The Pen Addict 733/transcript

The Pen Addict Podcast Transcript
Episode:	733
Title:	The Red Is Orange
Release Date:	September 10th, 2026
Hosts:	Brad Dowdy Myke Hurley
Guests:	No guests this episode
Additional Information
Official page:	Episode 733
Audio File:	Audio Episode 733
Podcast page:	The Pen Addict 733
Length:	6363 min <br />1.05 h <br /> minutes
Previous Transcript	Next Transcript

Myke Hurley: From Relay, this is The Pen Addict, episode 733. Today's show is brought to you by Squarespace and Pen Chalet. My name is Myke Hurley, I'm joined by Brad Dowdy. Hi Brad.

Brad Dowdy: What's up Myke Hurley, how are you? I'm good, I'm good. I'm good too, I'm good too. We're supposed to say a double, right? Is that what you did?

Myke Hurley: I don't know, man. I don't know where I am. I genuinely don't know where I am right now.

Stationery World

Brad Dowdy: That's true, you've had a busy week, you know. You've had your other podcasts are in content season. Yeah, pop-off time. Yes, it's like in the stationery world, it's Hobonichi season, you know, so lots of activity around Hobonichi. Myke's like, yeah, not really, but okay, sure, sure, Brad.

Myke Hurley: I mean, if you need to find a comparison that's the closest, but it ain't.

Brad Dowdy: It's the hot new release season. My hot new release season, so. Okay. Yeah. We'll just go with that. Stationery.

Myke Hurley: I mean, it depends on whether there's drama or not. If there's drama in the Hobonichi, then yes. If Hobonichi goes the way you want, maybe Hobonichi, like, purchasing day is the closest comparison. Yes, exactly. To yesterday. Yes, things sell out, things, all that. And then it becomes a bit of a furor. Like, you know, the iPhone isn't on sale yet, but iPhone purchasing day is not like what it used to be. It's much more calm now.

Brad Dowdy: It is. It is. The good thing about stationery is we already have devices that we use that fold in half, so we're covered.

Myke Hurley: Let me tell you, though, brother, you know, I know you follow, but I don't know how much you follow, right? So the folding iPhone, the iPhone Duo, you'll be able to use an Apple Pencil on it. What do you think about that?

Brad Dowdy: I think I was 0% interested in a folding phone for the way I do things. And once I, I didn't read till this morning that the pencil would work with that. Now I'm like 1% interested.

Myke Hurley: Yeah.

Brad Dowdy: I went from 0 to 1. I mean, that's like a 100% increase. Yeah. In my interest. So, yeah. It's still probably not for me, but.

Myke Hurley: The original Apple Pencil. Was that my, my only appearance on the Pen Addict? I think so, right?

Brad Dowdy: I think so. Yeah. Because you've never done, you've never used like the Remarkables enough to like do a full review and like the other stuff. It's never been from like a full, full review other than like talking about like testing things out here.

Myke Hurley: But yeah, back in 2015, I wrote the Apple Pencil review for the Pen Addict. That was, that was a really good idea. I was. I don't remember how we came up with that, like that that's what we would do. But like, it's just that epic crossover kind of thing. It was. It's funny. It's funny.

Brad Dowdy: I mean, it was really interesting to talk about. Yes. That, that's like the biggest crossover, right? Yes. From like, like a technology aspect is having like an input device, like for lack of a better term, better than a stylus stylus and the way it was used and I don't know the way it works. So, yeah. Good product. Good review. Shout out Myke Hurley for that.

Myke Hurley: I'm like scanning through it right now and it's like my takes, they're just fascinating.

Brad Dowdy: Mm-hmm. Oh, yeah. It's, I don't know. It's, it's usually good to read that stuff. Like, I don't know. One of our anniversaries, I went back, didn't listen to episode one of the Pen Addict podcast.

Myke Hurley: Oh, don't do that.

Brad Dowdy: Maybe when we did 500. It, I, it held up. It was shocking. I thought this is going to be terrible. Like it sounded, you know, sounded worse and the, the, the takes were good. Like, I was like, oh, this holds up.

Myke Hurley: Yeah. This is a fun, this is a fun article. I'll put it in the show notes if people want to. Yeah, please. If people want to read it. Yeah. Like, I have nothing in here about how you charge it, which I think is absolutely the right take for me. Because like, I've always found that to be so like stupid. Like the way that people. It's horrible. No, I always thought the charging was great. Like it made sense to me the way that they did it, where you had to like plug it into the lightning connector. Like I always understood why that was the case, because it meant that you had everything with you to charge. Like you didn't need to bring a cable. And like, I don't like the new iPad, like the new Apple Pencil, it has a, you have to plug in a charger into it. Like there's a magnetic one on the pro one, but then they have the regular one, which is actually the only one that works with the iPhone duo. And you pull out, you pull out like from the top and it exposes a USB-C hole that you plug. But you have to have a cable. I always really, I thought it was always very clever that everything you needed to charge the pencil was already with you. Use your iPad. They worked that out with the magnetic one, because the magnetic one, it charges with induction. But if you don't, not all iPads do that. The Duo won't do that. And like, I never really liked that. So like while it looked silly. It was a bad visual. It was a bad visual. Yeah. Aesthetically, it was bad. But it was the best option for like practicality, I think.

Brad Dowdy: And it worked fine because you were doing that like say at the end of the day.

Myke Hurley: Well, and also, you only ever had to like plug it in for a couple of minutes and you have more than enough charge. Like, because it charged really quickly. I think it was like a couple of minutes and you got like 15 or 30 minutes of battery from it. Anyway, this is not what we're not even talking about the new stuff. We're talking about a product from 11 years ago.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. I just want to flip over my mouse to charge it. That's really what I'm looking for.

Myke Hurley: See, that's the one that is like inexcusable.

Brad Dowdy: I think. Right? My wife has, my wife uses that mouse and she still gets hot about it. And I just, I just fire her up even more. Because that is like, there's no, that one's too much. That one's too much.

