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Last month I bought a Parker 75 with a 14k gold ‘M’ nib. The pen has the date code ‘IE’, so is from either 1984 Q1 or 1988 Q3. One of the first inks that I put through it was Parker Quink ‘Black’, from a cartridge that I bought back in the mid-2000s. It worked delightfully in my 75, being far more ‘black’ than I remember it as being. Today I decided to put a cartridge from the same box in to my early-1970s Parker 45, which has a 14k gold ‘M’ nib. In that pen it barely wrote at all. I assumed that there was something wrong with the pen, and switched the cartridge in to my late-1970s Parker 45, which has a steel ‘M’ nib. The ink barely worked in that pen either. I then spent Some Time switching the nibs, feed-‘spikes’, and grip-sections between my two 45s, in a quest to cobble-together a 45 in which my cartridge of Parker Quink ‘Black’ would produce a pleasant writing experience. Whilst I have now managed to create a 45 in which the flow of Quink is improved slightly, the pen is still laying down a very fine line that looks ‘washed-out’ and grey. Does anybody understand why this might be occurring? Do I perhaps own the two driest-writing 45s in Christendom? I don’t think it’s this, because I haven’t had problems with any other inks in them. Or do I have the wettest-writing 75 on the planet? Is 2000s-era Quink ‘Black’ merely incompatible with 1970s Parker pens? Or has my house become host to either a Dybbuk, or perhaps a convocation of the Unseelie Court? (If I had to lay money on any of these possible explanations, it would undoubtedly be the latter one.) My thanks to you in advance for any explanations that you can offer. Slàinte, M.