Editing The Pen Addict 190/transcript (section)

== Eco Pen Discussion ==


'''Myke Hurley:''' Otherwise, I mean, did I sell to Isby? Yeah. All right. So let's, let's bump this up the list. I want to talk about the eco. Okay. Now I've been holding off on one of these for a while. And I was specifically holding off after I read your review was my thought because I wanted to wait for the colored versions. But while I'm here, I might as well get one. Your review was glowing.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. I really liked this pen.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Now, what are we thinking build quality wise, right? And you're feeling that this one is in a better situation than what maybe some of the stuff we've seen previously. I mean, it's difficult to tell because you haven't had it for long enough to like really put it through its paces.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Right. But I've been using it for a few months. I've seen no immediate issues. The deal with this pen is actually has less parts than like the 580, for example. The section is not removable. It's built into the barrel itself. So the section you don't remove, you can remove the nib and the feed. You just pull them out. But there's no section that screws off to where you can get into the barrel proper, if that makes sense. So really kind of the only moving parts is the piston mechanism, which I mean, I haven't had a problem with yet. The only thing you generally run into with pistons in Twisbees, if you use if you really, really use the pen a lot. I have a Twisbees mini that I used for my ink review pen. So I'm new ink, clean it out, do a review, clean it out. And I was cleaning it out constantly. It loses some of that lubrication. So the piston will stick and stutter. So you just take it out. They give you the tool, put the little silicone grease around it again, and then it moves properly again. That's pretty much the only moving parts in this pen, aside from the feed and the nib, which don't really move. They're just, they stay put. And we put in a post when the Eco first came out from Mountain Biker Dave about the process, the manufacturing process. And I should have looked at it. I don't have the right words that he used for looking at it, but he basically looked at this through some, I don't know, some machine he's got. Polarizer? Yeah. So you could tell like this, I don't know. You could tell like the stress points basically, like in the 580, the stress points were higher because of all the faceting design in the barrels. And this one doesn't have that. It's just smooth and cylindrical. So there's less stress in there. So I, I mean, you never know. Some people have written TWSBI off completely and sworn off of them. And I cannot blame them one iota. They had lots of pens with lots of problems.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Well, you know, I was getting there, right? But like, I have an underlying love for their stuff, right? Right. It's just the quality that drives me crazy. But everything else about them is on point constantly, right? Right. Their design is fantastic. I think personally, I think the Eco is the best looking design pen that they've done, including the cap. I know that maybe you're not too crazy about the cap. I love the cap.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. So I love the, I love the red logo on the top of the cap. I don't dislike the cap. I'm just saying that's the part that stands out visually to me from a, um, off kind of off, uh, kilter kind of perspective. It's just a little bit big and it's really not a big deal. It's not something that says, oh, well, I can't buy this pen now. It's like, I actually love the clip design. I love the top. I love the, like the finial, the red finial. I don't love the size because it's just a little bit bulky, but it doesn't matter. I mean, I, it's just, you know, the cap is what keeps it clipped onto my, to my pen case. And when, um, I write with it, I don't post the cap anyway. So it doesn't affect me that if I did post the cap, it would drive me crazy. Um, it's a little bit too big for posting in my opinion, but the one thing you left out when you were saying all the things they do, right, is they nail price points too, right? They make pins with features that you can't get at the price points that they're at. And, you know, have there been some bumps in the road along the way? Absolutely. Um, have people that have sworn them off completely and will say never again, or are they, you know, good to do so? Yeah, I can see people have been burnt a lot of times. Um, I haven't seen much talk about TWSBI Eco failure points so far. Um, it doesn't mean there aren't any, I am just not super familiar with any, I haven't had any issues. Um, but I haven't had issues with any of my 580s or minis either. The only one I've ever had an issue with is the micarta, which had a feed and collar issue that had to get replaced. Um, so, you know, I, it's a fantastic pin. Um, I think it's probably better than the Lamy Safari for like an entry level pin. If the person purchasing it wants to get away from cartridges, you know, sometimes for beginners, cartridges are hard to get away from.

'''Myke Hurley:''' I know you didn't put it ahead of the Metropolitan.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' No, because I think it's that much better, uh, of a price. It's, it's 50% less than this. And the quality of writing that you get with the Metropolitan is killer. The style and the feel of the pen, it's so well balanced. It just feels good to write with. Um, and you know, I think the cartridges do, do make a difference for like a pure beginner from a pure beginner's perspective. They're very afraid, um, of getting that bottle of ink and filling up a fountain pen. The very first pen that they get, um, I was the exact same way, you know, I'm never going to use fountain pens. Okay. Okay. I'll try a fountain pens, but I'm only going to use cartridges. And now we're here.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' So that's kind of how it works.