Brad Dowdy: Oh man. It's almost like this is a stationary show. We're adjacent. We're adjacent. We all have, we all use our digital toys. That's why you were asking. Tools and toys. And yeah. Duo's probably not for me based on how much I use like the camera aspects of my current phone. Yeah. We'll see. The cameras are going to be good, but there's one fewer of them. Yeah. And my primary iPad mic is already an iPad mini. So it's like I'm covered. I feel good.

Myke Hurley: Yeah. But Brad, you know it's got like a little texture display on the inside. I know.

Brad Dowdy: I don't. The last thing I need to do is listen to you talk about it.

Myke Hurley: Yeah.

Myke Hurley: See, I'm buying it, but I don't know that I want it to be my iPhone. Right. Right. Like I'm getting it because obviously. Yes. But I, at this moment, like just looking at everything on paper, I don't think I would want it to be my daily phone, but that is about using it. Like I think that's the difference because the trade-offs are such that I think it would be a step back in a bunch of areas. Yeah. But what I don't have on my current iPhone is an iPad on the inside. And maybe that changes the way I feel about it. You know what I mean? Maybe. Maybe.

Brad Dowdy: Let me ask you last question on this and then we can carry on. If you put on your Vision Pro and open up the Duo while looking at it, how many screens do you get? Probably quite a lot of screens, man. Mm-hmm. There's a lot of screens going on there. I actually. Vision Quattro then, maybe.

Myke Hurley: It's funny. I was actually about to tell you a take that I had, which is like, there's no point. Like we don't need this take, but I'll save it for another podcast about like the Vision Pro. And it's like, no one needs this take right now. Maybe you'll hear it somewhere else.

Station A

Brad Dowdy: All right. Let's talk about Station A. First, let's talk about St. Jude. Yes.

Myke Hurley: Let me take a moment to thank, not to thank, to thank you all actually for getting us to where we are in our fundraiser so far. I want to go check the total right now as we're recording this. We've raised, just as always, an incredible amount of money. And I'm currently typing URLs into a URL bar, Brad. I don't know if you know about how that works. Yeah. I think it's RSS. We have raised $142,000 at the time of recording this episode.

Brad Dowdy: I mean, the link is literally in the show notes.

Uniball Pens

Myke Hurley: You could have just clicked it. Brad, but I'm doing stuff. You know, I've got tabs open and things like that. I'm like really, I'm like getting ahead of myself here. Hey, that's a lot of money. It is a lot of money, Brad. And it means that we are less than $50,000 away from 5 million lifetime, which is truly awesome. Just an incredible, incredible achievement by us all. And I'm so thankful for everybody that donates and supports the campaign during childhood cancer awareness month. Since 2019 is we've been raising money and we're about to pass that $5 million. I think I would expect by the time before we record next week, we would have done it, which is truly amazing. Let me talk about where that money goes, actually, and why there is such a need for St. Jude to raise the huge amounts of money that it raises. St. Jude is making progress on the construction of three new towers on their campus. These are two 15-story towers for outpatient clinics and clinical offices, plus a 17-story advanced research tower. These two clinical towers are part of an over $1 billion construction project, and it's part of the ongoing $12.9 billion St. Jude strategic plan. The clinical center tower is planned to open to patients in February 2027. Its 44,000 square foot footprint is as large as a football field. Then the research tower contains 130 lab modules with four floors reserved for future expansion needs. It is an $810 million investment that represents St. Jude's serious commitment to accelerating research capabilities. These towers enable St. Jude to expand its ability to treat more children and accommodate a larger workforce to find the next big discovery. Brad, you've been on the campus. You've seen how big it is. I mean, the funny thing is you are also going to see, like me, how it expands. But in the 10 years or so that I've been seeing St. Jude, because I've been visiting as part of visits to the Hackett family, I've seen it grow and grow and grow. The campus is bigger and bigger all the time. And the reasons for these kinds of expansions are twofold. One, more clinical research, like space, enables more clinical research. Like that's a simple one, right? You have more places and people to do the research. You'll get more research done, which is a need. It's a must.

Brad Dowdy: We got to see some of the crazy, like I'm not even going to pretend I know the names of these, like devices and machines. Some of the stuff is just physically massive, right? Yeah, it's wild.

Myke Hurley: And they're doing incredible things. But then also they have the clinical buildings. And one of the things that we really took, well, I really think we all took away from the last time that we were at St. Jude is the benefit in having as much stuff as possible on the campus. It just makes things easier for all of the kids that needed to move around. All of the families, like you can keep them together. They're not having to move from place to place. And being able to have more, the ability to treat more kids and to treat a broader range of requirements for the children is only going to make their experience better. And the better an experience the family and the child have during their treatment, the better it will be for everyone. So, yeah.

Brad Dowdy: It's like simple stuff that you don't think about, but like having like some of these buildings interconnected from where like some of like the family residences are so they can get to like the where the kids are being, you know, you know, taken care of, you know, and making that easy for them to get the best care that they can get. It's just it's pretty awesome. Pretty awesome place to be.

Myke Hurley: Your generosity can help give more kids the chance to live, grow and reach their potential. And we're inviting the Relay community to help us reach our goal of $700,000 raised for the Kids of St. Jude this September for Childhood Cancer Awareness Month. There are so many ways to support the campaign. You can go to stjude.org slash relay and make a donation. But if you're looking for more ways to help, we'd love you to join the Relay community fundraising effort by creating a personal fundraising campaign. There are some amazing incentives available for different amounts raised starting at just a dollar. Challenge coins, bandanas, desk mats, cord organizers, hats, like there's so much great stuff. If you do something like this, what it enables you to do is maybe you don't have money to give, but you believe you can convince co-workers, friends, family to give. This lets you do that. You set up your own fundraiser and it all goes into our overall total. We have some incredible fundraisers. We're going to talk about Brad's in a minute. And you're able to also offer your own rewards in those fundraisers as well for people that donate with the one that you set up. So go and check it out for yourself by going to stjude.org slash relay. You can donate or start a fundraiser today. Give them the chance to grow up. That is stjude.org slash relay.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, so I have my fundraiser going. I think we're closing in on like $5,000 raised, which is amazing, amazing stuff so far. So thank you to the Pinnock community for going and checking this out. We're $5 away from that right now. Okay. I was thinking it was like $49, something. Yeah. So the community has been great supporting this. You know, I have a couple of little incentives that I do with, you know, sending postcards, a postcard art and, you know, painting some ink ponies. I just got my batch of prints to color. So I'll share that, you know, later this week and see what we're painting this year. So we'll have the link in the show notes. Go check that out. And thanks to like all the makers that are sending over products to help us like just shine a light on this. They certainly are wonderful for doing this. We have two just free to anyone giveaways out right now. Every $2,000 we raise on this campaign, I just launched a new giveaway. And we have a Skogsy fountain pen LVED model, which is a popular model from Skogsy pens. And we just launched a River City Pen Co. Arlington model, which is really, really pretty, blue and yellow and kind of shimmery fountain pen this weekend. And we'll probably have another one up in the next couple of days. So these are going to keep coming throughout the month. And I just look forward to continuing to help raise money for St. Jude. And I look forward to our event at the end of the month.

