Schneider Red - Review

[ismellarat]

I can't get this scan to work worth beans, but the color is actually a red-orange. Not that pinkish red that is shown here

 

Full Sized Click Here

 

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3494/3793603742_076c26fda6.jpg

 

Full Sized Click Here

Edited August 6, 2009 by ismellarat

[bphollin]

Never heard of Schneider before, but it sounds like I wasn't missing much--at least not for their reds, anyway.

[ToasterPastry]

I've never heard of it either. Where is it made? Can you take a pic of the bottle?

[lovemy51]

i used schneider RB refills before, i wasn't aware they made FP inks as well. never liked the RB stuff, i guess i won't like their FP inks either... not according to what i read here!!!

 

thanx for the warning... ehemm!... i meant the review!

Edited August 8, 2009 by lovemy51

[ismellarat]

I actually bought a 2 pack of cartridges (they buy in bulk and sell in pairs) of this from a stationary store in colorado while I was on vacation. I didn't buy them for the ink, but for the cartridge. I needed an international cart. so that I could refill it with bottled ink. The one that came with the pen I used this with broke.

[liapuyat]

I actually bought a 2 pack of cartridges (they buy in bulk and sell in pairs) of this from a stationary store in colorado while I was on vacation. I didn't buy them for the ink, but for the cartridge. I needed an international cart. so that I could refill it with bottled ink. The one that came with the pen I used this with broke.

 

Schneider is a German office supplies brand. They do specialize in rollerballs but they have plastic German school pens that are either marketed to children or adults needing inexpensive pens (Schneider Zippi) and something for young people who need a reliable daily writer (Schneider Base).

 

Unfortunately their international cartridge inks look a bit wan after drying (the blue fades quickly). I might do a review of the rest, come to think of it. Like you, I bought some so I could refill the carts with my ink mixes.

[Bo Bo Olson]

Schneider make a ball point cartridge, that will turn a Parker 75 mechanical pencil into a working ball point pen. It is their version of the Parker cartridge.

 

I had the Parker mechanical pen cartridge in my old Cross Hatched Silver 75, that I bought back before it got a French name. It is my only matching set.

The Parker jotter cartridge did not work in it.

By sheer accident, because I had a German ball point pen in it, I tried it in desperation, and it worked great.

 

Now the mechanical pencil, can serve two purposes, although I have no interest or need of a pencil.

 

Just in case you have a Parker 75 mechanical pencil that you would like to turn into a BP.

[cocojj]

I'm fond of my Schneider Zippi (I'm using it this very second, LOL!). The nib is stiff, but somehow it makes my handwriting look nicer and neater. I haven't tried the red cartidge, but I like the blue's bright color. Sadly, as mentioned, it does fade easily. Any feedback on the black ink?

 

If I'm not mistaken, Schneider also has rollerballs that take the same fountain pen cartridges.

Edited October 27, 2009 by cocojj

[deltree]

I had their cartridges on a waterman hemisphere in black...right after that the downfall of the pen began...my dad gave the pen up as a faulty pen...i will know by tmr whether it was faulty or the ink clogged it up...i have cleaned it and by God I have seen a worse handled parker frontier that was taking in dollar ink and even that came out 80% better whilst cleaning then the waterman did....the schnieder was certainly an evil ink!

[Ted_1944]

I have two Sheaffer VFM fountain pens that I use when my other pens don't fit into my shirt pocket without hitting bottom. (The VFM has a side mounted clip that makes it ride high in the pocket, like a Cross Century, or the old Parker Classic.) The VFM takes international cartridges only, and I've used Sheaffer's international cartridges (They come only in blue and black, and are hard to find, and expensive!), Pelikan cartridges, Mont Blanc and Schneider black cartridges. The Schneider cartridges can be found for two dollars for a box of six, and have performed flawlessly in the VFM's, even after being left in a drawer for several months. But then so has just about every other ink I've used in them. But so far, I haven't found anything evil about the ink, but that might be because I haven't let it dry out in my pens. Maybe it just didn't mix well with whatever else may have previously been in the Waterman, if it was not well cleaned out before inserting the Schneider cartridge. At any rate, I like the Schneider black ink, and have re-ordered it several times.

Edited August 7, 2016 by Ted_1944

[bob_hayden]

I bought a package of the red cartridges some time ago and just bought black, green, and violet off eBay for $1.97 per box of six. I ordered enough other stuff that I got free shipping -- a big deal here as shipping costs more than the item otherwise.

