I’m in love with the modern Pilot Elite, the E95s. I only got it a couple days ago, but it has not left my presence since — I’ve used it for my notes in class and my own journaling over those past few days — as it seems, to me, perfect for my needs. Perfectly pocketable at just under 4.25” capped, but close to 6” posted, the fine nib perfectly suits my handwriting style: I tend to write very small, very tight. It’s very light: arguably too light (I don’t have a scale handy, but it’s noticeably lighter than the Pilot Metropolitan that it’s replacing in my arsenal or the Lamy 2000 that has gone mostly unused since I acquired the Elite) and of course, it suffers from the ink capacity issues of Pilot’s cartridge-converter pens, so I’m likely going to stick with eyedroppering ink into the cartridge rather than going with a CON-40 converter: I believe the numbers are something like .9 mL of ink with the cartridge against .4 mL with the converter, which is a shame. I went with the (sadly now-discontinued, apparently) dark red or burgundy precisely because I wanted something that contrasted well against the black ink that I primarily use.

I’ll confess, I was considering continuing to collect some more fountain pens, but between this and the Lamy, I’m more than happy with what I’ve got so far, at least into the foreseeable. I’m frightfully boring in that I pretty much only have interest in using black ink: I’ve tried a couple of colored inks and I find them much less pleasant to read on the page compared to black. I don’t need a broader array of nib sizes: I don’t really vary the size of my writing, so having this as my mainstay writer and notetaker while the EF Lamy (which runs wider than this pen by a good margin) serves as a bold pen for emphasis or variety, and I just don’t see the need to get more pens. Maybe at some point down the line, I’ll pick up a second Elite to complement this one (maybe a medium nib or a vintage), or some variety of TWSBI for the reputed large ink-capacity of that firm’s pens, but I’m in no hurry to do so. So long as these pens are in good working order I think I’ll continue to write using these two primarily.

I’ll write again soon.