Editing The Pen Addict 275/transcript (section)

== Mini Topic ==


'''Brad Dowdy:''' All right. Good. All right, should we take a second break? Let's do it. I have a mini topic that I wanted to discuss, and then we'll wrap it up with some Ask TPA.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Sounds good to me. I want to also thank Squarespace for the support of this show. Use offer code INK at checkout, and you'll get 10% off your first purchase. Make your next move with Squarespace. Stay there. You easily create the website that you have for your next idea. Whether you want to make an online store, a portfolio, or a blog, or a site for your restaurant, a site for your band, a site for your business. No matter what it is, Squarespace is the all-in-one platform that will let you do it. There's absolutely nothing to install, no patches to worry about, no upgrades needed. Both me and Brad have used and continue to use Squarespace for projects in our lives because it's so easy. You don't have to worry about anything with them, and they have a great support team if you need any help. All of their templates are beautiful. You can customize them to your heart's content, and you can also get domain names to Squarespace as well. They are the full package for anything you want to put on the internet. Their plans start at just $12 a month, but you can sign up for a free trial with no credit card required just by going to squarespace.com and use the code INK at checkout, and you will get 10% off your first purchase, which is awesome, especially if you sign up for a year. If you sign up for a year and use the 10%, you get a real good discount on that. And you'll be showing your support for the show as well, which we really appreciate. I want to thank Squarespace for their continued support of RelayFM. Squarespace, make your next move, make your next website.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Thank you, Squarespace, for making my life easier. That's what it's all about. That's why I love them so much.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yep, we just finished building the website for the wedding, which you'll see. You've seen. Brad has been invited to my wedding, everyone, so you can all stop worrying about that.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Were people actually worried about it? I wouldn't worry about it because I didn't expect it. Can you imagine that, right? I'm going to make it happen.

'''Myke Hurley:''' If you post pictures at the wedding and you're not there, it'd be like drama. Drama.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' But no, he's going to be there. Going to be there. So the other anniversary happening this year is my 20th wedding anniversary. Remember the part where I'm old. So we're going to forego doing anything big for that and hold off and go to London for your wedding. It'll be our 20th anniversary trip, if you will. So yeah, looking forward to it.

'''Myke Hurley:''' No better way to celebrate your love than to come and celebrate mine. How about that? That's right.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' And I love for each other, me and you. That's right. All right. This next topic isn't like a huge topic, but it was something I was working on a bunch of paper reviews and testing the other day. And the paper market has really, really expanded in the past, you know, five to 10 years since, you know, we've been around doing this and getting more access to things from more countries. And we tend to talk about a lot of the same things, you know, like my recommendations, you know, having used so many things, my recommendations have become very narrow and, you know, I can pinpoint what I feel is the best for the best use cases. And then there's this whole subset of products that I just adore that I don't necessarily recommend as much. So I feel that they're really, really underrated. So this was a list of underrated stationary brands that, or items specifically that, you know, and this came up with me working on the top five pins list too. I was like, you know, why doesn't this pin get more love or why doesn't this brand get more love? And I came up with, you know, four different headers and one product for each header. And the first one's paper. And this is what kind of got me set off on this little sidetrack for underrated brands. And for all the Japanese paper that we talk about, anything with Tomoe River and anything life stationary, anything Morimon, anything Midori, we never talk about Apica, except me. I bring it up all the time about how good it is. They have so many sizes, shapes, formats, rulings, price points, and up and down the lineup, no matter if you're buying like a $3 Apica or a $35 Apica. The paper is some of the best I've used for every pen, pencil, anything you throw at it. I've talked about my undying love for the Apica Premium CD notebook, which is a very expensive notebook. And I haven't found any hardcover notebook better than it. But they have so many lower price point notebooks that are just as good a quality as that, like in the $5 to $10 range, that it doesn't get talked about enough. So that's a brand that I feel is super underrated. It's one I adore, use all the time, and just wanted to give some love to the Apica brand. The next one that I feel is underrated is not an underrated company by any means. They're a very popular company, but I think this one specific subset is underrated, and that's Montblanc's inks. And I'm not talking about the special edition inks. Montblanc's standard color inks are some of the premier colors in their specific color spectrum. Like green inks, Montblanc's Irish Green is considered like the top green. In grays, Montblanc's Oyster Gray is one of the tops. In browns, Toffee Brown is one of the top inks. They're really high quality inks. And guess what? They are not even remotely expensive. You know, I think 50 milliliter bottles run about $20, something like that. 60 milliliter bottles, $21. So that's a lot of ink. That's a fair price. The one I want to try is lavender purple. That one gets raved about. All the Montblanc inks I've used perform and behave really, really well. They have good colors. Do you use any Montblanc inks? I know you were an original, back when we started the blog, you had a Montblanc pen. Did you have Montblanc, like black ink with it?

