The Pen Addict 701/transcript

The Pen Addict Podcast Transcript
Episode:	701
Title:	I Like Froggo, So That's Good
Release Date:	January 30th, 2026
Hosts:	Brad Dowdy Myke Hurley
Guests:	No guests this episode
Additional Information
Official page:	Episode 701
Audio File:	Audio Episode 701
Podcast page:	The Pen Addict 701
Length:	5151 min <br />0.85 h <br /> minutes
Previous Transcript	Next Transcript

From Relay, this is The Pen Addict, episode 701. Today's show is brought to you by Squarespace and Pen Chalet. My name is Myke Hurley and I am joined by Brad Dowdy. Hi, Brad. What's up, Myke Hurley? How are you? I'm good. Yeah, I'm really good. Yeah, I think I am too. I'm mentally recovered from last week's episode. Oh, yeah. No, it was amazing, right? It was good. If you didn't listen to last week's episode, you probably should. I tidied that up for maximum impact, by the way. I thought you might have, and I have refused to go back and listen to it.

I wanted to make sure people understood what was going on, you know, that you really were shedding some tears. Yeah, I was definitely like locked down for like a long time. Yeah, good man. So, yeah. That's what we love you for. Yeah, so got it. Obviously, got a bunch of emails and everyone. Yeah, just kind of like, you know, appreciated that we do this and it's more than a podcast about pens, which is what I like to say. You know, it's definitely a podcast about people and about us and about life.

And we take that seriously and we just have fun with doing this and we're glad y'all are along for the ride. Like, that's the most important thing, right? It's fun. We're lucky we get to do this and we're super, super grateful that y'all like hearing us yap about pens. Speaking of both things, both the people and the pens, Tim wrote in and said, I've been catching up on the show and I had a thought on the NIM material discussion related to gold and looking for alternatives. Schaefer used a palladium silver alloy for decades with some of their lower end models that have held up well over time.

They have been, they were replaced by steel when stainless steel got good enough since it was cheaper. But it might warrant another look by pen manufacturers as a middle ground between gold and steel now that there is such a huge price gap to fill. Yeah, I think we'll continue to see some of this experimentation. Like when Tim brought this up, it wasn't that long ago that Visconti used a palladium nib for their higher end fountain pens. This is probably, they probably stopped five or six years ago, something like that.

Maybe the late 20 teens where they switched over to 14 karat gold because they were having so many problems with those nibs and it was a big QC issue. So I don't know if that was a materials, you know, they were having trouble with the materials or just a QC issue with palladium. So I just, I do think we're going to see companies continue to experiment with other things and who knows, who knows how it's all going to shake out. And yeah, there was a time where like stainless steel, like back in the days, you know, and we'll talk about it in a minute on Tokyo Inklings.

Like gold was the standard because stainless gold was inexpensive, you know, back in the early 1900s. And for a while there, that was the easiest thing to make nibs from because the stainless steel was actually poor quality, right? It would end up rusting. It was just not combined with quality materials to make a good performing nib. So, and now that's kind of switching and we'll see what comes out of this era in fountain pens. And I imagine we're going to see something like in the next decade kind of take over a little bit and see, you know, what other materials we can get in.

So yeah, it was good. It was good. So speaking of Tokyo Inklings, they, this is the podcast I've been waiting for to handle a lot of the Japanese market price increase talk because CY and Jacob are in that market and are very in tuned with what's going on with, you know, a lot of the public filings from like sailor and pilot, you know, Jacobs, you know, definitely in like the financial realm and has always done a great job of it breaking down. They've been digging down. was a good one y'all should go check it out a couple of points i wanted to bring up that i

thought were interesting um so they were talking about how the japanese pens like they mentioned how we talked about how these companies just kind of flat out refuse to raise prices a lot of times right as a as a just like that's what we do in japan we don't do this right but obviously times have changed and now they're kind of getting caught behind and cy's point or maybe it's jacob's point i think it was cy was that these now the gold nib prices let's just take pilot for example for ease of conversation pilots gold nib prices are actually now just in line with the rest of the world

right so they've actually just always been more of a value and now they're in line with the rest of the world and while i don't disagree with that at all and i'm sure that's what the corporate you know people are saying like it's still like a perception issue from the customer right the customer sees the massive percent increases and and kind of just like panics a little bit yeah it's like one of those things where the the reality can be different from the perception it's like you always had a like the their products were excellent within their price bracket because they were underpriced

