Which Inks Have Disappointed You?

[dneal]

In line with the "which pen disappointed you" thread in the general forum, which inks disappointed you?

 

Pelikan Edelstein Sapphire: Not nearly as dark as I thought it was supposed to be.

Herbin Eclat des Saphir: I loved the ink from the cartridge, and bought a bottle which is much less saturated and watery.

Noodler's Liberty's Elysium: Great color, but couldn't put up with the creep and crust behavior.

 

[pencils]

Noodler's X Feather: A brilliant (though not quite as deep as, say, J. Herbin's) black, and no shading whatsoever (which I prefer in certain contexts), but not quite the the ultra anti-feathering miracle one might want.

Can't totally get rid of it, I guess.

[Anneleen]

Herbin Rouge Opéra. I know Herbin inks generally aren't the most saturated, but this one looks watery on the paper. I have tried about six Herbin inks and the others were all very nice though.

[swanjun]

I am tolerant to a fault, so I can't offhand think of an ink I actively dislike, but I can say that in the pen I tried it in (a medium Platinum Preppy), J. Herbin Gris Nuages was just way, way, way too light to be usable. I added a few drops of Diamine Damson to the cartridge to get a purply-grey that I could at least use.

[zaddick]

J. Herbin bottles are disappointing for their shallow nature. I can't fill my large pens from them. I do like the inks though.

[Fabienne]

Herbin Lie de The...it grew a creature in the bottle and I had to throw it out. Disappointing because I had put it in a pen which did not belong to me (it was a loner from a nice guy on the board) and I felt like a heel for it. Also, I liked the color a lot and now I am scared to use it.

 

Diamine Salamander-Try as I would, I could not make it shade and there was no sheen at all. I was expecting a mysterious muzzy green but didn't get that. Alas, can't have everything.

 

Visconti Purple-two years ago we all went ga-ga over this high shading ink except when I got my bottle, it didn't shade one little bit.

 

Noodler's Red-Black-Meh, just a burgundy with nothing special I have been able to coax out of it.

[Betweenthelines]

Noodler's 54th Mass. I know I'm in the minority, but wow, when I compared it side by side to my other blue blacks - it was a greenish blah bland boring color. Very underwhelming.

[lapis]

In any ol' order....

 

- New CdAs due to their price (per ml). And I originally thought that Iroshis were expensive.

- Most Noodler's and PRs due to their overabundant saturation and high maintenance.

- All Noodler's because of their bottles and boxes (again, I love their ink names and labels).

- Most Herbins because I find them too watery and/or washed-out.

- Bung Box -- e.g. their Melancholic Gray -- where they once demanded that for an order, you had to purchase at least 12 bottles of that one ink itself. Thankfully, that bad manner has in the meantime been disrupted by a very trustful dealer elsewhere in the country.

 

Mike

[fabri00]

Noodler's Luxury Blue.

I tested it with 8/10 different pens, but it do not write with any pen the day after having loaded it.

[FloatingFountain]

Diamine Jet Black. It behaved VERY badly in the two pens I tried it in, and I suspect the bottle was already done for straight out of the factory, or it is indeed a very nasty, oily/slimy ink.

[HalloweenHJB]

Definitely Private Reserve's "Black Cherry" and "Burgundy Mist". Both just lovely shades of deep brown. Not at all what I expected, and not at all what the sample chart indicated. But lovely browns, they are.

[crbrown]

Mont Blanc Einstein, too dry. I'm just really into colors right now.

Noodler's El Lawrence, I got none of the coloring I saw in reviews.

Noodler's Zhivago, same as El Lawrence.

[Safari_Camo]

Omas Blue: looks very nice in webpages, but when I got the bottle and tested looked the same as Waterman's Florida Blue. Very disappointed.

[carlos.q]

Private Reserve Invincible Aqua Blue... a truly awful pale baby blue ink.

[inkstainedruth]

Organics Studio Charles Darwin. The dry times were absolutely amazing, and the ink is amazingly saturated (think "black hole, nothing's getting out including light") but I had horrible bleed-through issues, even in a pen with an Asian F nib.

Organics Studio Aristotle. I was looking for the blue-black iron gall of my dreams, but it's even grayer than the sample of Diamine Registrar's Blue-black that I got.

Noodler's Black Swan in English Roses. I don't know what Nathan thinks "English" roses look like, but reddish brown isn't what *I* think of....

