to, there's considerations you have to take. Well, why should I buy this pen instead of a Twisbee? So you know, this opinion you need to do your research on, you know, make sure it's a good fit for you, just like the Pelican M205. But in the end, I've been happy with it. Just like the Pelican M205, I was ecstatic with. From one other recent review, which has kind of got me down this path that I've kept thinking about going down and then I never really get going. And now I've kind of got this bug a little bit about wood case pencils. So I got the, someone, someone give me the right pronunciation because I've mentioned it before. I'm going to say fabric castle, but I know it's, it's probably Faber Castel or you know, I would call it Faber Castel. I can't even believe that you called it Faber Castel. I don't call it that, but it's hard to, it's just like Kavaco, you have to think, I have to think about pronouncing it, but I think it should be Faber Castel because that sounds right. And that looks right. But no, I, you know, it's just American of me, I guess. I don't know. But the, the grip 2001 is a Faber Castel classic. I mean, this is a pencil that's been around for, I don't know, I want to say decades in a company that's been around for hundreds and hundreds of years. This is one of the more popular current line pencils. And I tried some out and the set I got from JetPens contained three lead grades and lead grades are whole different discussion that we'll have some time. And we've, we've kind of talked about it in a way, way old episode before, but I'm not that experienced with it. So I always have to refer to a chart. And the ones I got were kind of in this middle range, but I found, I always thought I wanted the darker lead pencils that I would like those the best. But there's a trade off, you know, generally, in general terms and, you know, hardcore pencil people will probably correct me. But in general terms, the darker the look, darker the lead, the softer it's going to be. So I kind of like a, I like a harder lead, a more firm, you know, lead to where the tips not losing shape as quickly, you know, I like to keep a sharper point. So I found that the HB grade pencil was really, really great to write with. And the review actually I did with the 2B, which is the softer of the three, but when I was done with that, I just kept writing with the HB because I could write these lines that were fantastic and if you, you know, you blow up the picture, you can see them that my lines are just neat and clean and I don't, it was a super enjoyable experience. So I've gone on from there and ordered several more pencils from JetPens. So I want to be reviewing them, you know, maybe not as thoroughly as some of my pencil compatriots. But, you know, we're going to have to work on doing some more pencil reviews and maybe some pencil talk on this show sometime and we might, I'm working on a guest for that as we speak. So hopefully soon. And yeah, that's, that's something I wanted to bring up because it's definitely an outlier for me. I feel like with the pencils mic, it's back when I started, it's like starting the blog all over again. It's this whole learning experience is like, I don't know much, but let's try to figure it out together. I don't know much, but I know I love pens. That's right. That's right. I was pretty proud of that. I don't know much. Shall I just leave? That was great. No, that was fantastic. Last thing, and we'll leave it on this, I finally ordered a couple of pens I've been talking about. I guess I'm completing the whole, the whole Twisbee lineup. I don't know if I have one of each or not. I haven't really thought about it, but when I placed this order, I was like, I think I kind of have all their pens now when this order comes in, but I just ordered a Twisbee micarta, which I've had one on loan that I need to get back shipped back down from our friend Jim Cant on Twitter. He sent me this pen. He's heard me talking about it on the show and talk about it in different spots, and he said, hey, let me let you borrow mine, see if you really like it. It turns out I really, really do like it and have one on order for myself, and I ordered, I went ahead and ordered the Twisbee classic as well. So I will be getting those pens in hopefully in about a week, and we'll do some reviews on those, but I'm pretty excited to get those in. You know, since the micarta gets a lot of play and it's a lot of people's favorite pens, but ever since the classic came out, it kind of had this big release, and then I haven't heard a peep about it or I don't see any pictures about it or really anything, you know, people reviewed it right when it came out like the first week and then poof it was gone. So I don't know if it's just not sticking, if it has that stickiness like the like the 580 people talk about the 580 all the time and take pictures of the 580 all the time. I mean, you can tell me, I guess from having it in person when you get it, but I just don't think I like the way that it looks. I think it looks kind of strange. Yeah, I think a couple of people have said that and, you know, some of the barrel design aspects were a little bit confusing compared to some of the other work that they've done with other designs. So yeah, we'll see how it goes, especially when you consider it's the same price as the 580 and then the 580 aluminum piston fillers coming soon. So we'll see. I don't know if it's just going to cannibalize this whole classic thing or not. So it kind of seems to be heading that route, but we'll see. I have one on order. I think I actually ordered the exact same one that Mike Dudek reviewed, which was the blue with the 1.1 stub nib. So we'll see. But yeah, I'm excited to get them in just to try it out. I'm actually really excited for the micarta. That's going to be a heavy rotation pin just off the testing I've done with the loner I've had. I've been very happy. I think that's it buddy, I've got a lot going on these days with the pins, got a bunch of new pins in to review stacks of pins actually. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And I don't think there's a fountain pin in there I haven't bought anything new in what feels like a long time. Well, I've gotten a bunch of new stuff from Jet Pen, some new products, some old products, some products that people asked me to review that I've forgotten about that I've got several things in that I'm going to get to sooner rather than later. So we will definitely be talking about them in future episodes. Sounds awesome. So if you want to catch up with what we've spoken about today, go to 5x5.tv/panadict/95. If you want to catch up with Brad, he is @doudism, d-o-w-d-y-i-s-m, and he also writes at panadict.com. And I'm Mike. I am Y-k-e. Thank you so much for listening to this week's episode of the Panadict. If you want to send us some feedback, you can also do that by email by going to 5x5.tv/panadict. And you can see the big button, that's as contact. Thanks to our emailers, Abby and JP. That's for your really, really valuable feedback about the show. Thank you for being here, Brad, and thank you all for listening. Until next time, Brad, wish these people a goodbye. Goodbye lovely people. [BLANK_AUDIO]