right but that doesn't change the perception people have on the product just because you now fairly price well now you're going to be judged way harsher yes to the products that are around you and i would say as i've always said about these products i don't think that they've been daring enough in design over time compared to products that are more expensive so now if they're in that bracket they're going to feel that comparison way more where i think they sold more because they were more fairly priced with the quality yeah but one good thing to think about or interesting thing to

think about that cy brought up five years from now if you like we don't know what the prices are going to be like in five years but if somehow we fall into balance in the world and pricing and we just have like normal price increases five years from now are these prices going to look normal and i actually kind of agree that they probably will right this will it'll become like time is going to just make this the acceptable this is what the price is for a gold nib pen and it won't be the issue that it is now

yes i mean so what we're saying is that they're going to fall back into their bad business we'll see we'll see um cy did give a huge shout out to the pilot light of which i thought was hilarious and and i'm i'm super excited that he does like that so that's the pilot explorer that we talk about it's it's different it's you know like a lot of products they're named differently in different parts of the world uh but the pilot explorer he said that's like one of the best pens going right now it's like a it's about a 30 fountain pen and they just come out with some

new colors i'm gonna get some of the new colors i really really enjoy the the pilot light of and then i um to see see why was funny he was he was saving his spicy takes towards the end and i had to text him when i was done i was like okay he's gonna he's gonna tell me how wrong i am now and i was like man you agreed with pretty much everything i was saying there was wasn't spicy at all i think i think we actually agree on pretty much um pretty much everything the only thing i did want to just clarify and it's not like there's no point in doing like a point-to-point thing like we've we're both on

record saying like the things that we believe in i i hugely support retailers like i don't want that to be misconstrued that we shouldn't be supporting our retailers i think i actually think the retailers are like the number one stalwart in this stationery business that keeps this whole whole thing going like they're the ones putting the risk they're the ones that have the risk in bringing in these products and uh they should absolutely be supported by all of us i think my questions for retail was

twofold one how are retailers going to handle the higher cost of inventory and two how are retailers going to handle the gaps in the um in the product lineups that they now have like between 100 and 300 right so like i was i think that's my only questions about retail retail should be the absolute focus honestly because they put so much into not just building their own businesses but building the communities and educating and you know assisting and helping and repairing and fixing and i think they're just they're kind of like the cog that drives the whole thing to be quite honest

um without the retailers like we're probably not doing this doing the show because we just wouldn't have access to as much stuff and um so yeah i definitely believe retailers are kind of the key to this whole thing so i hope it i hope it does work out um to where they can you know kind of figure things out it's it's definitely a big change for them and like i said i don't even know that we're going to know anything this year i think it's probably going to take a year or two to shake out and see how these retailers um kind of handle this change so i think an important detail that you missed out

is how um they agreed with me more than you on the episode i think that it's important pretty much that we put that into perspective and also note that you didn't mention that on your own fair fair um i mean you know i can i mean i can only be so right mike yeah you know that's a really good point and it's also best for you not to mention when you're not you know like and then the rest of it i don't know what you're talking about yeah the rest of it it doesn't really matter to be honest well this actually is a good tie-in because um i had i got a follow-up email i've been

holding for like a month um was this was basically uh brad you were wrong email um and which is is so right like when i read this email i was like oh my gosh you're exactly right this is a thing so this goes back to we're like taking a hard turn here we're going back to like the secure pigma micron barrels and the general fineliner design and how i talk about how fineliner grip sections are generally poor right no one makes a really good fineliner grip section and then i got this email let's see who's this from i i again i didn't i didn't put this in the in the notes mike i'm not

going to cry during this one so you don't have to cover me right uh but it was a long one um but john sent me this email and it was like a smack head moment i was like you are so right this is exactly what happened or or why this is the case so let me read this and it's gonna it's gonna i'm gonna i'm gonna start with the platitudes first and because you know we have to so john says well i've been a fan of you and your show for a long time i just recently started listening to the podcast again i recently changed jobs and now have a 40 minute commute each way in which i try to fill

with good music or podcasts so we're we're officially good podcasts mike i recently heard episode 695 there's scissors in here mike which is a great great episode title where you talk about how great the secure pigma microns are even though you don't like the grip you mentioned why the grips are designed in this way if they are uncomfortable and i may have a reason but i have not found proof to back it up yet i actually think he did uh give proof and i have some images in uh that we'll put in the show notes that john sent over and it's just like yes this is absolutely why so john says