Myke Hurley: Yep. Speaking of pens, Brad. All right. I bought some pens. I have some pens. Yes. Number one Uniball fan over here.

Myke Hurley: It's Uniball 2026 for me. Can't stop buying.

Brad Dowdy: I'm glad you've been assimilated.

Myke Hurley: Yep. If anything, they should have me go to them. I don't know what I'll talk to them about, but maybe I should go, you know? Right. Hi, Uniball. It's me. It's Myke.

Uniball Zento Flow

Myke Hurley: I've got some stuff to say. So I bought three pens last week. This is basically because you had referenced the Uniball Zento Flow three color. And I was like, oh, that sounds interesting. So I found a company in the UK that was selling that. And I bought a couple of extra pens with them. I'll start off with the Uniball and not, which is the hot dog pen. This is a very fun and satisfying pen. To me, it satisfies what I thought it would when I first saw it. And you poo-pooed it, if I remember rightly. Visually, yes, for sure. And just branding and everything. You were very upset. I was. I was. But this pen is wonderful. Like, I think it's very thoughtfully designed to operate in the way that you would want it to. And I think the key to me here is the carabiner. That it is a carabiner. It's not like a key ring. Right. So it makes it easy to put onto something and take off something.

Brad Dowdy: Right? Yeah. And it's, like, chunky. Like, it's good. Like, it's not a low quality. Yes.

Myke Hurley: Yes. And then the pen itself, very easy to disengage. Shape-wise, it's very similar to the Uniball 1P, which I really like. It's a little shorter than that pen. But not in a way that is a problem.

Myke Hurley: And I find it really nice to use. Like, it's comfortable to use. To me, it will be a pen I hang from a bag or something like that. And, like, just like a perfect kind of product for that. Yeah.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. And just to cover myself off here, once I got it in hand, I understood it. Yeah. Like, I was much more positive about it once I physically had it.

Myke Hurley: You made it part of your personality.

Brad Dowdy: You know? I ruined a shirt because of it. Yeah. But it's a good product. I will still stand that it's completely overpriced, like, relative to what you get. Yeah. But I also understand what they're trying to do here. This is essentially, like, you know, they're trying to make, like, a Beams offshoot, if y'all know what Beams is. You know? Yes. It's, like, a cool hipster fashion brand. And I would be here for that. I do, too. I think this pen succeeds in doing that. I would be 1,000% into that. I'm not saying that in a derogatory way as a fan of, like, what Beams does and, you know, collates products and makes products and stuff like that. So, yes.

Myke Hurley: I don't like the refill, though.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. Fair. What refill is this? Is this SXR? What is that? I think it's just the standard. It's the standard new refill?

Myke Hurley: It's not, like, a Jetstream or anything?

Brad Dowdy: SXR might actually be Jetstream. Yeah. It's Jetstream. It's Jetstream. Okay. I think that. It's a 05 Jetstream, which is, that's a tough choice. If they're going to go Jetstream, it should be 07. That's better for most people because it's very, very fine. Yeah. Yes. But that's also kind of the, yeah. The 07 is more than fine enough. The 07 Jetstream is, like, an 05 gel ink pen, which is still very fine for people. So, they could have done a little bit bigger refill. That's one thing I did like, right, is obviously the refill.

Myke Hurley: So, like, there's, like, a couple of things on the refill, right? One, I don't know why they chose such a skinny refill. And I think it's probably because of the size of the pen. But I think that's, it's just weird to me that the refill is, like, it's like a multi-pen refill. It is. But it's the size of this huge, chunky pen. Yeah. And I know, like, what I want in this is the one refill. But the one refill is too long for this pen. But I feel like they should just find a way to have made that work, right? Like, because I think that would be a better refill for this pen. The refill is, it leaves a little to be desired for me. Like, it doesn't feel as nice to use as I would like, probably because, as you mentioned, I find it too fine.

Myke Hurley: And I would prefer, I would just prefer something different.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, so I think the, this is just me theorizing. If I was making a carry pen, a pen that's going to be banged around a lot, allegedly, right? Like, that's the story they're telling me with this, is you're going to, like, throw this and hook it to things and put it in bags. Like, a ballpoint type ink is going to be a better use anywhere type of ink and throw it around your bag type of ink from just, like, controlling the ink perspective, right? It's a more, it's going to handle movement better and it's going to handle random usage better. Like, we're not intentionally going to the cafe with our journal and a bag of pens, right? We're throwing it in a bag and, oh, I might need to sign something real quick at the store. The Jetstream is going to be a better general answer for that. So, if you want my thoughts on maybe why they chose that. That makes sense. I would probably make, yeah, I would probably make a similar decision.

Myke Hurley: Then I would want it to be a .7.

Brad Dowdy: And I think that would, that would solve half of my issues with it. Yeah, I never recommend 0.5 ballpoints to anyone who doesn't already have experience with, like, micro gel pens. Like, it's not a good, it's not a good experience.