Diamine Kelly Green, Diamine Meadow Green, and De Atramentis Jeanne d'Arc -- all of these were too light to be very legible.

Iroshihzuku Asa-gao. Drippy and a boring color.

Iroshihzuku Kosumosu. Never got the lovely pink to orange shading that I saw in a review; plus, in incandescent light it looks like watermelon....

Ruth Morrisson aka inkstainedruth

[dneal]

Omas Blue: looks very nice in webpages, but when I got the bottle and tested looked the same as Waterman's Florida Blue. Very disappointed.

 

They changed the color a few years ago, and a search for reviews can easily turn up the older darker version.

[Komitadjie]

Honestly, the first one really today! I picked up a bottle of Dragon's Napalm, and it's a good, healthy, bright colour... but strikes me as kind of an indeterminate salmon colour, and not really the *WHACK* in the eyes I was expecting. Not entirely sure WHAT I was expecting, to be honest... but that really wasn't it. This one will likely either sit in my stash for a long time, or get traded off.

[Vgimlet]

Noodler's Liberty's Elysium - I love the color, but I am still trying to find a pen that's not a hard-starter before I buy a whole bottle. Thinking of trying a Platinum Plaisir, maybe.

Noodler's Rome Burning. I don't know what I was expecting, but 'meh'. I might switch it to a fine nib instead of the medium and see if that makes a difference.

 

Keeping in mind that I love Noodler's Inks, in general.

 

Also Monteverde Green. I like most bright greens, but this one is boring to me. The color just doesn't pop.

[ac12]

My ink testing is done with Morriset dip pens with Fine and Med nibs. The feed on the nib allows the Morriset dip pen to behave like a fountain pen, yet be easier to clean than a fountain pen. I test on 4 papers to see the effect paper has on the ink; HP 32# Premium, Hammermill 28# Color Copy Digital, Staples 20# Sustainable Earth sugar cane, Staples 16# Brazil filler paper.

• Noodler's Emerald City Green. A REALLY NICE COLOR, but it BLOTTED on ALL the papers that I wrote on during my ink test. Quite a disapointment. It is the only ink that I have tested which did that. Then, I decided to try it in a dry pen. And it is behaving itself in a dry Pilot 78G. But, based on my test pens, I am warry of using it in anything other than a dry pen. Using it in a wet pen would be a blotting disaster.

• Diamine Kelly Green. The Diamine ink is yellow-green (too much yellow), not what I think of as Kelly Green. It is a nice bright green, but not what I was expecting, for the use I intended it for.

• Noodler's Black Swan in English Roses. I thought this was a red-black ink, but my testing ink line looks brown. Similar to Ruth, I did not care for the brown look of this ink. Maybe it needs a wet B nib to bring out the color, but in my testing pens with F and M nibs, I was underwhelmed. This is one ink that I am glad I got a sample, vs a bottle.

• Blue-Blacks in general. The blue blacks that I have tired, so far, have been like a blueish gray color. Rather a disappointment in looking for a dark blue that did not look gray. So I got samples of Diamine Midnight and Majestic blue, and they are dark enough to take the place of blue-black, and are still blue.

• Cross/Pelikan blue. In several of my pens the blue ink line looks light and washed out. It goes on nice, but dries/soaks in leaving a light blue ink line. And this runs into another problem, on ruled paper, the eye is distracted from the light ink line by the blue ruled lines. To me, the ink only looks good out of my WET pens, where the ink line is darker, and I get more contrast separation from the ruled lines.

• Parker Quink blue. I got this ink to have one of the standard blue inks on hand. But it looks very washed out. Even the Sheaffer blue is darker. I was so disappointed, that the bottle sits unused.

• Parker Quink black. I used this in cartridge form all through college, and I was always disappointed at how light the black looked, more like a dark gray. I thought black was BLACK. Although this was not helped by the fact that I used a F nib on my Parker 45 (= Lamy XF). Since picking up the FP hobby again, I read reviews that backed up my impression of the ink as a dark gray rather than a black. This prompted my changing to Waterman and Cross/Pelikan black inks.

• Daniel Smith Walnut ink. It is much lighter in shade than what I was expecting, or hoping for.
  Note, I bought this ink as a dip pen ink, NOT a fountain pen ink. I do not know if it is filtered well enough for use in a fountain pen.

[I like mango cheesecake]

Montblanc Oyster Grey: it's a washed out pale colour, akin to writing with a 2H pencil lead.

 

Noodlers Forest Green: Just another green