i went to school for drafting mostly for the design of mechanical parts and in the beginning of my career i was designing things on a drafting table one of those really big ones with the mechanical t squares along this i had a complement of tools one being a professional set of compasses that i still have and i use these along with a set of repeatograph technical pins which we've talked about a bunch and those pins are super finicky fine and uniform lines but they are just a pain so john says i switched

to secure pigma microns because they were just as good and without all the fuss and the compass set came with an attachment that allowed me to use the fineliners like the pigma microns in the same way i use these along technical pins so i'm going to stop right here without reading the whole rest of the email this is exactly why they did this so he sent over an image of the fitting and that's why these pins are designed this way and it was just literally like a smack head moment like it's such a rare and unique

thing because no one drafts at tables like this anymore with these this type of tool set but this is exactly why and once he sent that over i remember seeing this and yes but i still agree with your point what's like this i mean it's great that this is the reason they were made that way yeah but it's not how they're being used today so they should make them more comfortable to hold and use than the way they're made i agree but at least have a reason now why they're this way but yes it's been decades

since this has been a common tool set for anyone to use so why don't they change and that i don't i can't answer that but yeah it was literally a tool that wraps around these grip sections and that's why other companies copied the micron because they had to fit these tool sets that's why like you know you look at like the statler pigment fineliner and some of these other companies it's the exact same shape on the front end and we're so beyond that point like i feel like they could change like the

kuretaki zig mangaka one of the reasons why i like it is because it doesn't have that grip um that sharp grip section but yeah this is exactly why they're made so we put a um put a couple of images that uh john sent me and yeah like i get it like and and you're right mike like okay we can we can not do we cannot do this right but i think it's just it's one of those things that's so ingrained with people right now where it's not a big enough issue to change what a product that people love like the micron is a beloved pen right even though people will go yeah that kind of

digs into my finger a little bit because now it's like people are buying them and using them anyway so you don't need to change it and then also you're not going to upset the people that are still using them on drafting tools and drafting tables right so you just kind of just leave it as it is but i think i think it would be better for their customers to i mean even to have like a separate barrel that's like a thing that lots of companies do right this is that's exactly what i was gonna say we're

gonna put the same refill in a different barrel you know like look at the kuretoga right it's like the same mechanism in like 20 different things at this point yep and you start morphing that design and then kind of transitioning as you go and then you know you know eventually charge more money for it because why not you know what i mean like that one well that's why they made this that's why they made the sleeve the 20 sleeve that goes over it that has a different grip different grip section but

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penaddict to get 10% of your first purchase and show your support for the show or thanks to squarespace for their support of this show and all the relay all right mike we got our shout out of the week shout out of the week nice i like that one on the paper on the paper trail podcast mike our good friends lisa vaness from vaness penco and joe craze from the gentleman stationer have their podcast out in the wild now uh you can subscribe to it via rss which is the one true podcast format uh it's not a podcast unless it has an rss feed mike uh but they're also on youtube so you can go

check them out so um they're a couple episodes into it and if y'all aren't aware do y'all need to go subscribe in in all the places and check them out joe just had a sit down uh in in snowmageddon recently in nashville uh matthew chen was over there grinding nib so joe got some time to to spend with him sit down do a video talk about nib grinding so y'all should go check that out we'll have the link in the show notes to where you can go follow all the things so good job by them really really i just love that new podcasts can still about pens can still be made in the year of 2026 that's what

excites me yeah more pen podcasts please no no one well okay less pen podcasts uh then there can be some but like some just not all just not all we don't need all the competition brad yeah settle down everybody settle down all right one a year one one new podcast a year all right so this podcast a year all right so we're gonna officially stamp their card uh they're the one and and they're the card carry they got in early which is the way to do it because there will be no more this year so no more this year okay so so stay stay tuned to future shout out of the weeks there will be no

no more podcasts until 2027 until 2027 it's not about the shout out of the week brad is that there will be no more we're not we're not going to allow it okay we get to approve it i'm glad everyone has to come through exactly it's about time they let brad do some gatekeeping you know what i mean it's about time you know me man we we we keep it behind the walls here we don't let anyone in um speaking of one per year mike uh it's finally the year of 2026 and the hobonichi techo app launched oh man post post uh january 1st uh what were you're already o-manning this so do you do you have

anything to say like from the job just in that they they did it right like i just think that i just think they shouldn't have shipped it this year well yes that is going to be the theme of what i'm about to say so to the begin to just from the jump i'm not really this type of app person right this isn't made for me but i wanted to try this because obviously hobonichi is big in our space and seeing how they've done like such a great job with their notebooks analog tools planners all that stuff like and built like just a huge booming business of of this stuff uh it makes sense that they would have an app