Myke Hurley: It is to me like a reminder of just, like, which is what I don't like about the Jetstream. Like, and I can't really put my finger on it. It just doesn't work for me. Like, I don't like the way it feels to use and I don't like the result. Yeah, fair. Totally fair. Where the next pen, the Uniball 1.3 color, I love the Uniball 1 refill. I love it. Mm-hmm. The, this one is red, blue, black. I really like the colors. They're a little low saturation. That's interesting to me. But they're good. You don't think so or you do?

Brad Dowdy: Well, this is, the one is specifically a high pigment gel ink formulation for high saturation.

Myke Hurley: So, I would say that the red is orange. It's a little on the orange side. So, I have also got the Zentoflo 3 color. And to my eye, the red from the Zentoflo is more red. And the red in the one is more orange. Okay.

Brad Dowdy: I'll have to try. I haven't tried the one 3 color yet.

Myke Hurley: It is a, they are, the red and blue, I like them. They are very vivid. But they are not, in my opinion, strong versions of the colors. That's interesting. So, again, to me, right? I love how this pen feels in the hand. Because it's, it's basically the same, like, girth as the 1P.

Brad Dowdy: The 1P has really put us in a spot. I love the 1P. It just has. It's so good. It just is what it is, right?

Myke Hurley: We just, it just, it's doing what it's doing. And we just got to learn to live in the 1P's world.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah.

Myke Hurley: It is really difficult to discuss. But the 1P3 color is a little longer. Yep. Than the 1P. The problem with the 1P3 color is it has no defined retraction point. So, it is a twist mechanism to cycle between the refills.

Brad Dowdy: Mm-hmm.

Myke Hurley: When you engage each refill, it has a click. But when you disengage, there is nothing, there is no stop point. Right. You're basically just moving the pen to halfway between each refill. I do not find that to be a nice experience. Yeah. Because I have to think about it every time. Like, there's no, like, I cannot do this with any, without thought. There has to be thought put into me retracting the pen because I need to check that I've done it. And I don't like that.

Brad Dowdy: That's correct. It's like a two-handed retract. So, what this is, it's not a 360-degree rotation pen where you can just send it around the barrel where it's, like, extend, and then you hear, like, a click to retract. Extend, click, extend, click. This is, like, a station to station where you're either engaging the station or you're just kind of, like, pulling back the refill a little bit. Yeah. Right? And it's not as satisfying from a comfort perspective to your point of knowing that you did it correctly.

Myke Hurley: You kind of have to anticipate where the halfway point is. Yep. And, again, I feel like you could fix that.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, a lot of other retractables have it that way. So, but having this type of twist mechanism, it was a choice, right? As opposed to, like, the buttons, which you're getting ready to talk about, right?

Myke Hurley: Yes. Yes. But I feel like there could be some, just some kind of, like, ratchet inside. Other companies do it. Yeah. For sure. That makes this better. And, of course, that's more expensive to make, but I would find it much nicer. This is like a $10 pen. And I would pay $12, $13 if it gave me this instead. You know what I mean? Like, I just, I really like this pen a lot. I like the shape of it. I like the refills. I like the colors of the refills. It works for me, but I just, I don't, I just find it to be not as satisfying as it could otherwise be. Because the click when it retracts is very nice. Like, it's good sound. Very, like, you know, it's very obvious. But I don't like, I really don't like that. You know, I just have to think about it. Can you compare it to something like the Zento 3 color, which is a, just a standard, like, multi-pen, right? Where you're pushing the little button nubs down and engaging. But they have actually made something that feels in that really nice. Like, the shape of the buttons that you're engaging is really nice. I like the way that that feels a lot. It's very satisfying to engage. I think the refills also perform well. And they are, I would say, bolder red and blue than the one. Like, they're just more red and more blue. Yeah, they're really good. And it reads more of, these are your stand, this is your standard multi-pen color range of, like, the red, black, blue. Like, it looks how I imagine it to. Like, it looks like the Bic, you know, like, that standard Bic multi-pen. It's the same way. The 1-3 color doesn't. Like, those colors look different.

Brad Dowdy: These are very strong colors. Like, you could make, like, an advertisement without having to, like, like, to share, like, online or, like, in print without having to, like, color adjust for those colors. Like, it would look, like, really good. Yeah, it's red, black, blue.

Metal Grip Section

Myke Hurley: Like, it's obviously red, black, blue. The only downside I have on this pen, so this is a plastic barrel with a metal grip section.

Myke Hurley: I would like the metal grip section to have more texture on it. Yeah, fair enough.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. I don't have a problem with it, but I can totally get that problem. We're actually going to talk about a pen later that has this problem.

Myke Hurley: A little light Merlin would push this over the top for me.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. So, interesting to think about what they did with the Zento Flow 3 is they actually did make a signature barrel that is more expensive than this, which was kind of, like, out of my purview. I thought this was, like, the high-end Zento barrel with the metal grip section. And this is, like, a $20, $22 pen, low $20s pen. They have a Zento Flow 3 signature.

Myke Hurley: Oh, my God. That can't stop.

Brad Dowdy: And it's, like, $60. But they have a – I'm not going to buy that pen because I'm just adamantly against what they did with the knurling on that. They use the knurling only for the twist. And it's, like, a knurling ring in the middle of the barrel, so it's not on your grip section. And I'm just kind of just, like, flabbergasted by that. Like, yes, it looks great. But that is, like, so not useful in the usage of that pen. It kind of blows my mind. But I would like to try one. I don't want to pay $60 for that one. I really love the one that you have is the same one that I have. That's one of the better pen barrels that has been released in quite some time.

Myke Hurley: Yeah, this doesn't make any sense. Yeah, at triple the price, right?

Brad Dowdy: I don't know that that's three times the price.

Myke Hurley: Maybe this is sacrilege to the current pen moment. I don't like the way the signature barrel looks. So it's a capped barrel, right?

Brad Dowdy: Yes. So that's the other thing, which you don't get a lot of capped. Do you have a capped multi-pen barrels? As a matter of fact, I have to think about it. Do I even own a capped multi-pen barrel?

