Editing The Pen Addict 562/transcript (section)

== Selection of Sailor Ink Studio 140 and related pen preferences. ==


'''Myke Hurley:''' Yeah, I went with Sailor Ink Studio 140. I thought this felt like a blue one for me. When I received the pen, I was like, oh, I don't know. Like, I've never had a pen that has this concave. So if you need this to describe, it's like if you imagine purely straight barrel, pinch it in the middle, right? So the ends are the thickest. And then it kind of like towards the middle gets thinner and then out again. And it's like I've never used a pen like that. And I don't think I would necessarily have like been gravitated towards that style. But it is so comfortable to hold. Like, it fits so perfectly in the hand. And because you have the concave design, like, you know, so it's like thicker on both ends, the pen retains weight. Where like if you had it just be like conical, right? That it just gets thinner towards the end. So you still achieve the thinner part in the middle where it meets kind of the, where it meets your hand. What is the area called between your thumb and your finger? I call it the cusp. I call it the cusp. I don't know if that's the accurate term. The cusp of the hand. And if it just got, you know, they made it so it went thinner there, it'd be fine. But you would lose weight in the pen. And, you know, I like there to be weight in pens. I don't like it to feel like when I pick up a pen, it's just going to fly over my shoulder. Right? Like, this doesn't feel that way even though it's made of resin. And I think it's because it's retaining some material at the end and it gives a really nice balance. So for me, like, this is a very comfortable pen. And obviously, the design is great, but the real winner is the nib and just how close that nib is in color to the material. So super awesome. Go check it out for yourself right now. It's $240, which is a steal. I mean, I genuinely cannot believe this pen is this price. Me and Brad were talking about this before we started today. It's an incredibly fair price for a quality product like this. There are just 50 pieces. So you've got to act fast if you want to go check it out. Go to enigmastationery.com slash penaddict. That is enigmastationery.com slash penaddict. And use the code penaddict at checkout to receive a free gift and discounted shipping on an order of $40 or more. That is enigmastationery.com slash penaddict to secure your Enigma Special Edition number 3. And use the code penaddict at checkout to receive free shipping on all orders over $40 plus a free gift. Thanks to Enigma Stationary for the support of this show and all of RelayFM.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' All right, Myke. So we're going to bring some of the topics we talked about or some of the specific parts of the specific topics above that we talked about in barrel weight, feel in the hand, balance, tip rattle. All kind of come to play in my conversation around the Maker's Cabinet Laszlo. So I did a review of this brass ballpoint pen from Maker's Cabinet on Monday. And I wanted to bring it up because it's a good conversation to have about pen design and like how we all like different things. And, you know, how what might be good for one person may not be great for another person. And like all of those things are like cool. Like it's good to know like what features a pen brings to the table. And that way you can decide. And one of the things I try to help with in my review is help you decide like does this type of pen fit my needs for a writing instrument. So you're familiar with Maker's Cabinet, Myke, right? They make some of like the fancy extremes, not the right word, but they upgrade a lot of traditional objects in their own style. A lot of brass, a lot of machine parts, a lot of custom build. I did a review of their lead holder called the Ferrell a few months back where it was just like almost like an over-engineered pencil holder. And this one, the Laszlo, it's a brass ballpoint. And it's actually kind of simple, right? It's a for for Maker's Cabinet. I would call it a simple design. Their upgraded piece of this was the twist mechanism to retract and engage the refill. So they use this magnet, this custom magnet design that they built and designed. And I didn't find it to be great. Like it's fine. Like it certainly wasn't transformative. It didn't change what I thought about. Oh, this is how all knocks should be in the future. Right. Or all twist mechanisms, I should say. It was fine. It was a little bit funky. It didn't work the same every time I tried to engage it. It always worked at some point, but it didn't work consistently the same every time. Like sometimes I would twist it, you know, do it, give it a half turn. The refill would pop right out and I'd go to town. Other times I would twist it and it would snap back in. I twisted the same, same. And I'd have to like keep going all the way around to get the refill to engage. So it was a little bit inconsistent in that aspect. That's fine. I can deal with that. You know, it is what it is. I appreciate someone trying something new, right? Like that's why like I did not have a great time with this pen, but I didn't go out to eviscerate this pen because I want people to keep designing and keep making things.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' The tip rattle was one of the worst that I've experienced. And that makes me question a lot of the ideas behind this pen. Like if you put this much effort into creating a cool retractable mechanism, the writing experience still needs to be good for me to even consider using it, right? And it's rare that I have to put an audio file in a pen review, but I did on this one. Yeah. Because it was so egregious. Huh?

