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Do me a favor, if you spend any time at all writing using a pen, get yourself a fountain pen. They are so much nicer.
@obi an expensive ballpoint is largely all about just being jewelry in a sense. Its some expensive metal, looks nice, and makes you happy to write with as anything of value wold. But in the end the actual ballpoint refill on the inside is likely no better than cheaper pens. So the writing expiernces wont be too different. With that said I can still understand the appreciation of having a nice pen, even a ballpoint.
But for us fountain pen users it is often uch the opposite. All we care about is the nip and the feel on paper and the look of the pen for many isnt important.
I have a 1000$ pen where the body itself is mostly plastic (though it does have solid white gold trimmings and the nib is solid white gold too).
The feeling of a ballpoint is, as the ink would suggest, sticky, its like walking through mollases, the ink in a fountain pen is very different and it glides.
But I also loe flex pens, so many of my nibs flex and can give all sorts of fancy writing you cant do with a standard nib either.
SpoopyBoop [~/]$ 
@freemo the day i bought my first fountain pen and inkwell is a day ill never forget.
@EclecticEclipse Since you got an inkwell was it a fountain pen or a dip pen?
Most people dont have a well if they use a fountain pen but I suppose you could.
@freemo That's what I thought ... until I went flying with a fountain pen in my pocket.
@tatzelbrumm yea i empty all my pens before flight and keep the main one upright.
@freemo Amazing, I was in a shop the other day as I’m thinking about moving back to a fountain pen, not used one since school, but wasn’t sure which of the dizzying array of options to go with (as you note, most are just very expensive metal with a label). I thought, you could have provided guidance and here you are posting about it. Thoughts for something not too expensive and suggestions on a good ink? Bear in mind, I am looking for something portable for an everyday note taking pen.
@rw Well lots of questions I need to ask ideally but lets reduce it to just a few important ones..
Do you plan to use it just for note taking, would you also like to use it to sign your name or do fancy writing in general, or no, mostly for scribbling things fast and smooth?
@freemo mostly scribbling. I sign my name less and less these days and when I do it is usually at the motor registry and they force me to use the hideous pen there.
As for fancy writing. Sadly my penmanship is more akin to a spider crawling across the page than actual writing. It is on my very long list of arts to work on, but if I am realistic I will just be scribbling notes.
Price wise... between about $100 and $300 would be a sweet spot. But always happy to save a bit or pay a little more if there is something good which would otherwise be just out of reach.
The only other element is feel in the hand. Years ago I had a pen with a nice feeling nib, but it was a screw top and the screw thread left an unpleasant groove in my fingers after long periods of writing.
@rw
If its just for diagrams and random scribbles you really dont need anything too fancy. 50$ on a twsbi diamond with an EF or F nob shoukd do you good. But of your willing to go up to 300$ you can get a pen with a nocer case than that, even a gold nib. Pilot falcon will be the a good deal nicer, gold nib, stiff enough for scribbles but with just enough flex to see a roi shoukd you want to play with it and get fancy. Its a nice middle road pen that is an all rounder with high quality nib. These are my two favorite non-superflex nibs.
@freemo many thanks for the guidance.
@rw also how cheap is cheap.. give me a price range?
@freemo I use a Faber Castell e-motion fountain pen and my wife has a pen from Beaufort which is also very nice. Currently using pelikan brilliant black ink, which I'm very happy with. Originally I bought it so that I could stop throwing away plastic bics every month, but now I love it and would never go back.
@comphys
How do you like the pen, i assume no flex?
@freemo No flex, I'm not really into calligraphy although I certainly wish I had beautiful handwriting. With that said, I love my pen. It's so smooth, I don't have to apply even a touch of pressure. Works well for maths, which in was originally concerned about. Being able to try different inks has made writing a bit more interesting & I've enjoyed it. I've also got a few J. Herbin rollerball pens. They take standard cartridges and are cheap enough to have a few for different colours.
@comphys The two I suggested are stiff enough and fine eough to be good for diagrams and math, but the falcon can give if you are trying to flex it. So it is great for both if you ever just need to sign your signature or somethng.
@freemo The only pen I use is a Fisher AG7. My daughter loves the Fisher Bullet. She's been using it for 3 years (she's 7). I'm sure a fountain pen is on an even crazier level, but never used one.