Montblanc 146 reviewed by John (revised version)

This was my first serious fountain pen. I received this pen about 10 years ago while I was working as a bankruptcy consultant. At the time, I was decrying the uniformity of dress and action in my firm. I rebelled in various ways (none of which would get me fired). I chose ridiculously colorful and highly patterned socks to go with my gray and blue suits. I also chose splashy floral ties whenever possible. Choosing a big impractical fountain pen seemed like the logical next step. My wife got the Montblanc for me for my birthday shortly after we were married. It was easily the most expensive gift she had given me up to that point and it was clear that it meant a lot to her that I enjoyed this pen.

Of course, having very little experience with fountain pens, working with a balky Montblanc s not an introduction I'd advise a beginner to undertake. Indeed, the pen seriously put my love to the test. On being completely filled (with the recommended Montblanc black ink -- yuck), the pen had a bad habit of sweating ink all over the section and the inside of the cap; thereby creating the dreaded Montblanc ink bomb. There were about a half dozen times (including in a meeting with an important client) where I suffered the ill effects of this. The pen was also a lousy flier. The probability of an ink bomb following flight was about 100%.

It turned out that there was an easy fix for this problem. At some point I switched from Montblanc to Waterman ink (mostly because I thought it was nicer) and that completely solved the problem. For seven years, the pen has been ink bomb free!

Although others have talked about the fragility of Montblanc pens, I have not found that to be the case. My pen has been dropped more times than I'd care to remember with no damage to the cap, barrel, or section. There was, however, a disastrous incident where the pen nose dived off the desk and into a plastic rug protector thing. This shattered a part of the feed and tore off one of the tines of the nib. Essentially, this rendered the nib a total loss and I had my good friends at Montblanc replace it (for $150 -- ouch!)

The new nib turned out to be smoother and wetter than the original. Indeed, it was so wet that I did some very minor tweaking to dry it out. This pen is the smoothest writer in my stable at this point. There is practically no friction at all in writing. The downside, however, is that the wetness of the line makes a mess on any but high quality paper. At this point, I use the pen exclusively for entries in my Clairefontaine journal - where it is very much in its element.

The body of the pen is the classic Montblanc style. In all physical respects, length, width, and weight, the 146 is close to the Pelikan M800 (although more tapered and aerodynamic). The weight is perfect for me -- I have never been excessively fatigued from writing with this pen. Even after ten years of more or less daily use, the "precious resin" is as lustrous and beautiful as it was the day I opened it as a gift.

To sum up, the pen, while quite expensive, is really attractive and of extremely high quality. Amazingly, it's become much better than when I first got it. The nib is smoother, it's less balky in feeding ink. It's very reliable-- no skips, immediate starts, and so on. I'm not sure that I'd buy it for myself because of the price, but I'm really happy my wife gave it to me. Plus, every time I use it, I think of her -- which is also nice.

Montblanc Writer's Series: Marcel Proust reviewed by John

As a rule, I don't buy limited edition pens. I have two reasons for this. First, I don't really see the point of fountain pens as an investment compared to other investment instruments. Although I have no data to support this, I would conjecture that investing in stocks over the long haul yields a consistently higher return probably with less risk and is certainly a more liquid investment instrument. Second, I think the whole point of owning a pen is to write with it. Limited editions are antithetical to this in two ways. First, many are not designed to be comfortable or even useful as writers. Second, writing with (or even opening the box of) a limited edition pen causes its value to drop on resale if you're buying it as an investment. To me, it's a sad thing that you should an item which is supposed to be useful only to find that you destroy a part of its investment value by putting to the service for which it is presumably designed. 

Nonetheless, I'm happy to borrow limited edition pens from anyone caring to lend them to me. This is how I got to test-drive the Proust.

To be fair, I think the Writer's Series by Montblanc is a lot less guilty of making pens that are useless as writers than many other limited editions are (think Delta or expecially Krone). The Proust is well balanced and very pleasant to use. While the nib design is unique to the pen (it has an hourglass inscribed in it as well as the usual "4810" designation of all Montblancs), it seems to be the same basic nib used in the standard Montblanc 146. The version I have is in extra-fine width and executes nicely, producing reasonable inkflow for such a narrow writing line.

The body of the pen octagonal with panels of attractive guilloche (I think that's the design term) alternating with swirl designs. The panels are executed in sterling silver with a black background. Perhaps the most attention-getting feature of the pen is the cap, which is oversized and adorned with the usual Montblanc snowflake executed in mother of pearl. When I first saw the cap, I figured that the pen would be poorly balanced owing to the weight of the cap when posted. This proves not to be the case. The pen is remarkably well balanced with the cap posted. I assume that Montblanc pulled off this trick by balancing the metal in the body of the pen with that in the cap. This, to me, was the most impressive part of the pen.

Bottom line: I still wouldn't buy one of these, but I do admire the attractiveness and craft that went into creating it. In the category of limited editions, this is indeed a "Writer's" pen.

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