Editing The Pen Addict 733/transcript (section)

== 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.