Editing The Pen Addict 327/transcript (section)

== Blackwing Volumes Critique ==


'''Brad Dowdy:''' This, this is not a good release for them. So the 33 and Third. I don't want to beat around the bush.

'''Myke Hurley:''' It's, it's referring to vinyl, vinyl records.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yes. So the vinyl record, speed, right? Mm-hmm. Speed, speed that they play. So a little bit of history on this, the volumes as a whole. So what they did with this, this is an all black pencil and this is their second all black pencil. So you cannot discuss the 33 and a Third Edition without relating it to the 24 Edition, which was the Steinbeck Edition, which was an all black pen pencil. And there's not enough difference in this one. Actually, there is enough difference to make this one worse than the 24 Edition for me. In that, like, the lead is, so the 24 introduced the Extra Firm core, which was a brand new core for them. This has the standard Blackwing core. This is the balanced core. So the one that comes in the black pencil. That's their stock pencil. So there's another black pencil for you. But there's nothing about this design that's impressive to me. I think they've, they kind of dropped the ball on this one. It's too close to something they've released too soon, too recently ago. And it's not special enough to separate itself from that. And you set yourself up to be compared to something you just did, you know, like within the past couple of years.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' And it's just, it didn't deliver on the story of the 33 and a Third. So it's supposed to represent the black vinyl. The best thing about this was the subscribers got a pelletized bottle of a vinyl record.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yeah, it's got a record and a bottle. That's really cool. So the pellets that you need that you melt down to make an LP, they got a jar of those. And that's really fun.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' That put a huge smile on my face. You know, like I love the little tchotchke things like that. So that's awesome. I love that. I'm not going to use these pencils.

'''Myke Hurley:''' I guess like for me, I just think, because the way that they tried to make it look like a record is by printing these like thick lines around it. Right. I think that's what they're going for. Yeah. It doesn't seem to me like what I would want. Like I would want a pencil with a really thin texture of the whole way down, which looks like a record. This doesn't.