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Hello, if this has been discussed before, feel free to point me in the right direction. :-) We all know whether any given ink works well for you depends on the pen in which is used, the nib size, and the paper you write on, but I am interested in learning what are the best overall inks members know about, in any and every pen or paper. After some experience, though not a lot of different inks, I am forced to the conclusion that the safest and overall best performing ink I know is Lamy blue for the following reasons: 1-Least likely to clog or stain a pen, at least any pen I have tried 2-Among the least likely to bleed through bad paper, little if any feathering in most papers I tried 3-Excellent drying speed, though probably not the fastest of them all. 4-Attractive dark, saturated color always for an ink apparently intended for cheap paper. 5-Flows well on dry pens, seems to work well on wet pens. The point of this topic is, I love Lamy blue, but I wish to find other inks (and other colors) that meet the above characteristics. Based on other comments, I have tried other popular inks, with the following results Lamy black: dries fast, but much more likely to bleed through, unattractive gray black, some residue left inside the pen, though not nearly as much as Noodler's black Noodlers black: one of my favorites, but seems temperamental with the weather, some of my pens don't like it much, and it leaves visible residue inside bladder pens that I cannot wash off, though I cannot prove that is bad for the pen. Great on cheap paper though. Hero carbon ink: another favorite, dries fast, good color, but tends to clog some pens, can feather badly on some papers. Quink black: one the safest inks for pens available, apparently, but it has bleed through issues in my tests on cheap paper, and the color is kind of dull. Noodler's X-feather: competes very closely with Lamy blue when it comes to not bleeding through cheap paper, but sometimes Lamy blue actually bleeds through less on some paper, and X-feather is not really usable in high quality paper because of very slow drying, and it clogs some of my pens. I have tried other inks with mixed results, but none of those others comes close to the above in terms of usability with any pen, nib, or paper (X-feather is mentioned only because of how well Lamy blue performs compared to it for its intended purpose, it is otherwise troublesome when not used as intended). Hopefully what I am after is not too confusing. Thanks in advance. :-)

So I’ve got a small bottle of Lamy Red and about three boxes of Lamy Blue cartridges. As I’ll probably never use those blue cartridges, I decided to have some fun mixing those inks together. This is the 2:1 Red/Blue mix, plus RGB indexes for the darkest and lightest areas: Now the 3:1 Red/Blue mix + RGB: …aaand the 4:1 Red/Blue mix + RGB: Method: Lamy explicitly says in their website not to mix their inks, so I left each concoction sitting quietly for 24 hours in a drawer in a sample container before putting a little bit of ink on the pen (I used a regional brand pen with a fine nib made in Taiwan). I didn’t feel any difference in writing with any of the mixes compared to the pure blue or red, except for a little bit of spread, but so slight that I only noticed it in the scans. Also, I forgot to add paper information: the tests were made on a 70 g/m² acid-free "Ivory-colored" paper from a Moleskine pocket notebook. There was no bleed-through, even on the ∴ (where I let the nib rest); ghosting/echoing was as noticeable as the pure Blue and more noticeable than the pure Red on the same notebook. My conclusions: I liked the 2:1 mix a lot. Didn’t care much for the rosy tint of the other two mixes (that’s why I stopped and didn’t add red any further). I was surprised that the orange of the Lamy Red didn't appear on the 4:1 mix (if you dilute Lamy Red you get a "Vitamin C orange"). Also, I gotta say that 3:1 and 4:1 look very similar to me. I'm going to wait 24 more hours before fully inking a pen with the Lamy Beetroot (2:1 mix) and carrying it around. What do youse think?