'''Myke Hurley:''' All right. I'm just placing my order of jet pens right now.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' So, so on the, we talk all the time about how TWSBI teases things on the Facebook page. Um, they've been talking the yellow, they did one with a yellow cap. That would be an instant purchase for me. They did a full demonstrator one, which actually is not my favorite, which is probably surprising because I'm a big demonstrator guy. I like the black better than the full demonstrator. But if they do other colors, like they like to mix in a lot of colors, like they're doing on the AL with the green is the next one that's going to come out. They do. If they start doing like orange and purple and lime green and yellow on these ecos, I'm going to have a problem. It's going to be like Skittles or something.

'''Myke Hurley:''' So, uh, this isn't the first eco that I have purchased. Oh really? I bought one as a gift.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Oh yeah.

'''Myke Hurley:''' For Tiffany, I'm a friend of the show and host of top four on Relay FM. Um, I bought, I bought her a little care package. She started to get interested in this stuff. Uh, and I bought her a private metropolitan because just because, and I also bought her a TWSBI eco of a stub nib because I think, I think that the stub nib is something that most people will either love or hate. And I believe that she'd love it. And I think she did because I'm going to put this in the show notes. She tweeted to me yesterday. A little Myke was right. Uh, picture that she drew with her stub nib in a teal ink. I think it may have been a Hiroshi Zuko teal ink. And then if you look through the chain, if you look through the chain on, on twitter.com, you'll see that she's gone ahead now and gone to Goulet and bought a Noodless Flex, a Jinhao 159. Uh-huh. Now, these are good, right? This is like one of those cheap pens that people love. Yes.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yes.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yeah. And two bottles of Noodless, including Apache Sunset.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah, that Apache Sunset is awesome.

'''Myke Hurley:''' That's a beauty. And I am so happy to see Tiff go down this route because she's a friend of mine and I love it with more of my friends start to get into pens. And I think, I think it's safe to say at this point that she's in pretty deep.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So she's, she's, she's in now. And we have to remind the listeners in case they missed it a few episodes ago when Myke had visited the Armands in New York, we discovered that Tiffany was a backer of the Visionnaire. Yeah. Yeah. So this is kind of a result of that. Myke's like, let me fix this for you. But I need to know what ink she used on her, on her eco. All right. Give me a minute. And I'll tell you. It looks like it might, if it, it might be Tsukiyo. I don't know if it's in Roshizuku, but it's just beautiful.

'''Myke Hurley:''' You wait right there, buddy. And I'll pull up the order that I had.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' So Tiffany's into the adult coloring and all these things. So we've been talking to her a bunch about this. It was a Kujaku. Kujaku. It's a deep tuck wise blue. That's one I don't have. I need to get that one. Kujaku. Yeah. That's an extremely popular one. And it's beautiful. It's quite looking. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. So yeah, good job in getting her the eco. And I'd be interested if anyone who does buy the eco and runs into problems, we usually hear them. But I just haven't had that rash of this is cracking, that's cracking, this isn't working anymore in the eco. So if you have issues, definitely let us know. So because I like to bring that up when we're discussing these things because I don't want to send people down the wrong path. But it seems like the QC on Twisby, it continues to improve. And that's just kind of how the company's set up. They've definitely had some issues. And I think they're reining it in and waiting a little bit longer to get things right, which is why it took two years for the eco to show up. Yep.

'''Myke Hurley:''' All right. So I have three crew togas and an eco on the way.

'''Myke Hurley:''' JetPans International shipping is so weird. They do like a 950 one and it says it can take up to 45 days, which is insane. And then they have a $50 one to get it in like five. Obviously, I went with a 950 shipping. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But it's saying, you know, usually it's about two weeks, but it's like they put it on their site and it's like, ah, you make it so difficult.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' There's nothing, there's no redeeming values when it comes to shipping and shipping prices.

'''Myke Hurley:''' No, International shipping is a nightmare. There's no way around it, but it's, you know, it is what it is. Yep. There was one more review that you did that I'm so surprised that one hasn't already been on and two, you did it now, which is the Bic Crystal ballpoint.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Probably the most popular pen in the world, right?

'''Brad Dowdy:''' I would say so. The most popular, the most copied, you know, it just is. Everyone knows this pen, right?