'''Myke Hurley:''' I have Montblanc black, yeah.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. So I just, I, the basic blacks and blues from Montblanc don't get a lot of love. And I, that's probably, you know, normal. I don't really hear anyone using them, but Irish Green, Lavender Purple, Oyster Gray, and Toffee Brown are at the top of the list of all those colors. And I never use them. I have an Irish Green bottle, which I love. I just never ink it up enough, but it's always great and always spectacular. So they have some really, really good, good inks. And I, for a company as big as Montblanc, that's part of their product lineup that I think is underrated. For the pens, I put Zebra Japan just as a whole.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Well, I feel like we haven't spoken about Zebra in such a long time. Like we spent so much time in the old days talking about their stuff.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yep. Yep. I think they're completely underrated. And they don't, they don't push the envelope quite as frequently as Pilot and Uniball do in the same, you know, like $3 gel pen category. But it's because the push clip gel is so good. Kind of like the Sino DX is so good. They don't change it a lot, but they add a bunch of colors. They added a lot of tip sizes. You can get it in tip sizes from, you know, 0.3 to 1.0 and all kinds of crazy colors. They do scented stuff, which I don't really get into, but I appreciate that they do that. You know, they'll do brand marketing stuff. I don't really have collaborations with other, you know, other people. And, you know, like Uniball does with Hello Kitty. They'll do like the Chupa Chups, you know, suckers and lollipops and have Sinege links. But it's mostly about the performance. It's as good a pen as the Sino DX. You know, it just doesn't get the love that that pen does. And I think it's really, really good. On top of that, their brush pens are some of the best in the business. I use their super fine brush pen just to write with because it's very, very fine. And the Charbo X was one of my most expensive pens when I first bought it. And one of my entry-level, eye-opening, wow, this is interesting Japanese technology for a multi-pen that used D1 refills. And I actually think the price of the Charbo X has gone down since I bought it. I thought they used to be $45, $50. Now they're like $34, $35. It's just a good pen. It's really unique in its mechanism. No one's been able to make a quality multi-pen like this Charbo since it came out. It just happens to be expensive. And the D1 refills, if you use the gel refills, they're also very expensive. And you run through them very, very quickly. Gel doesn't last long in a D1 size refill. So I thought, you know, Zebra is kind of in their own market. They're not getting left behind. But in like, you know, what I, my perceptions of where things stack up. So Zebra Japan is such a good pen manufacturer. Now, one of the reasons I brought this up is because I get emails a lot to say, hey, I bought the Sarasa at Staples and it's terrible. What are you talking about? It's not the same pen. The Zebra USA Sarasas are not the push clips. They are completely different. They're not as good. So that's always something I try to point out when I talk about Zebra. It's Zebra Japan. And the products they make like the push clip gel that are really, really good. And the last one, and maybe the impetus for this article or this little topic. Like I was going through a bunch of pencils the other day for something I'm working on that hopefully you will see soon. And I have this whole cigar box full of pencils. And I was going through testing everything, writing things, you know, doing some drawings, making some examples. And I found this Mitsubishi 9850 pencil. Just a regular old HB pencil. It says for office use. You know, it's super generic. I won't say generic looking, but it's basic looking. It's like what a typical office pencil should look like. It's so freaking good. And I forgot how good it was. I must have thought it was good previously because I've used over half of it. It's getting to be a shorter pencil now. So I reintroduced myself to it, and it's as good as like the Blackwing 602s and everything else that I've been using that I've been fawning over some pencils recently. I was shocked at how much I loved this $1 pencil. I'm actually using it today for my show notes because ever since I rediscovered it on my own desk, I haven't wanted to put it down. So this is what I want to use when my new Field Notes Dime Editions come. So these are really good. It's a very basic, you know, burgundy pencil. Silver Ferrell, white eraser. It looks like the ones you'd find in an office, you know, in various dozens. And, you know, it's price. It's not cheap, but for $1 each, you know, that's, you know, something to try out. If you've never been into pencils and want just a quality writing pencil, I was fascinated with it. And then on top of that,

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Guinea Mitsubishi makes another pencil that I've just stumbled on. It's called the Marksheet pencil, which I purchased that. It's a little bit fancier. It has, you know, nice dipped ends. It looks like a Tombow. It's really well done. And it's this nice, firm, dark pencil that I like. And so they don't ever get talked about in the pencil world that much. It's usually, you know, some of the, we all hear about black wings. In Japan, we hear about Tombows. I guess some of the main line uni pencils get talked about, but some of the lower end uni Mitsubishi pencils don't get talked about. And it's a really good pencil. So I wanted to bring those things up just because I've been using a lot of these things recently. And they're never like at the top of any list, but they're such enjoyable products. That's kind of what I love.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Right. And I think for a few of those, especially, like they, they're really good as like basic stuff. And I think the reason we don't talk about them too much anymore is we've mostly moved on, you know? Yep.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Right. And I don't want these things to get lost in the shuffle. So I think it's good to call them out. Exactly. And I get some emails about that sometimes, you know, like, hey, don't forget about, you know, some of the stuff you started on. I was like, you know, I use that stuff all the time, except it hasn't really changed.