Myke Hurley: Right, because this is a style. Like, just the regular Zento signature. I tend not to like a pen where the body has such a huge step in it, which is to accommodate a cap. And the reason is I don't like it when it doesn't look good when it's capped, and I'm not a poster. So I always end up with this pen, which is very strangely shaped. And so, yeah, I'm not a big fan of it.

Capped Multi-Pen

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, yeah, fair enough. The more I think about this, the signature model, the more maybe I do need to get one because of that capped multi-pen aspect of it. Capped and twist. It's an interesting idea. I might have talked myself on it. Yeah, so I might have to pony up just to understand what they've done here. But I'm really against what they did with that knurling because it's just a tease for me. It's just pure tease. So anyway.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, Uniball's killing it. I don't know what to say other than we can talk good. And it's nice to have pens from them that are, number one, new. Number two, making a statement. And number two, a little bit opinionated, right? The and not is not for everyone. Some of the Zento stuff is not for everyone. And that's okay. I like that they're doing this. So it's pretty cool. They're doing a good job. Yeah, same. Same.

Myke Hurley: All right. This episode is brought to you by Squarespace, the all-in-one website platform designed to help you stand out and succeed online. Whether you're just getting started or scaling a business, Squarespace will give you everything you need to claim your domain, showcase your offerings of a professional website, grow your brand, and get paid all in one place. With Squarespace, you can offer a store. You have physical goods, digital goods, stuff that I've played around before. It's stuff that Brad uses all the time, the Pen Addict. The Pen Addict website is a Squarespace website. Every day. It has a shop functionality. People buy stuff from Brad, and he has all the integrations he needs to be able to send them out. With Squarespace now, they offer expanded global shipping options. So you can automatically calculate shipping costs using real-time rates from local carriers based on the destination, size, and weight of each order. This eliminates manual calculations and avoids over- or undercharging customers for shipping. That sounds very useful. You can also, when you have your Squarespace site all set up, you can make smarter business decisions with analytics. Keep track of the stats that matter with intuitive built-in analytics tools. It makes it super easy for you to review website traffic, learn where to focus engagement, and track revenue from bookings, invoices, or product sales, all in one place. Now, Pen Addict listeners, I'm going to say this part now, and you're going to think, oh, I know what Myke's about to say. I know what the offer is. Well, let me tell you, you do not know what the offer is. If you go to squarespace.com slash Pen Addict, you can sign up for a free trial. When you're ready to launch, use the offer code Pen Addict to save 50% off your first purchase of a website or domain. That's much bigger. That's much more than 10, Brad.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, because you can do like a whole year purchase from the jump and get a huge chunk off. Huge chunk. I need a new website. Let's do that.

Myke Hurley: There you go. Squarespace.com slash Pen Addict and the offer code Pen Addict to get 50% off your first purchase and show your support for the Pen Addict. Our thanks to Squarespace for the support of this show and all of Relay.

Brad Dowdy: All right, Myke, we got our shout out of the week. Shout out of the week. Fountain Pen News. My friend Wendy Sue has a great YouTube channel where she does just general stationary videos. But she has been on the forefront of all the Pelican hubs shenanigans.

Myke Hurley: Is that still going on?

Brad Dowdy: A little bit, yeah. Oh, God. They're like the cleanup crew is like very mediocre. Let's just say that. All right. It's just really just not working out well.

Myke Hurley: It's probably one person.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. So we've gone from Pelican flubs to Pelican't is what we're now on. Oh, my God. So shout out to that. But anyway, Wendy has been a hub master for a while. So she is actually knee deep in this and trying to figure out everything that's going on. And then it's pretty upset about the whole deal. Yeah.

Myke Hurley: I'm sure.

Brad Dowdy: I'm sure. Yeah. So she has like the if you're still like wondering what's going on here, because it's honestly still not finished. Like as far as like everyone knows what's going on now. So she has a great video out of all the updates on that. So definitely go check that out and subscribe to her channel because she does great reviews otherwise. Nice. And does other things. So, yeah. Go check that out. We got a new pen from Lamy. Well, new pen. Jeez. New color from Lamy. But is it? The Lamy Studio Petrol, Myke.

Myke Hurley: Yep.

Brad Dowdy: I wasn't going to really be bothered to put this in the show notes. And I don't know. The more I thought about it, I was like, yeah, why not? I think if people aren't familiar with like the studio is what I really want to talk about. But my question, is there anything they won't put petrol on? I feel like this is Lamy's official color now. They should just change their logo to petrol because they have put it on pretty much everything at this point. They are big fans. And look, they're not wrong. It's a great color. I would buy Lamy swag with Lamy Petrol. The Lamy wordmark in petrol. Just do it, Lamy. And I would be into it. But the point I wanted to just bring up, and I really don't have that much to say, is that the Lamy Studio continues to be one of the best pins on the market and is extremely underrated. It's, for me, as a Lamy fan and as someone who sings the praises of the Safari, I think the studio is probably the second best product that they make. And this is counting the Lamy 2000 lineup and other pins that I like, like the Lamy Pico. I think the studio might be the second best product because it's more useful for more people. It's like an $80 fountain pen, so it's like an upgrade, but it's very premium for the price. The only hang-up with the studio, and this goes back to what I was alluding to when you were talking about the Zento Flow 3 color, it's got a metal grip section that's even slicker than that Zento section. So they do, Lamy realizes this, and they capitulate it a little bit. They do have rubberized grips for the studio. I think it kind of ruins it. It makes it feel better, but it's not so much a studio anymore. It feels, it looks weirder, right? And their black rubberized grips. And it's like, I get it. I like, yes, fine. But, I mean, the studio is a lot about the grip. And this is a Lamy grip that is not molded or not shaped, right? It's a conical tapered grip. It's very slippery. It is very slippery. It is shiny and slippery. It works for me. My fingers are just the right, they're never too dry and never too damp. It's like the sweet spot. But if your fingers are too dry, or, you know, you sweat a lot, or you live in somewhere humid, it's going to be bad for both of those situations. So I'm singing its praises, but that is a real challenge with the studio. And that's the one hang up. Why, this is why it's not Lamy's number two pin. Yeah. Is because of the grip. So, but I love it. I just wanted people to check it out. And I just wanted to tell Lamy to continue petrolling everything. So there you go. This did make me think about like the price point of this. And this is something I'm thinking about. So this next topic, I'm calling the $200 fountain pen conundrum. And I'm not going to get too deep on this today, because I'm just starting to get some products in to where I'm kind of, this is all kind of, I'm trying to like put all this together. And then the Lamy studio was just kind of like the cherry on top of what I'm thinking about. In that, I have finally ordered one of Sailor's steel nib fountain pens, like one of their upgraded ones. I specifically, I specifically bought a fancy one. There is a cheaper one you can buy. I bought the Sailor Pro Gear regular. So it's like the full size Pro Gear body. And they did that Lucky Charm color a few years ago. That was very popular. It's like a teal barrel with it when they were still doing gold nibs in this product lineup frequently.

