hello!! I know you from The Pen Post (and righteously dunking on moleskine) and I was wondering what your thoughts are on the pen in this video (lamy safari). I also wanted to inform you that in middle school a friend of mine had 8 uniball sigmas and together we called them OCTOBALL
oh this is terrible. this is one of the things I worry about when it comes to AI and botspam and generally half-informed recommendations. they use information from REALLY old posts and the reputation of pens from a decade or more ago, and this video is fucking terrible. ohhh it just keeps getting worse. these are not people who know a lot about fountain pens (or if they do, they lack in integrity with what they post, what the absolute fuck)
so the lamy safari is complicated.
the lamy safari is also not the current best selling fountain pen for beginners, I think that award goes to the hongdian black forest at this point. according to amazon, at least.
but anyway, the lamy safari has dogshit quality control now. they are infamous for having their F nibs be finer than their EF nibs, their M being broader than their B, and I personally have owned several safari line pens, and nearly all of them arrived with SHITTY nibs. they all needed adjusting or even some of the tipping removed. I would never recommend a lamy safari to a beginner unless someone else has guaranteed the quality of the nib, because I sure as hell know the factory has not. every single lamy safari needs to be cleaned out too, because they pretend to care about the nib quality control, so they dip test all the pens with their blue lamy ink. meaning every lamy safari arrives with crusty blue ink inside of it
this video is also really deceptive. the 'gold' nib the lamy safari nib gets compared to is a steel nib with gold plating, which is one of the oldest fountain pen lies in the book
the video implies the one on the right is a gold nib. it is a gold plated steel nib. this model of kaweco nib in gold says 14k on it.
and the way they show replacing the lamy safari nib is TERRIBLE and can wreck the nib! HELLO? DO NOT PUT PRESSURE THERE! THAT CAN MISALIGN THE TINES! WHICH I GUESS YOU MIGHT NOT CARE ABOUT TOO MUCH IF YOU THINK THE LAMY SAFARI IS THE BEE'S KNEES, SINCE SO MANY OF THEIR PENS SHIP WITH MISALIGNED TINES NOW!
I absolutely do not trust any fountain pen source that tell you to change a lamy safari nib like this, because you can very safely change lamy safari nibs with a piece of tape or some kind of grip.
DO NOT FUCKING DO IT LIKE IN THE VIDEO
for everything mentioned in this video, nothing the lamy safari does is actually considered groundbreaking anymore.
the five parts this video claims were revolutionary for 1980:
ink window, a nice clip, interchangeable stainless steel nib, lightweight plastic ABS body, and the shaped grip.
and then says that because the lamy safari has never changed, it is proof that it works great.
if anything, the lamy safari is an ode to stubbornness and the enshittification of established brands that are riding on their reputation while destroying their quality. I cannot speak for the rest of this channel's content, but it I was looking for a reliable reviewer for anything and saw this kind of shit, I would bail.
the lamy safari was alright decades ago. these days, just about nothing the lamy safari does cannot be done better by the pilot kakuno.
the pilot kakuno fountain pen has a shaped grip, you can see the remaining ink through either the semi clear feed or by getting the clear body pen, the nibs are easily changeable, and the quality control is much much much better. although there is no clip and the plastic is not ABS, I have used many pilot kakuno pens without problem, but I have almost NEVER used a lamy safari that did not have something wrong with it. someone's first fountain pen should just work. and you should be able to buy the nib size you want and not have to guess whether the F or EF is finer. (for the kakuno, get the M or F. kakuno EF is one of the finest nibs on the market. kakuno also uses japanese size nibs, while lamy is western. the kakuno M is around the same size as the lamy EF.)
I take someone's first fountain pen very seriously, and as lamy is currently selling so many duds that it drives someone like me with a bunch of fountain pens up a wall, I absolutely never want a beginner to risk getting a shitty lamy safari.
the pilot kakuno is half the price of the lamy safari (around $10 USD), and is compatible with a much nicer ink converter that holds way more ink than the lamy safari. it can also be cheaply modified to be converted to an eyedropper, where you can fill the entire barrel with ink. to do this with a lamy safari, you would have to buy the rollerball barrel which is compatible but has no ink window, and then attach it to the lamy safari, which is. a grand total of around $40 USD. if you want a no-bullshit lightweight eyedropper in a very solid pen for a beginner, you can just get a pilot lightive (better) or pilot explorer (older) for $20.
the pilot kakuno nib AND feed pop out easily, making it easy to clean. the lamy safari feed is very difficult to remove for cleaning, and trying to take it out can damage it permanently. so +1, the kakuno is way easier to clean down the line if you want to get spicy with your ink choices.
and did I mention the kakuno actually works the first time, without you having to fuck with it? no need to adjust the nib, or clean out the pen first, or mess with anything at all. just pop the cartridge in (you will get better performance if you clean the feed first though), and go.
the maximum capacity converter for the lamy safari is 0.8ml, while the pilot con-70 fits 1.1ml. by the way. so although the lamy safari can take nibs that go up to 1.9mm, you still have to use the old shitty 0.8ml ink capacity, buy a rollerball barrel, or use a LOT of resin to fill in the ink window.
long story short: the lamy safari is no longer the best fountain pen for beginners, and people saying it is are going off of the reputation the fountain pen had 10+ years ago. the features are no longer groundbreaking, they sell a lot of duds, they cannot even have a consistent nib tipping size, F can be finer than EF and M can be broader than B, and you either get lucky or not. you can get cheap chinese fountain pen nibs for 10/$1 that have better quality control than lamy fountain pen nibs, AND they work on lamy pens. a good lamy safari can be a nice pen. but holy fucking shit it is way too hard to get a good one these days, and even when you do, you have to clean it out before using it, because they all come with crusty blue ink in the nib. for just about everything the lamy safari does, the pilot kakuno does it much better, and much cheaper.
also this video fucking sucks, is misleading as hell, gives dangerous advice about pen maintenance that can damage the nib, and I would not trust anything else this channel says based off of it. maybe they know more about other types of products, but I would not trust them for SHIT when it comes to fountain pens.
the uni ball signo on the other hand is an amazing line of gel pens. I have a post going up later today praising them. good taste in balls!
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