um it's super it's not broken but it is definitely unfinished and so when you download this app it is now available on ios and android they just had the android release like a couple days after like a wider android release it was already available on android but oh more countries available as of like a couple days ago um it's very weird in that they shipped an app with areas that you readily go into that say coming soon oh really see i haven't yeah so like you can scroll down like if i'm just on say i'm open up today

friday january 30th and then you can go into that and you scroll down one of the cool things they're going to have is like your five-year journal you'll be able to see last year's entry well guess what i don't need to see i can't see 2025 one year ago it just says coming soon right like don't ship with this like every page that i go to shows me a year ago that doesn't could not have existed because the app didn't exist and it just says coming soon this feature is being prepared as a special treat for the second year please wait a little longer so you got to look at coming soon

literally every day and then there's a um kind of a point kind of like the the gamification part of it when you do certain tasks it's called omake so you collect these little like jelly beans in a jar well if you want to go redeem them like i have 120 you got to redeem them up coming soon we're preparing a small gift for collecting omake please wait a little bit longer like there's so much like you can't ship an app with all this you can if you do it in the middle of the year okay sure right no i mean i'm being serious like yeah if this is a product that they want to build in

public with some user feedback maybe yeah you don't do this at the beginning of journaling time yeah right you do it in the middle of the year and you're asking people to kind of help you and give it give advice how would they want to use it so then november december of this year now we're into 1.0 version of the techo app and it's ready for the customer base all of them for next year like to do it now when it is still very much journaling time like people are still making the decisions or they're

like i don't like the one that i have you know we're still in journal season like maybe for like another day right like i mean once you get into february no no no the um the uh april starts just shipped so they're out in the april starts are out in the retailers now so yes april so okay we can do it now then we take a break for another two months and we do it again i just think that like that this model of like building in public is it is common enough and it's fine enough but you don't do it when your app is tied to a particular time of year and you launch it then you know like i feel like if

they launch this in the summer they can build it out for november and then do the big unveiling is not yeah because this was supposed to come out two months ago and it's not finished now right you know so it's not great it's not yeah which is a shame because i think the idea is so good yes yeah i will get to some good stuff here yeah i'm sure like yeah yeah it's basically like your journaling app it's gonna you can choose a daily cover based on you know what images or photos one one thing that i do find a little bit strange and maybe this is just a me thing

so when you there's like you know like any apple have like say if they have an image right you can hit plus to add something from your photo library you can't take a picture uh from within the app which i thought was a little bit weird because i don't keep a like a lot of stuff in my photo library like i'm pretty you know tame on not shooting a lot of pictures so i don't have a lot of things to draw from but if i'm going to go into the app and i'm gonna say hey i'm doing this thing right now boom and i'm within the app and can take the picture you can't do that yeah it just it

feels like they've not you have to go outside building this but maybe they they don't have someone who's truly thinking through the user work like the user flow of this application because i kept looking for what i was missing there yes if you look at any app right that has this kind of functionality it will be a picker between take a picture add a picture right right this is how all apps are like right like if you're adding a a receipt into an expense tracking app or whatever right take a picture or add from the library yep yeah not great man so i kept looking for this like

did i not give the right permissions i kept looking for the setting it's like no i just i just don't um the other parts are fine you know the general you know how was your day prompts um it's got a lot of location tracking like if you were out in mobile like the location tracking would be fine like to see the places you were you know but a bunch of data collection that way but like i don't need that there is a character based prompt mike which i think is actually kind of fun you can choose one of three

characters to be basically your buddy within the app so uh i have frogo and right now frogo every day every time you like pull up a new screen frogo has like a new comment right now frogo says to me maybe forgotten single sock hiding somewhere so you know all right frogo okay what is i i don't i i don't know okay why would the job lap say that to you i don't know i don't that's it's not the journal app mike it's frogo that's a good point silly me that's really weird man yeah that's kind of that's kind of the

thing that's making me uh enjoy this app so far is i just really want to see what frogo says but you can just like reset him every day like i can just close the app and let's see he'll say something else here hang on all right maybe something hiding somewhere yeah relaunching oh okay here we go instead of good morning frogo's haiku eat persimmon frog jumps into pond cicada's voice wow let's go frogo frogo's frogo's found his emo streak i know right yeah so uh hiding somewhere yeah so there's a there's a lion and then there's like a a dog i think or the i wonder if they say