Brad Dowdy: So they're calling this one like the good luck pen, because it's just steel nib. It's like, Hey, good luck upgrading to gold. You can't afford it. I think is what they mean.

Brad Dowdy: But that was a $200 pen, like right at $200.

Brad Dowdy: And I just got it in. I don't even have an inked up yet. I just unboxed it this week. So I'm going to be exploring that. And then I happen to see, I haven't checked out any of Leonardo's stuff recently.

Brad Dowdy: Mostly because I already know how good they are. And their larger pens are not for me. They're too big. Like the piston fillers, the Memento Zero Grandes. They're beautiful. They're wonderful. They're like 10 out of 10. Like I could highly recommend them. They're just not for me just because of the size. But their standard Memento Zero with the converter is still $200. It's like, I think this one was $202. I bought the Leonardo Memento Zero Pausilia with silver trim. It's just a beautiful acrylic pen. And essentially these two pens are exactly the same price. And trying to think about those two in relation to each other. And then having a third pen, say like the Lamy Studio, that's less than half the cost of these. Are they not all like the same pen despite the price? And, you know, the Sailor Pro Gear that I bought was $200. You can get $140 steel nib one, right? I just happened to buy the fancy one because it's pretty. And what does it all mean? And where my head's at with trying to describe these things? And the challenge I'm having, and this is a personal issue in dealing with stationary and working with stationary, is I called it the challenge of trying to over-contextualize everything. And thinking about does it matter what the Sailor Pro Gear is in relation to a Leonardo Memento Zero or a Lamy Studio? Or should it only matter what the Sailor Pro Gear is in relation to the Memento Zero and the Lamy Studio? And I don't know. I probably lean more that it doesn't matter.

Brad Dowdy: But at the end of the day, my job entails giving like a recommendation and putting these products in a place to where I can give guidelines to someone who says, I have $200 to spend on a fountain pen, which let me be clear, that's a lot of money. These are very expensive pens.

Brad Dowdy: I have $200 to spend. What should I get? Here's what I like. What do you think? So I feel like I do have to put something like this Pro Gear with a steel nib up against something like a Memento Zero, even though it's probably unfair to both. They're completely unrelated products.

Brad Dowdy: But at the end of the day, I feel like I need to say at least what I feel is better. So this is just me thinking out loud of some reviews I have coming up and how to present them. Because like we all just got jammed, like it was about this, starting around this time last year, where the prices like just went through the roof, right? So like we're a whole new ball game now of price points and value and thinking about, you know, spending a lot of money on a pen and what you get for that money. And so, I don't know. I think this is just something I'm thinking about a lot and just kind of rolling around in my head, trying to decide how to tackle something like a Sailor Pro Gear review with a steel nib, knowing like that I can't erase the context I have from the past 15 years of using a similarly priced Pro Gear with a gold nib. Like I can't erase what I already know. Like if I was coming in, you know, with a clean slate, like can I come into that review with a clean slate? And I'm just going to admit that it's very difficult for me. Like I don't have like positive thoughts

Myke Hurley: about this Pro Gear. You can't remove the context, right? Like you can't erase your thoughts. You're not a fresh new baby coming into this, right? Like you have used pens of this price from not very long ago that are vastly superior. And they even look the same, which doesn't help, does it?

Brad Dowdy: Really? Yeah. Some of the comparisons I did like side by side, it's like kind of frightening.

Myke Hurley: It's hard to ignore it when it's essentially the same pen. It just has a steel nib now.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. Yeah. So anyway, this is just me thinking about stuff. I'll have reviews of these in the coming months. So we'll circle back to this. I really look forward to that review. I'm probably going to do the Sailor Pro Gear before anything because that's the one I have the most questions about. The Leonardo, I know what it is, but I want a fresh look at it.

Brad Dowdy: But yeah, I haven't even inked up these pens and I already have really strong thoughts about them, which isn't fair. I need time. Sure. So we'll see. That's why I don't just throw out a review instantly when I unbox something. I try to spend some time with it. In this Sailor Pro Gear, I need to ink up and get going and try to see what I'm thinking about it. So it's going to be interesting. So that's where we're at now. That's how I'm thinking about product reviews. Now in this realm, this is a specific category. This $200, give or take, like $50, is a massive, massive category in what I talk about. So I'm just trying to, I'm having, I'm just saying I'm having difficulty with thinking about this because of what's transpired with the pricing in the past year. So anyway, you want to talk about another expensive product? Always. The Caillou Plus Aim Vision Pro. I got my review up. So we've talked about this before. This was the pencil you saw at Stationery Fest that I purchased that I was fawning over from pretty much the first day. Yep. over at the Hachimanjia table. So I, and we've talked about it here, so I'm not going to belabor it.