'''Myke Hurley:''' It was helpful.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah, it was outrageous how loud this pen was. And all I could think about is like they had to know, right? Like when you're making this, you're going click, click, click, click, click, click, click, click, click, click, click, click, click as you write and like you're okay with that. I was like, I don't understand. I don't understand like the thought behind this being okay. So I was a little bit taken aback by that. But like that's, as I put in the review, that's something that's easily mitigated. Like you can fix this like really easily, right? You know, I can fix it after market, you know, again, tape, again, like the Lamy, except I wouldn't break this pen. Like I broke the Lamy. They actually, I think the clip is probably like the worst decision that they made on the pen. And again, like I'm not trying to like beat down this pen. I'm just trying to discuss like design choices when making products, right? Like it's a good pen. Like I, it's a perfectly fine pen. And I think a lot of people will like this pen if you like brass pens and heavy pens. But when you make a pen that's 66 grams, like for a pen that's very heavy, you know, retro 51s, for example, run, run about 28 grams. So it's, you know, an all brass barrel pen you expect to be heavy. Well, this clip is very flimsy, right? So it doesn't match the weight of the pen. And I actually got some feedback from Maker's Cabinet. They reached out to me. I posted on Instagram that the clip was something a lot of people have pointed out that it's just not a match for a weighty pen like this brass barrel pen. And they said that they're actually working on a Laszlo version too. And they're going to adjust the clip and they're actually going to make a way you can retrofit a clip onto this pen, which all brings me back to say. Honestly, you're staking your reputation on your design chops.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' And I think there's just several small things that should have been fixed before this pen launched. If you're making heirloom products and charging an appropriate price for that, I don't want to buy the alpha or beta version of an heirloom product, right? Those things don't add up in my mind, right? Do you understand what I'm meaning when I'm saying this? If you're selling me the best product you can make, I don't want version two next year. No, and also... I want version two because, hey, we're making a good product and we're going to keep working on it. As we get feedback, we're going to make another one. Like, that's what we do at Spoke. Like, we have a Spoke 1 and a Spoke 2, but we've never said that this is the only pen you'll ever need because we want to keep iterating, right? And I feel like they're making products that they should stand alone and they don't.

'''Myke Hurley:''' There's also an Osborne effect issue here, right? Where it's like, buy our pen now, but also we're making a better one. So why would I buy the pen now? Right. Do you familiar with the Osborne effect? It's a computer company called Osborne. They made a computer and they were like, and, you know, it was on sale. And they were like, next year, they did like a presentation. We have this incredible computer coming. It's so much better than what you're currently getting. The company went under because everyone stopped buying their products. Right, right. Because why would you buy one now when in six months time, you know there's a better one coming? It's why, you know, big tech companies now are so secret about their stuff, or companies in general, right? You don't want people knowing your roadmap because they're going to stop buying your products. You need people to keep buying your products, right?

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Right. It's the reason you exist as a company. Yeah. And all pen manufacturers, and I'm including myself as a maker myself with Spoke, like we're always going to iterate and try to make our designs better. We think we come up with a good design. We're very happy with it. We get people's, but we don't sell it as a singular item. This is the best, right?

'''Myke Hurley:''' But neither can you, like, you know, if you're three months old, you would know you have a new version of the Spoke pen coming out, and it's going to improve it in a bunch of ways. Six months before, you can't be like, hey, we've got this new one coming. Yeah, right. Because you need to continue selling your product, right? Right. So, like, I just find that so weird. And plus, I feel like for me, the biggest issue I can see on this pen is the way the clip looks, and the fact that the clip appears to just be an aftermarket idea, at least.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah, it's not aftermarket, but it's a basic stamping, right?

'''Myke Hurley:''' Right, but, like, what I mean is it is not a permanent part of the pen. Right.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' It's not built into the pen. It's torque screwed through the barrel, through the hole in the pen, which I didn't get a close-up shot through the hole in the clip.