different things i mean surely they would right because the lion's not going to talk about frogs and eating persimmon true i guess true so they have to have a lot of they got a they have a pretty big database i haven't seen a duplicate yet even though like it's only been like a week yeah but anyway uh i like frogo so that's good um you know i think a lot of people will enjoy this it is you know i'm just using the free version there's paid versions and you know you do have to pay to export your data which is i think is always a bad decision but um you know they're using yeah

you can't export your data unless it's it's exporting data is behind the paywall which is that's not good that's not i mean that's not don't do that yeah and then there's you know you pay for storage and cloud storage and stuff that's fine because that actually does cost money to do that yeah yeah and then they have the memory print services where you can take like the images that you have in there and you can print them like pre-sized for your different hobonichi notebooks right so to like anyone can use like those different printing apps and use like the

little kodak printers to print from their photo roll from their camera roll um but this will actually size it into like nice whatever hobonichi product you might have it'll fit to print there so it's got some cool features like this yeah yeah yeah yeah so i think a lot of people are or will really like this it is really like it's it's definitely more intense than just like a traditional journaling app there's like lots of things going which i think a lot of hobonichi users would appreciate right so

it's got a lot of those tie-ins so i don't know we'll see it's it's definitely uh undercooked so far um i i just don't like you said like if you're still working on this i don't want to see all your coming soon stuff in the app i just want it to not be there until it's ready that's a very good point too yeah you don't need to show it to me yeah yeah it's because it's in every screen that i want to go to is a come is a coming soon feature and it's like just stop just take that out and like you know feature map hey here's the feature here's when this is going to be you should or at least have

frogo doing the under construction thing yeah frogo i think frogo is i think actually frogo is like should be working instead of telling me to go find the missing socks yeah okay here we go answer in two seconds what floor this i mean this is the ground floor i guess but and and friday brad you took too long to answer you took too long sorry frogo i was more anxious because frogo is doing a yoga pose this time okay what floor this yeah i don't know i think ground floor anyway safe to say there's some translation issues yeah is it safe to say anything i'm just

gonna go and write down what frogo the words of frogo was frogo wisdom and just keep track of frogo's daily wisdom uh in that but yeah um go go check it out if you're interested it's it's definitely not something i've seen before and i think there are going to be people who kind of kind of find it to be pretty cool and useful i want to see this like fully fleshed out and see how someone's using it because like for me it's it's like a non-starter like i would not use this app it just doesn't provide any benefit to me but i think a lot of people could uh could find some some good

usage out of this and it's you know it looks fun you do you know you have to give it like literally all the permissions in the world just like a most journaling apps so uh you know so just be aware of that and yeah i don't know take a look i'd be curious if anyone does really like dive into this like a few months from now and i'd be interested to see how it's going for them um probably not gonna have a follow-up for me on this one although although frogo already frogo is already like you know ingratiating himself to me so he's making his way into your heart uh i have a question for you

though um what i what i wonder is do you think anybody who doesn't use a hobonichi would find value in this app marginally but you're just gonna find better apps there's too much hobonichi tie-in um with the paid portion for the free portion i think you would be fine like doing your regular tracking and journaling i think yeah i think you'd be fine i think you could use it um just for for any uh paid services you're probably going to want to be a hobonichi customer right okay so speaking of which speaking of which one last thing it does require an account to sign up i already had a

hobonichi account from purchasing things from them so that's the same account but i don't think you can test it without creating an account so that's a thing yeah yeah i know that bothers some people but yeah i just thought i'd bring that up because yeah yeah but like i literally already have a hobonichi account from years ago and i was like i wonder if that works and it's like boom yep that works that's fun all right should we take a break and then we've got some more news to get onto i think let's do it yeah this episode is brought

to you by our friends over at pen chalet they sell authentic amazing roller balls fountain pens ballpoints mechanical pencils and so much more they have your favorite brands and that brand list just gets bigger and bigger all the time because they're always adding new styles of pens every single month and new uh accessory products too so you can get inks carrying cases refills holders converters everything you're going to need for your pen life they do fast and reliable customer service they run special discounts twice a month and close out specials every two weeks pen chalet

ship internationally with great shipping rates but they also do free shipping on orders over 75 dollars in the united states pen chalet has low prices on high quality pens of a 100 satisfaction guarantee so go to penchalet.com slash pen addict right now and you'll get 10 you got the code that you need to save 10 on anything at pen chalet and see a selection of special exclusive offers for listeners of this show what have we got brad well can i just say before we get started um in in some of the um the stuff on our podcast page they do such a good job pen chalet does with all their um store