Multi-Pencil

Myke Hurley: This is the one where it looks like it's a multi-pencil, but it isn't. It just has a wheel where you're like, this is the lead I have in this pencil.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. Which is helpful. A lot of, yeah, yeah, yeah. So a lot of times those lead grade rotations are hidden. Yep. Right? So there, you just have like a little cutout and like a little disc that slides around where you can, like a lot of the engineering pencils do have this because the theory is that you can afford to have three different pencils on your drafting table, each with a different lead grade in them for different jobs. So you want to have that notation dial on there. But with the Caillou, it's like $80. Do I need the rotation mechanism? Because I'm probably only going to have this one. I'm not going to have three more sitting right next to it that I need to have with the pencil. And that's the, not flaw, that's the kicker with this pencil. This is one of those products that I love that I would really, I don't know that I will ever, I'm ever going to meet that person that I would recommend this to. You either know you're into this already or you need to buy something else, probably. And that doesn't mean it's not just an absolutely one of the best pencils I've ever used because it is. It means there's very few circumstances that you're going to reach out to me and I'm going to go, oh yes, Caillou Plus, Aim Vision, that is your answer, right? It's just not the answer to a lot of questions. But it's a stellar, stellar product. It is so well made. This is very tip weighted, right? The grip section is heavy. I didn't realize how much I like a firm feeling fountain, fountain pen, mechanical pencil until like using this and that really solidified what I like the most in a fountain, God, I did it again, fountain pen and a mechanical pencil is how firm it feels when I write. That's why I like something like the Rotring 600. There's nothing going on there. It's just a rock solid pencil. Like that's where you're getting into like your auto lead advancements and your lead rotations and like the tip advancements and all kinds of weird stuff going on on the front end of these mechanical pencils which is great. Like I love all that stuff. But those tend to and this is like on such a tiny scale they tend to loosen up the front end a little bit and what I want is an absolute nail to write with and that's what this gives me and that's why I enjoy this. I think the clip ended up being a bad idea though. Aesthetically I think it looks killer. It's a half clip if you will. It's a short clip. So it's unavoidable to have a mechanical pencil. If the mechanical pencil has a clip it's always going to get in the way because with pencils you rotate in your hand. I don't care what pencil it is because of the way the graphite wears. That's a Kuretoga thing that they solved where okay you don't have to rotate it if you're just going to write and we'll rotate the lead for you and always keep a sharp edge. That's great but people still rotate like with Kuretogas I do. You're just going to do it. So this clip ends up actually in a worse spot because with a long clip it can kind of rest in your hand in the middle of the clip and this one the edge of the short clip actually I won't say it digs into the hand but you can feel it right and there's no getting around you can't grip it low enough to get out of the way of the clip so I think that's actually as much as I enjoyed it aesthetically and I was like oh this is really cool I like what they did there in practice it does not work it's not a feature put it that way it just it's like any other clip it's gonna get in your way so I like it I can't recommend it I would be shocked if I ever recommended this pencil to anyone but like I'm gonna use it I think I said I'm gonna redo a we did my top 10 mechanical pencils list on the podcast I never wrote an article about it I think I want to refresh that because I think this actually might be a top 10 pencil for me it's just I just don't see it for a lot of other people unless you're like I said in the beginning looking at this pencil you already know if you're this customer this is not something I would try on a whim

Myke Hurley: no this feels like something that you you're very focused on right like as a thing like it's wearing it's like features on its sleeve kind of thing you know when it's very mechanical pencil forward as a product so

Brad Dowdy: one of their bits of advertising or marketing is like this is a pencil for architects yes they were like very direct in that and I was like I found that funny because like well I'm not an architect and I really like it

Myke Hurley: I

Brad Dowdy: that are you know equal to the rotary it's it's it's still probably number one but and like it actually looks better and better because the price it used to be the most expensive pencil and it was like 30 $32 and now it's still probably like in the $30 range and there's pencils that are just double the price now so it's interesting place for the rotary ! yeah

Myke Hurley: all right should we take a

Pen Chalet

Myke Hurley: this episode is also brought to you by our friends over at pen chalet they sell amazing authentic rollerballs fountain pencil ballpoints mechanical pencils and so much more from your favorite brands they're always adding new styles of pen new products every single month you're going to find new stuff over at pen chalet along with great deals they're running discounts all the time you can get fast and reliable customer service of everything that you buy from our friends at pen chalet as well as pens and pencils they also have accessories whether you need a new carrying case a bottle of ink a converter a pen holder it doesn't matter they've got it they do free shipping on orders of $100 in the US and they sell internationally with great shipping rates pen chalet has low prices on high quality pens and products with a 100% satisfaction guarantee so go to penchalet you'll get a code here to save 10% on anything over at penchalet you'll see some exclusive offers because you listen to this show as well but Brad what is catching your eye right now on penchalet

Brad Dowdy: I think I'm turning into a delta fan for fountain pens which is not something I ever thought was necessarily on my radar they've always made great pens but they were

Brad Dowdy: this year and I've really enjoyed how it felt and how it wrote so they have one called the reflection pool and the duno model which is just a great beautiful blue swirl acrylic and it's like $220 and it's a piston filler and this goes into that category I was talking about before this is kind of awesome for the price point you're getting this pen at these days and they've they're using Yobo nibs which I love they're my favorite nibs because I know how quality they are and I don't know this is just a beautiful pen like if I was going to start a delta collection man they're doing some good stuff that's in the non orange and black category which is historically where they've lived which nothing wrong with orange or black you know what I think about orange but it's nice to see them stretch their legs a little bit the other thing well there's more than one thing but something that did catch my eye is the sailor vfm matcha pens so last year they did I don't know if they called it coffee or espresso and it was a very popular style for these Schaefer Schaefer modernizing some of their lineups

Brad Dowdy: and the last coffee one was very good so I guess this is the next one in line this is the matcha one and it's a green obviously greenish and kind of green and white blended pen and it looks like really good yeah so these are going to do super well given the fact that last year's coffee model did super well people raved about these and like Brad you need to try this I think Kimberly reviewed the coffee one on the blog I'll have to go look and see the link and just very positive reviews about these so this is a good lower cost fun pen that's going to work well good quality I was talking about Leonardo's earlier and I think I've talked about this on a previous pen chalet spot before but I just happened to be poking

Brad Dowdy: set with the Leonardo in green it's like a tinkerbell themed so it's this beautiful green and you get a bottle of ink with it and it's a limited edition and it's a really good price so lastly Myke I never thought I would I haven't seen this anywhere but I haven't been looking for this just happened to pop up this will be one of the more random things I ever talk about