'''Brad Dowdy:''' And I'd never reviewed it and that was kind of on accident. It wasn't on purpose because I've always liked this pen and always like really respect the story behind it. And I always really enjoyed seeing how people use this pen because it is everywhere and people can do cool things with it. Like artists and engineers do these great, great looking pens. And actually it was probably like a year ago, someone emailed me said, Hey, why haven't you reviewed the crystal? I was like, you know, I don't, I don't have a good answer and I will rectify that situation. So I bought some, which that's the great thing about them. You know, they run about 20 cents a pen, right? So I think I bought a 10 pack for like two something. And because you can't really buy just one, you know, if you go to the grocery store, you're not going to buy a 20 cent pen. They don't package them that way.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' I mean, it's just a great pen. I mean, it's literally museum quality, you know, it's in the museum of modern art as just a, an example of what great design looks like. And you know, how it's just a simple shape, a simple form factor can like take over an industry, which is what this pen did when it came out.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' You know, the ballpoint ink has improved over the years. I believe, you know, they've made it less messy. Like you used to use these pens when I was in school and they would just glob up around the tip and leave these blobs of ink on your paper. When I write with it now, that doesn't happen anymore. I don't know if that's taken away some of the artistic properties of it, but people still use it so much for art because it shades. Well, the type of ink it is the oil-based ink, it has some shading. I obviously don't have the skills to bring that out in any artistic kind of way, but you know, I have some links in the article to people who do, and you just do, you know, a big ballpoint, you know, ballpoint artwork on online. And you can see just like photo quality artwork done with one of the simplest pens on the planet. And it's a great pen. And I actually got a, people would just email me, it's like, thank you for doing that review. I'm glad you finally did that. And I was like, okay, apparently it's a thing. So it's cool. I should do this, you know, more often. I need to do things that I don't normally do. And especially when it's a pen as famous as this, right? I mean, I just have to review this pen. Just because it has to have been there. Yeah. I'm just sorry it took so long. It's just an awesome pen. You should have this pen like laying around the house. You just should. It's, you know, there's no, there's no reason not to. And it's actually a pretty good writer. It's not the greatest writing pen. You know, there's a lot of white space in the ink, which we talked about, you know, in how ballpoint and gel ink pens perform. You want to see a solid line without any white space in there. It doesn't skip, but you know, just the ball doesn't roll evenly. Sometimes it leaves a little bit of white space in there. You know, it's not, obviously, if you want me to make a list of the best writing ballpoint pens ever, it's not going to be number one, but it doesn't mean it's not a great pen. You know, it's just a really good pen. It's good for what you get. Yep. Not in the 20 cents per pen market is some of Pilot's UK pens.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yeah, tell me what's going on here.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' So, without getting into too much detail, our good friend Ian, who writes pen, paper, pencils, pencils, pen, paper, pencil.net, who's also someone we need to get on the podcast. And I've talked to him about coming on before. I need to follow up on that. He did an article on Pilot's UK's pen pricing, basically. And, you know, it's something we've always discussed in general terms, and maybe some specific terms about basically Japanese importers here in the U.S. And, you know, why can't we get everything that Pilot makes in Japan? Why can't it come here to the U.S. or to other markets in the U.K.? For this example of Ian's, he talks about that. You know, some of the U.K. retailers were importing Pilot products from Japan. Pilot UK, as a regional Pilot, I don't know if they would be a distributor or a standalone company, they were upset that retailers were bringing these pens in, told them they had to stop, and basically, I mean, basically told them to stop, that they had to remove these pens for sale, and they could only buy the authorized whatever Pilot UK is carrying, and it's allowed to sell in the U.K.

'''Myke Hurley:''' From Pilot's perspective, I can kind of understand that, whilst I think that it's a ridiculous thing to do. You know, it's like, because they make their decisions about what products that they want to be in certain areas, whether it's right or wrong, but, do you know what I mean? Yes. So it's like, they're going to say that. It's like, well, no, this is not what we want you to do. But I think they should just make everything available for everyone.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' So this goes through a couple of posts, because Ian got a really long, detailed answer from Pilot, which was mostly good. I mean, from a business perspective, you understand where they're coming from, as far as discussing why or why, not why they can or can't bring products in. The answers are good. They're not great. But, I mean, it's also a corporation. There's going to be some things they can't directly say.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' But, you know, a lot of it goes down into things as detailed as ink formulation or things as simple as a trademark brand. You know, do we have to rename this pen because someone else has the trademark in that region? You know?

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yeah.