exclusives like there's always i i'm looking at like their home page and just going through i was like oh there's a new one and then you go to the next page and like there's a new one and uh they just do a really really good job with that so let me i've gone too many pages now so let me go let me go back and see oh they have they have the new colors of the pilot explorer which i need to buy right that's the light of that i was talking about let's see what i was talking about but they have a new monteverde

uh sonoran desert ink they have where did it go the pages are moving too fast a new tono and limbs ink lineup so yeah anyway lots of cool stuff over there and you get that 10 code that you can use on this stuff too yeah oh and the van demons ink special edition monthly oh this is this 100 milliliter bottle sorry i'm very distracted by all this stuff yeah they have a lot of new stuff in there and this is a pretty wild looking ink so yeah that's very cool um they also have a bunch of gift with purchases now uh on the pen attic page so there's different uh pilot um gifts with purchase

depending on like the types of pilot pins you buy you can get extra pilot pins like extra metropolitans or metropolitan ballpoints things like that um with decimo purchases custom heritage purchases so they have a lot of that going on right now and some some combo deals uh obviously a bunch of the ink samples which we're big fans of and trying things out and um and again i mentioned the pilot explorer y'all should go check this pen out it's a really great great price and then you get our discount on top of that um and they just launched some new colors of this which i was always curious

what pilot was going to do with this product when it launched it's like is this going to be a continuation product right are they going to continue to lean into it and there's like five new colors this year so uh definitely go check that out over at penchelet.com i'll put a link in a show notes to the uh to the explorer specifically so people can go and check that out so go to penchelet.com p-e-n-c-h-a-l-e-t.com slash penaddict our thanks to penchelet for their support of this show and relay okay so we have

obviously talked about all these price increases uh this past few months and platinum 3776 is one of the big ones right it had one of the biggest jumps platinum did come out with what i'm calling a spec upgrade it's a new formula mike uh it's a new rule set here for the platinum 3776 going forward they made a lot of changes to the pen and it's obviously much much better the interesting part why i was hanging up there is like it's it's already a really good pen right they've done a very good job it's like what can they change on this design so this is kind of like the base level design and they're

announcing it as part of the 3776 version 2.0 demonstrator so they're letting this they're running this demonstrator out here to show all the new changes that they have and this is like a 2000 um 2000 unit limited edition pen um it's 480 dollars it's pretty expensive obviously that's the new going 3776 right but they changed a bunch of things so one platinum already had kind of the best slip and seal cap mechanism to help your help the nib not dry out when it's capped which can be a problem on some pens so mike they have changed this they have improved this from two years worth of

sealing to three years airtight performance now mike so 50 improvement brad 50 improvement so we've gone from three years to two years on slip and seal performance look it was already the best right and they've made the best even better they have made so what that means is you could you could put the cap on take it off and in three years it'll still work yes and i haven't tried it for that length of time because i'm not keeping yeah i should time capsule it it works yeah like all the way from the platinum preppy they they offer this in that type of pen like this is a pro this is a feature

that does work right it's not just marketing although i don't know who's keeping these for two and three years to to test them but um anytime i've had a platinum pen it it's never had an issue uh with with drying out no matter how long it's it's been sat unused so um they've gone even more transparent in their transparent barrels right the clarity is clearer um the there's a ring section at the back end of the barrel that's sealed tighter um interesting thing they did a change it's kind of along with the

slip and seal performance and i know no one probably cares about all this stuff but i do because it's a lot of little changes so in the tops of platinum 3776 pins before the slip and seal mechanism you could see like in the top finial you could see the the nut and like hardware that kind of screwed down that mechanism and that's just kind of been redesigned to where you don't see that at all so like the top finial is very clear now which is just a better look so i was looking at my pins when we were talking about this is like yeah you can see this um on the pins that i have and it's not

really there anymore and it just works differently now so refined design along with a the gold nib mike has the traditional mount fuji shape lines on there they've already had that in the past and now they've just kind of changed it and give it a little bit more detail i actually kind of prefer the older one but the new one's completely fine as well so anyway all of this is to say is platinum is working on you know making these pins even more and more stable and durable and where i've never really had a problem oh they did say a stronger grip section which i think some people

are saying that um they've had experience like cracking in the grip section i've never seen that you've had one or you've had one yeah um like in the plastic um towards the nib like yes like the closest part to the nib okay i think that's what people were saying kind of like the cuff i guess okay like that i've had mine crack and the problem with it when that cracks is the ink gets in gotcha so i think people have been saying that was an issue so they have um upgraded that area and you can tell there's like now like a a ridge you can see inside the barrel in the grip section so it looks