Brad Dowdy: the short schmidt rollerball refill you usually can't really find those easily they're around I mean they're not the hardest thing to find you can find them but Penn Shelley actually sucks them which I

Myke Hurley: that's p and ch and that's p and our thanks to Penn Shelley for the support of this show and relay you want to hit a couple last TPA you know I do this comes from Vasuri who says on your top five pens in the store list on the pen addict you cited the uniball one as the better pen when compared to the uniball 207 or 307 while the one certainly has the darkest and most vibrant gel ink pigments out there I found it to be far less consistent in performance in my experience the one is much more prone to skipping and blotchy ink than other products like the 207 Zento do you feel the same way about it since posting the list

Brad Dowdy: this is an awesome question and this is one I've

Brad Dowdy: there is a caveat that needs to be posted on that page the uniball one in black ink is better than most gel ink pens the uniball one color inks are worse than most gel ink pens they are prone to skipping I've never had an issue with a black uniball one in 0.38 or 0.5 and I use them daily almost never had skipping never had problems you hand me a blue one standard uniball one and it's not as enjoyable I would prefer a signo ink which is the 207 I would prefer the DX which is a signo ink which is different shape than the one so the one gel color inks are not good not as good as most other uniball own signo color inks are better than uniball one color inks and you're kind of finding that out in your multi pen where that red is it's not meeting your expectation maybe it's not skipping or anything like that but I've done like sky blue orange I haven't done every color of the one but none of them are as nice to use as just a regular black one so when I say how much I love the one it's only the black 0.38 and 0.5 anything else I'm going to take the signo in uniball's lineup I'm going to take the signo color gel inks over the one ink every time

Myke Hurley: oh

Brad Dowdy: they did mention the zento zento has not done a full color range yet which I find interesting just for my you know how popular that has proven to be and how much they lean into colors in their other lineups I find it strange that they haven't done that yet but I just got in everyone's been saying those blues and reds are spectacular and that was proven to be the case with the multi pin that I got and then that Myke just got the zento blue and red are way better than the zento black so it's this weird thing where there are certain ink formulations that are certainly better in certain colors now the zento doesn't have any skipping problems like the zento black isn't I don't like the zento black because it skips in relation to the red and the blue I don't like the zento black because it's not as dark as the one so there's all kinds of little nuances there but in general Vasuri you're correct in that experience with the one color gel inks that I don't think they stack up to any signo ink out there

Myke Hurley: Gabe writes in and says I'm looking to broader my nib horizons I want to try something finer and something broader than what I've been using my go-to has been a fine TWSB Eco or Lamy Safari I love the thin scratchiness of a Signo DX or a Secura Pigma Micron but on the other hand I want to experiment with showy shimmer inks and want something more broad both preferably under a hundred dollars I feel like there's so many places to go but I don't know where to start

Brad Dowdy: start with Pilot start with anything Pilot their Pilot stock fine nib which you can find in their least expensive

Brad Dowdy: their fine nib is going to be finer than your TWSBI Eco extra fine it's going to be twice as fine as a Lamy extra fine Japanese fountain pen nibs are just on a whole a size finer than their marked lines if you're used to a German nib which is what TWSBI uses or Lamy specifically being a German brand so I would get a Pilot fine nib if you want that

Brad Dowdy: line they do have EFs as well if you really want to push it they're spectacular they're just not as common not every lineup always has the steel EF pilot nib in it like the Kakuno I'd be looking at the Explorer maybe if the Kakuno is not your style look at the Explorer and then you could upgrade to the Pereira so one of the things in the Pereira lineup that I'm not sure comes in the Explorer lineup is the CM nib which is like their 9mm stub that's a pretty good one for shimmer ink if you end up liking the pilot fine or extra fine nib and then pilot's broad nibs are also good but you could use your Lamy Safari fine nib for shimmer ink and you get a lot of ink on the page they're just super wide and wet so yeah like anything pilot on any end of the nib size spectrum from EF to broad to they call it their CM nib it's like a soft cursive italic I use that for shimmer and pigment ink a lot it's a great nib anything pilot you're going to be very happy with and you could get two pins for under a hundred dollars with great nibs

Myke Hurley: and finally

Myke Hurley: it's a progeist standard that comes with a steel nib and a lower price I think sailor offering a stainless steel option in some of their premium pens is a great opportunity to fill in the mid range point after many of their gold nib pens have soared in price over the last couple of years I hope other pen brands take note and do similar so this question ! is here because we spoke about it but coming at it from this perspective what do you think?

Brad Dowdy: so this is the perspective that it should be seen at and this is what we discussed back during all the price increase drama is the question being is this the new norm and shouldn't we expect this to be the new norm and this was a point that CY made and I don't think that's wrong like I'm okay with understanding that a lot of these Japanese companies did this to themselves and we have to understand the new market that we're in now and I think and this is what it should have been all along but given like Japanese traditions and raising prices they kind of got stuck and I don't disagree with any of that so we're back to my conundrum of where does this fit in the scheme of things and can I erase my feelings about some of these other products in relation to what this lucky charm 2 is with a steel nip so this is a great I had no idea this was in here so I'll be exploring this Alex as we go I need to ink mine up I just got it in I've been holding I could have bought one of the cheaper ones but I just thought they're so boring for for like a hundred dollars like standard black or blue or burgundy one didn't move the needle for me but for some reason the $200 fancy teal looking one did so yeah we'll be discussing this a lot going forward as I do some testing and do a review here in the next month or two I'm not saying this isn't the way for these companies to continue to explore this space what I'm struggling with is my personal feelings towards in relation to this pen versus products I already own so there you go so yeah good good topic Alex we're going to be exploring this more

Myke Hurley: if you would like to send in a question of your own or you have any follow up or feedback for today's episode go to penaddict feedback dot com and you can send !

Myke Hurley: penaddict as well you can find me here on relay the enthusiast dot net and cortex brand dot com thank you to penchelet and squarespace for their support of this week's episode but most of all thank you for listening until next time say goodbye Brad goodbye Brad