'''Myke Hurley:''' It's not exciting, right? Like there's not a new thing to it, which makes you want to talk about it. So you're eventually just going to stop mentioning it, you know? Like I think that's, you know, I think that that is a perfectly valid thing.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' But I still use this stuff all the time. Obviously, like all this stuff was on my desk. And it's, you know, I get a lot of enjoyment from this, you know? That's why I do this anyway, you know, so I can find this $1 pencil that I'm absolutely fascinated with. And that brings us to the Ask TPA portion of the podcast, Myke. And I got a postcard that is an Ask TPA question. And anyone who would like to submit Ask TPA through the mail, you can go to the contact page at the Pen Addict. It's got my PO box on there. And I'd like to apologize to everyone who sent me stuff over the past probably two months. Because I appreciate the birthday cards from like a month ago that I just got last week. Because I have a lame excuse. And it's that the PO box is on the way to my kid's school. And during the summer, I don't go that way for anything. So I didn't go out of the way to go to the post office to the PO box if I wasn't necessarily looking for something specific. So it was filled with wonderful letters and boxes and packages. I had two of those key things where you have to go into the larger boxes to get out. I don't know how long they've been sitting there. So I felt kind of guilty. But now that I'm back on the school path, I'll be hitting the PO box quite regularly. So if you have Ask TPA, you can send it there. But this postcard came in. And it's from Corey. And it's actually a postcard. It's kind of like a pen company postcard, Myke, of the Koala Sunset. But that's not what this question is about. It's about kind of what I was just talking about with these underrated brands. It says, Hi, Brad. Why so much love lost for the Pentel Sleechy? I looked in the archive. You used to rave about this pen. Now you never even mention it. I'm writing this with a purple .25. Signo doesn't even have a .25, do they? Sincerely, Corey. So settle down there, Corey. Don't bang on the Uni too much. They do have a .28. But yeah, you're right about the Sleechy. And what happened with it was they never moved on from that skinny barrel. And that was going to be required for them to compete with the Signo DX, with this Uni Sarasa clip, with other micro gel pens, even the Pilot Hi-Tec C, which is probably its closest competitor. They write wonderfully. They're probably some of the best .3 writing pens and .25 gel ink pens that I've used. But they never upgraded the barrel to anything like very comfortable. They use that style of refill in some larger Pentel models. I forget the exact name of them off the top of my head. But they lack the tip sizes and colors that they use in the Sleechy. And then the Sleechy multi-pen just kind of tanked completely because it was technically poorly built and designed. It was not a good pen. So they've kind of ignored it. And then I've kind of ignored it right along with them. You know, if they're not going to put the effort into continuing what's a really, really good gel ink pen, I mean, they just get passed. And then that's what's happened here. So I appreciate that as TPA direct from the mailbox on this beautiful Canalea postcard. All right. So we have a few more, Myke. And this one I've been holding in the email inbox. And I keep forgetting to put it in here. And it's from good friend and supporter Lisa who wants to know, do your pens have nicknames or names of some kind? I feel like we've talked about this before, but I couldn't remember. It says, she says, all, most, some, or none of your pens. If so, examples, please. You want to go first?

'''Myke Hurley:''' I think mine are very famous. Yeah. For example, the Jonathan Brooks Sky at Night, which is a nickname that became a material name or a design name, which is the wonderful, I don't even know how to describe it. Like, it looks like Starry Night, the artwork, but I called it Sky at Night accidentally, and then it stuck. And then also the twist pen that I own, I don't know the name of it, so I call it the Mother of Pearl design. Mostly, this seems to happen to me when I forget the name of something. Yeah. And I don't know it, so I just make up a name that sticks. Like, I don't call my Pilot M90 Mary or anything, you know? Like, I don't give the names like that, but, like, if I, I do it because I want to be able to describe a pen to you, the listener. So, if I don't know a name, I'll just make it up, because that way I have a name, you know? That's kind of the way that I tend to do this stuff. But I do like, I love the names that I give to my pens whenever I do it.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' But, yeah, it seems like this is something I'd be really into, but I don't. I don't really name anything, you know, any inanimate object in my life. Although, like, I kind of think it's cool when people do, and they have a good story for it. But, like, I don't have a pen named Bob that I just kind of, you know, hangs out on my desk. And, you know, when I need to write an important letter, let me go grab Bob real quick. And, you know, because I know he's up for the job. It's kind of cool, but I just don't. I don't, I can't even think of any, like, anything. I'm trying to think of any single pen or pencil that I have that with, and I really don't. So, yeah, but I like it. So, if anyone has any pen pet names that they have, I don't just want to hear that. I want to hear the story behind it, because there's got to be a story behind it, right? Because I can't just go name a pen Bob now, because there's no real story behind it. There's got to be a reason he's called Bob. So, yeah, let me hear it. I'd be interested to see it, because I think it's kind of cool.