like it's maybe kind of almost like a doubled up type of thickness there in that area so maybe just stabilize that a little bit more so i think that has been a thing uh that people are seeing in the past so yeah all good stuff from platinum and no reason to bring this up other than not a lot of people do this much work on their their standard pen and this is their standard pen these days the 3776 kind of entry level gold nib pen um so i i do find this interesting i wanted to talk about it even though you know a lot of people might just like shrug and it's like oh that's okay they're gonna

they're gonna keep working on this and i i do appreciate that that that they're doing this um especially now it's like even even more expensive prices yeah i mean if you're gonna put the price up and stuff right then um yeah do this right make me feel like i'm getting a better product because of it exactly exactly so interesting i'll be interested to get one of these in hand at a pen show to see if i can actually physically tell any difference um so i'll like next time i go to a pen show i'll bring one of mine existing ones and see if i can tell just a substantial difference because i have

like a base level blue one um that should should mimic what this one's doing except like version 1.0 versus 2.0 i'll be interested to see if i can tell a difference so anyway that was that um i wanted to shout out the shop around the world article on the pen addict this week from sam who um played a little game with me at the dc pen show last year and then i promptly forgot to write about it for months but i gave him a budget and a goal to go shop around the world and he uh he took that to heart and i wanted to bring this up because this is actually something you can do when you're going

to a pen show you can do at your house i like having these little games i can play with my stationery to you know either put together a certain type of kit you know maybe you want to like a tiny travel kit or maybe you want to like in this case use as many stationery products from as many different countries as possible right or figure out you know some common theme in your stationery and have fun with it right like this is all supposed to be fun this is fun stuff and you know doing a kit like this

is fun um you know i'm always thinking about like travel kits that's just kind of my thing is i don't think i've ever taken the same travel kit twice because i'm kind of always changing my idea of what i want in a travel kit so i think about that a lot so i just wanted to point that out uh y'all go check out that article if you haven't already and uh i think it's just it's fun stuff a fun way to have um you know kind of re-energize your stationery usage at home or going to a pen show or anything like

that and then mike i went and caused trouble good trouble i like to say i caused good trouble with my pilot oroshizuku tier list which i uh did on stream this week and i gotta say it was a blast um so we'll have the results of my tiering i also shared it on instagram it's not easy to see the small writing in there so we'll have a link in the show notes to an image like you can embiggen on your own computer um any thoughts on this one mike i know you don't use a ton of the roshizuku inks i know you have one that you use pretty regularly that we've thought about in the past

and i put i put fuyugaki in its in its proper place on on the c tier and i just i didn't know what you thought about that i don't agree with that and what the thing i would like to ask first i noticed this when you posted on instagram what is this system that you use to make the tier list so it just so happened i've always saved kind of like tier list links yeah and just so happened last week on mastodon someone i'll have to go figure out who to give credit to but they said hey i created this i wanted to make a good a new tier list site and i think it's just called good tier list.com let

me go see if that because it looks really nice they did a great job and it's very clean and simple and oh shoot i'm gonna have to i'll find the link for you um but i think it's just called good tier list but i don't have the exact url you put fuyugaki in the wrong spot too high you're i gotta hate you where else so i'm looking for okay kong pecky there's there's a couple i want to talk about yeah i would i would i would bump kong pecky and fuyugaki both up one so i you put kong pecky in b i would put that in a and i would put fuyugaki in b it's a good ink it's not it's not that great and

orange is fine right like it's good but i think it's better than c tier um i'm sure there's a there's a more bright pink than the ones i'm looking at here so they've they kind of discontinued one of the really good pinks that's um i think uh last year and put in the lighter lighter pink i've not used yamabudo i struggle to just looking at the swatch that's in this image to see how that's an s tier personally but maybe it's different if you use it in the pen so that's another thing is there's no good swatches of these things while i was doing this so

we took these swatches from jet pins just because it was like a very consistent you know about mountain of ink thing so we went so i compared them as i was going to to the mountain of ink swatches and they were pretty good like they were much they were much better so right um so yeah um the the tier list is called quick tier list mike and it came from uh from birch tree who is birch tree oh matt birchler matt yeah matt birchler okay um he shared this like a week ago and i was like oh my god this is the tier list page i've been looking for it's just super clean even has a streamer mode to where