'''Myke Hurley:''' That's so weird to me that they did it this way. Because also, like, why does it have the light? Like, you know the thing that looks like you slip – you see this a lot, like the ones where you slip a clip onto a pen, right? And genuinely, Brad, to me, it feels like – I don't know, right? But I feel like they made this pen and then realized they needed a clip. Maybe. Because this is such a strange thing to do, to do it the way that they've done it. Like, why does it – if it screws into the pen, right, which you should say it does, why does it have those wings that go around the side? They're to hold the clip in place, but the screw holds the clip in place. So why do I do that? I don't like that style anyway. Like, I've never liked that look.

'''Myke Hurley:''' But, yeah, maybe they'll fix it. It'll be interesting to see what they do. It's a different material. Why is it a different material? The whole pen is in brass.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. So, like I said in my review, like, this clip belongs to the aluminum pen was the point that I made just in weight and style. And, I mean, I'm fine with clipless pens, but, like, I get that a lot of people, you know, like clips on their pens, and I totally get that. So, like, this one would have been, I think, better served just without the clip. I like clips. And without any type of hole or anything.

'''Myke Hurley:''' But I like them to be good and feel like they're part of the design.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah, they can't be an add-on. So, anyway, my whole premise of, like, doing this review was not to just, like, totally bang on this product because this actually made me respect the Feral even more, which was a very fidgety lead holder. That made me respect that product even more because I actually think this was, this was, I don't think Maker's Cabinet did their best work here. And I think that's fair for me to say in a review because I want them to do better. Like, I don't want them to not sell this pen, right? I'm not going out there. Like, I know it wasn't a very positive review. But the idea of the review is, like, I like your work. I don't think you did your best job on this product. And I think it's easily fixable. But then at the same time, you have companies like this that, you know, throw around some marketing terms that kind of makes them, makes you think that they're unimpeachable designs and they're just not, right? And that's more of where I have some of the hang-ups with this. So, anyway. This is why marketing is tricky, right? Yeah, yeah. So, you know, I don't know. I'll be interested to watch this one. And they were very positive with the feedback, you know, on the review and just the conversation, you know, that we had. And, you know, there's going to be a version two of this pen. And we'll see. I will actually actively track that because I'm curious what's going to change. Is it just going to be the clip? Is it going to be some of the other points that I called out? I don't know. Because the best part about this was it's the most fairly priced product that they sell. I mean, it's a $90 brass barrel pen. And, like, that's perfectly fine. Like, some of the other products are pretty expensive for what they are. This one's not. This one's almost cheap for what it is. So, we'll see what the next version ends up being. So, related to design, we have not talked about my friends over at CW&T. In a long time, makers of the pen type A, the pen type B, and the pen type C. Myke, very basic pen names. But they've kind of made their own thing out of it. And I just happened to see their Instagram. They've been leaning into the pen type C, which of all the pens they make are weird. This is the weirdest.

'''Myke Hurley:''' It is funny to me, man. Why of all of them? I don't know.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' So, this is a traditional, gosh, what would you call it? This is their take on a traditional gift shop pen. That's what I called it back in the day. Like, I like this pen. I use this pen. I literally went, once I saw their latest Instagram, I went and grabbed mine out and started using it. I like this pen. But back in the day, you could get these flip wire pens, like, at the gift shop at the end of the ride, at the theme park or whatever, you know. It was just like a swag pen idea where you had this clip. Like, I had these back in the 80s and 90s, right? But they did it in very CW&T type of way. And I just wanted to point it out because I think it's so ridiculous, but it's so cool. And they're just adding colors. They must be doing really well with this pen because they're adding a lot. Adding a lot of finishes and styles to it. So, I thought it was worth pointing out because it cracked me up.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Oh, these Cerakote ones look fantastic. Yeah.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' I wonder, like, this is from a design perspective. It's got to be reasonably straightforward to make. So, you're allowed to, like, you know, play around with that a little bit. Like, mine has a clip on it, right? Like, I really like the clip aspect of it. But, like, I wouldn't want to use it all the time because the flip aspect of it is kind of annoying. Like, it's fine. They sell it in a seven pack.

'''Myke Hurley:''' It's incredible.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Like, here's a bunch of designs we've done.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' But it's cool. I hadn't talked about them in a while. And I saw that. And that just made me smile because this pen is just silly and ridiculous. But it's in, you know, the very CW&T design style, which I really appreciate. So, next one, Myke, you added this to the list. I couldn't remember if we talked about this last week. Speaking of design, what you got here, you run this one.