A second look at the Levenger fountain pen nib

A few days ago, I did a review of a replacement fountain pen nib for my Levenger True Writer, but I was surprised at how thick the line was that it laid down, especially when compared to the Levenger medium nib.  When I notified Levenger of the issue, they quickly sent out a new nib and a shipping slip to return the old one for free. One of the biggest reasons I like shopping with Levenger is because their customer service is so great, and this is just one example of how they will to whatever they can to make their customers happy.

In my original review I used some Private Reserve Velvet Black ink with the nib, so I thought the best way to do the follow-up review was to use the same ink.  I was excited when I got the new nib in the mail from Levenger because I’ve been dying to use the True Writer on a more regular basis because it is such a good-looking pen and its comfortable to write with.

First thing I had to do before I tried out my new nib though was to do a quick writing sample to compare to after I changed nibs.  One of the great things about these Levenger fountain pen nibs is that they are simple to swap out, which was really convenient for this review.  With the new nib in place and the same ink again, I quickly started to write on the same Levenger paper that I used with the previous nib, and the results were pretty surprising.  I actually ended up with a line from this nib that was no different from the original fine nib that I wasnt to thrilled with.

Writing sample of the two different fine sized Levenger nibs and comparison to a Pelikan fine size nib

In the scan above you can see how the comparison worked out.  I started out with the Private Reserve in both writing samples for an apples to apples comparison of the two nibs, and as you can see there was pretty much no difference.  I figured the next best thing to try was to load the pen up with some Levenger Cocoa ink that way I was using all Levenger brand products for the test.  Unfortunately the Levenger ink didnt exactly make a difference, I was still left with a line that was as wide as what I had with the previous fine nib, and even comparable to the medium size nib from Levenger.

The bottom half of the writing sample above shows a comparison of the Levenger fine nib and the Pelikan fine nib.  There is quite a difference between the two lines put down by these pens.  You can see that the Levenger nib writes almost twice as wide as the Pelikan.  I understand that there are variations between different fountain pen nibs from different manufacturers, so I really can’t complain here, because in this case the quality is evident by looking at the consistency of the two fine nibs when compared to each other.  Ill just have to hope that some day Levenger comes out with an extra fine nib, or I might also consider sending this one out to someone to get it made a little smaller.

At the end of the day, I’m still a big fan of Levenger because their products and customer service are second to none, I think we just have different opinions on how a fine size nib should write.

©2016, Brian Greene. All rights reserved.