Editing The Pen Addict 482/transcript (section)

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'''Brad:''' Yep. First up, I want to announce to our listeners that once again, good friends of the show, Catherine Palmisano and Michael Harris have put together the Pen Addict Slack survey. And we call it the Slack survey because that's where the idea generated. Right. Catherine and Michael and a bunch of other people in Slack. You know, the questions come up frequently in the Slack. You know, how many pens do you have? How many inks do you have? What's your favorite brand? And they thought, you know, maybe we could put together a survey and kind of collect some of this information. You know, there's no, you know, real ulterior motive other than fun just to kind of see what's out there and what, you know, what's the demographics of this community like. Right. And, you know, how many pens do people really have? And they've done a great job of doing this survey. They've done it twice now. I believe this is the third year. So we'll have the link in the show notes. I would love it if you all would go fill it out. You don't have to be a member of Slack. It's just called that because that's where the idea was formed. And what happens is they will run the survey for a couple of weeks, collect all the data. And then, you know, I don't know, a month from now, whenever they get the time to collect all of the data, they publish a big PDF and presentation. And we all get to check it out. And it's just kind of a fun. We've always enjoyed seeing the results of the survey. You know, my favorite result of the survey is always, like, the age group, even though, like, I'm skewing to the older age group now. I love how many young people are into this stuff now. And seeing these numbers, like, reflects that, even though, you know, it is, you know, our thumb's on the scale a little bit about where we're publishing this. Right. Like, we're doing a survey of pen addicts by pen addicts. Right. It's not like it's necessarily a wider public ranging, you know, fully official auditable survey. But it's fun information. And I think it's really cool. And if you want to know what last year's looked like, I found the show episode where we talked about it, Myke, where we went through the results and have the links to last year's documentation and the video of them sharing the results. So I think it's a cool project. And I love that they put their time and effort into this. And I think it's cool.

'''Myke:''' I'm looking forward to it.

'''Brad:''' Yeah. So I got a preview of the survey. I went and filled out mine, like, in the test survey. I wonder if I need to fill out it again, like if my information was deleted in the test run. So we'll see. I'll make it fill out again. Change my answers this time. Really mess them up.

'''Myke:''' Really, like, throw a spanner in the works.

'''Brad:''' I'll say, let's see. What would I change? All bald nibs. Yeah. That's, yeah. What's your favorite nib size? Double B. Yeah. Instead of EF.

'''Myke:''' Yeah. I only own green inks. Just all green inks.

'''Brad:''' Yep. Yep. So that's the kind of questions you can expect. Like, literally, what is your preferred nib size? Like, that's one of the questions. So, yeah. It's really good. It's really good stuff. So fun stuff to do. Always fun to see the results. And, yeah. So thank you to Catherine and Michael for, again, once again, doing this. It's really, really great.

'''Myke:''' You wrote a review of the Jetstream Edge, which is a micro-tip version of the Jetstream in a different body.

'''Brad:''' Yeah. So I find this pen particularly interesting for me in particular. Particularly particular about this pen, Myke. It is a premium Jetstream, if you will. That's a good $15. Yeah. It's a $15 pen. Right? So they redid the idea of the Jetstream barrel. And I think that's where we get the Edge name from. I don't know. I mean, I guess it's edgy. I don't know. It's a definitely upscale version of the Jetstream. And the design is just awesome. I just, I completely love this pen, how it looks, how it feels, how it writes. And they came out originally with a .28 Jetstream. And just for reference purposes, when you're talking about ballpoint type inks, those lines in a Jetstream, when you say .28, it's really, the line is finer than that. Right? To where if you had like a rollerball pen that was a .28, the line would be wider. Right? The line would be more like a .4 line where the .28 Jetstream line is like a .18 line. So not a lot of people are going to be into this. Right? It's fine. It could be scratchy for some. I don't find it to be, you know, scratchy at all. But like, I get it. Like, people who aren't used to those sizes should avoid this pen. But the issue with this pen, and I've let Jeff review the first couple that I've had. Jeff Abbott, who writes for The Pen Addict. I've sent my first ones that I got to him to review because I like to get that other perspective of like, when I know for a fact I am going to love this pen personally, I want someone else to do it first. Right? Because like, what value is saying like, this is a Brad pen? And of course, Brad loves it. Right? So I want to get another set of eyeballs on it. I do that with a lot of products. And so Jeff, you know, reviewed it, and he liked it. And he likes that micro size. Like, he doesn't love it like me. But he's like, hey, this is pretty good. The one problem, the one kind of confusion I had with The Edge, and this has been since the beginning, is they chose to make a premium barrel pen and use a multi-pen refill. Now, the problem with that is, if you think about it, multi-pen refills are generally small. Small capacity, narrow diameter to fit, you know, two to three refills in a singular pen barrel. And this is a full-size pen with a full-size barrel and uses the tiny multi-pen refill. And I'm like, I'm paying you $15 for this pen. Can I have a real refill, please? And right now, the answer is no, because that's, one, that's how they built it. But number two, the full-size refills, they don't have in the needle tip design that they use for the Edge or for the multi-pen. So, I don't know why they went through the engineering of designing this pen without engineering, which would be a simpler engineering task to make a full-size 0.28 and 0.38 needle tip refill. Like, they have the technology just embiggen the multi-pen refill and let's go, because it's kind of a letdown when you're spending that much money on a pen to have just kind of a, it's a great performing refill. It's just a sorry size and it kind of confuses me.

'''Myke:''' I don't even know why they would start with the multi-pen refill. It just seems like a cop-out, especially when they do have for the point, there is a 0.38, right, in the standard size. Right. So, like, why don't they just use that one and then create a 0.28 as well?

'''Brad:''' Well, yeah. Like, I don't know if it was an aesthetic thing, like they wanted the needle on there, but, like, if they've already made the needle really technically smaller in the narrower multi-pen refills, why can't they make it for the standard and replace the conical tip? I don't think anyone would complain if it came out with a conical tip, but, yeah, I think my conclusion was, like, they just backed into it. It's like, hey, we have this. Let's make it around there, and we can go even finer since we already have the 0.28. But there's nothing in this pen that's weird enough to not contain a full-size refill, but you can't modify it to do that because it's built to use the shorter multi-pen refill. They attach differently on the inside. But it's almost like they over-engineered the pen to use a worse refill when they actually could have simplified it and just maybe changed the tip. I don't know. Who are we to say?

'''Myke:''' Who are we to say?

'''Brad:''' Hmm.

'''Brad:''' Who are we to say? I am here to say, Myke, aside from Lamy needing to hire me, Lamy just needs to hire whoever manages their Asian divisions, including Lamy Hong Kong.

'''Myke:''' They have, haven't they?

'''Brad:''' Well, I mean, they need to bring them into Germany because they're playing by a different set of rules over in the Asian market, which is common, right? Like, we talked about this before. Like, Pelican doesn't necessarily do different branding things, but they have a huge presence in the Asian market. And a lot of the pen brands, like the, what do you call it? Like the high-end pen brands, like your Mont Blancs and your Pelicans, like are beloved in Japan. So they have these whole divisions over there. Well, Lamy Hong Kong put out a Minions set. You're familiar with the Minions, right, Myke?

'''Myke:''' Yeah, I am, yeah.