you can put the um you can kind of shift it so your camera so your head's not covering the screen kind of thing and it has some colors so yeah it's super it was super good so i should actually probably uh linked to him that i used it and and shared it so it was it's definitely been like the best one i've found so far so really good um okay so the grief i got was and again this is my list right so this is obviously my rankings and everyone can can disagree they do um one of the questions is why is shinkai

an a and not an s and that's a very good question because i i still love shinkai it's it's one of the best things out there but what happened and is that this is actually the genesis of this tier list was i was going through my hobonichi five-year journal and i'm into the fourth year now on it so i see three entries above the current entry that i'm writing and not once but twice recently have i looked at a previous entry and gone what ink is that and both times it was sukiyo oh interesting so you are yeah when you're detached from it you're like oh hello well you will yeah exactly and then so

what i do is so the way i write my entries is um i'll just pick any pen and then i might use it for three or four entries in a row right say if i'm using a fountain pen i might use three or four entries in a row the same pen on the first entry with a new ink i'll write down what ink it is so i can go back and refer but i don't write that on every entry okay so yeah i saw this i was like dang what ink is that and i flip back oh sukiyo yeah i love that ink it's great and then it happened again and i was

like well i guess this is the ink that is really my favorite and so i was like well if that's the case does it does it um compete with shinkai and it's like i think it's it's it's a little bit better for me than shinkai so that's was kind of the whole start i was like well if that's what i'm thinking nowadays let me kind of put all these together and so something like yamabudo like that's one of my favorite colors to use is like those hot pinks the kind of the magenta purpley pinks and that's just one of the good ones and that's just the color i use most commonly then everything in the a tier

is just a great great ink i use toro a lot um which is the yellow orange um so yeah you know what actually i have a new problem with you okay that you put you yakai over fuyukaki oh yeah that's always been our argument that is no wrong wrong like you can go back to like episode i don't know no i won't go back i'm just gonna tell you right now that you're wrong yeah we've had this fight since the early days yeah yeah well you're wrong though so and it's always it what's the funny thing is you yakai isn't that great it's just better than you're absolutely wrong it's just a shame

and i guess the funny thing is your logo is is closer to fuyukaki than it is yaki i would say yeah i would agree which is funny because you given a choice you would tie your personal brand to fuyukaki but you won't rank it true true yeah fuyukaki like this sample again it's a sample specific thing it's when you put down it put it down heavier it's got some really like weird peachy kind of reddish undertones that i just i don't like i don't like um the one ink i got the most grief on and i'm very strong in my stance and i actually want to push it down even more is in the c tier

all the way to the right on this image is an ink called fuyu so you gun which is a gray i hate that ink it should probably be d tier and i got a lot of grief on that one um a lot of people love believing to put it in c tier no no because i'm i'm getting yelled that it should be s and a tier so no i feel pretty good about c and i might actually i actively dislike that ink it's just not as bad as the two inks and d tier which are just illegible so i'm coming at this if you did this in a like i did this from a writing perspective right how do i like these inks in my nibs and i haven't

tried a hundred percent of these but i've tried most of them how do i like them from a writing perspective and i'd say anything from b on up is great is great in the pen and i enjoy it and everything c and d is like i just i don't really want to write with this if you had other applications like if you were drawing or doing some more artistic inky applications like you would probably change a lot of these around but um there are some fuyu so you gun lovers out there that really got in me uh about that ranking but i'm that's one i'm confident in i've never liked that ink it's just

such a weird color i want it to be graphite gray but it's like this weird cloudy i don't know doesn't really work for me color it's got some weird shades to it and i don't know a lot of people love it though so that was that was the one i got the most feedback on i think was that and then shinkai could move up one and then compact you can move up one and i think that's about it otherwise i'm very confident in this list i have like literally no changes if anything for you so you gun would go down to d tier that's about it you gotta stand strong to your beliefs i'm very strong i put that

i put it out into the world and took the heat and like there's nothing i would change about this at all well i'm gonna put a link in the show notes so people can uh can go so you can see that see the ambiguan image and also the uh quick tier list um which was very fun so you have you download your own images and then you can just pop them in there and shovel them around as you need and uh yeah pretty good good stuff if you'd like to see those show notes they should be in your podcast app but you can also go and see them on the web over at relay.fm slash pen addict slash 701

that's where you find the links to all of our sponsors and to what we're doing but you can go online and find brad over at penaddict.com spoke design.com twitch.tv slash pen addict um you can find me uh here on relay at cortexbrand.com and the enthusiast.net i would like to thank pen chalet and squarespace for their continued support of this show but most of all i would like to thank you for listening uh until next time brad what floor this two you you