 

I would characterise these as utility inks similar to those marketed by the major pen manufacturers. Their main feature is their price which is about one-third of the major brands in the US. Right now you can get Thornton cartridges for even less on eBay, and the regualr prices for bulk cartridges from eBay sellers like majus or USAoutletstore are also cheaper.

 

I'll put a scan at the end and offer some verbal comments here. I half agree on the red. It does indeed tend to orange for me, but I also find it pale. More so than, say, the USA Sheaffer red that people complained about being pale. (In my scan, it looks like that Sheaffer ink.)

 

The scan looks pretty good to me for the black which is a bit washed out, maybe in the neighborhood of the Herbin equivalent in that regard, though to me it does not look as classy. But it's a perfectly useable black. Nobody would mistake it for grey.

 

Green looks a bit pale and a bit blue, similar to many European greens. Looks useable if not exciting.

 

The violet is pretty middle of the road with medium intensity and without the tinge of blue found in many violets.

 

So it's inexpensive ink in Crayola colors -- a nice choice for stationery stores who do not want customers to question whether the ink is really the color it is supposed to be, or wonder what color "Arabian Autumn" might turn out to be, or change their mind about buying the product when they hear the price. For the fanatics in this community its main strength may be, as earlier posts hint, that you can find it in a lot more places than the more exotic inks we tend to favor.

[TheDutchGuy]

Schneider ink is a low-cost ink aimed at school- and office-use, costing 70 eurocents for 6 cartidges. There's no point in comparing it to really good ink that's made with pen afficionados in mind. Apples/oranges.

Having said that, I thing Schneider ink has two very useful qualities.

First, it flows very well (I consider it to be a wet ink). Use this ink with a dry nib, and it'll feel like a different pen. Writing becomes effortless, without any starting- or skipping issues, and without saturating the paper. It can make an EF nib perform like a F nib, or a F nib like a M nib.

Second, in my limited personal experience, luscious, more expensive inks do not reveal their magic until one uses a broad nib or dabbles with calligraphy etc. With a lot of EF, F or M nibs all these wonderful nuances are less visible. But Schneider green and blue seem to perform really well with F nibs, especially the green. That green is far, far removed from army- or olive green. For lack of a better description, it's like traffic-light green, almost luminescent.

To summarize, this ink is boring for 'real' penmanship for which one would use a more upscale ink, but it certainly has its uses.

I'll add a picture later.

Edit: pictures added. The green is Schneider green. The blue is a comparison of Schneider blue to Cross blue. The same cheap white paper (regular office A4 paper) was used.

Edited February 8, 2018 by TheDutchGuy

[bob_hayden]

Thanks for adding the blue. These inks really are a deal at the price you are paying but I think they run two or three times as much in the US of A where there are a variety of inks at the same or lower prices.

 

https://www.fountainpennetwork.com/forum/topic/314342-cheap-ink-cartridges/

[TheDutchGuy]

Ah, yes, if the price goes up then it's a different matter.

[Aquaria]

A pack of the Schneider black cartridges came my way, surely as some kind of lagniappe with another pen purchase, because I wouldn't have ordered them. Not because I have anything for or against the brand, either way, but because I'm simply not a fan of black ink, in general. B-O-R-I-N-G.

 

That being said, I'm on a quest to get rid of all my samples and carts, and decided to put these to use at last.

 

Impressions:

 

Schneider black is a utilitarian ink. It's for doing some writing, and that's it. To me, it does that, quite well. It has a faint amount of a reddish-gold sheen to it, but you really have to lay down the ink to get it to show up on Rhodia. Even then, it's quite faint. Maybe on Tomoe River it would show up more, but I'm too lazy right now to dig out TR paper to see for myself.

 

The saturation of this ink seems quite high. It's really--really--black. I also find it a very wet ink, that seems to have some lubricating components in it. Of course, it's riding in a Duke pen (model # forgotten) that has a European-style medium nib, and on top of that, it's always been a wet-writing pen, at least for me. Still, this ink seems wet, even for this pen. It doesn't feather or bleed through on Rhodia, though, so it seems to have some good behavior to it, despite the wetness.

 

Conclusion: I'm still not a fan of black ink, but this one's not so bad, for what it is. If I had to use a black ink in cart form, or had no other choice about the ink I could use, this would work perfectly well for me. But I don't have much need for black ink in cart form, and I'm not in a position where it's the only option available to me, so it's rather a moot point.

[bob_hayden]

I found the black a bit washed out, a difference that could be accounted for by your very wet pen.