Which Inks Have Disappointed You?

[pen_master]

Diamine Blue Flame - bland blue with not the greatest shimmer. Writes dry.

Diamine Twilight - Probably because it looked so different from the swab I saw online. I wanted a greenish blue black and instead got a blue/black.

[Rossler]

Just about all Diamine inks I have tried....

[SchaumburgSwan]

Hi,

 

Disappointing: Robert Oster Midnight Sappire and Blue Night: Both have too much saturation for me, one is too greenish - one too reddish. Then I tested Pelikan Blue-Black and found my perfect dark blue.

 

Diamine Salamander, the ugliest dark green I have, looks military :-(

I should get Safari next, there are so many great Diamine Inks.

 

Best

Jens

Edited July 15, 2018 by SchaumburgSwan

[ENewton]

Diamine Grape, which does not flow well in many of my pens, and which turns redder than I like as it dries.

 

Robert Oster Barossa Grape, which looks fabulous in swabs but has produced only a weak, dry line in every pen in which I've tried it.

[aurore]

Just about all Diamine inks I have tried....

 

In what way, if I may ask? And what brand do you like?

Edited July 16, 2018 by aurore

[inkstainedruth]

Adding to the list since I first posted (wow, has it really been 4 years since this thread started?):

Robert Oster Black Violet -- almost black (with just a barest hint of purple), but the real problem was that it was dry dry dry).

Noodler's Whaleman's Sepia -- gorgeous color but it would NOT flow. Just clung to the sides of the ink chamber.

Diamine Passion Red -- saw a review that made it look good, but it was sort of blah pinkish red at close quarters.

Noodler's Empire Red and De Atramentis Document Red -- neither of these are anywhere remotely near red. Salmon pink is closer to the mark....

Ruth Morrisson aka inkstainedruth

[putteringpenman]

Diamine Blue Velvet: It's such a nice color but it takes forever to dry. It even smears a day after writing it on the page.

J Herbin Cacao du Bresil: It's much lighter than I expected for a brown ink. It is also much drier than the other J Herbin inks I've tried.

Pilot Iroshizuku Ajisai: It is very dry and made my pens feel scratchy. It's the only Iroshizuku ink I don't like.

Edited July 16, 2018 by putteringpenman

[monquito]

Diamine Blue Velvet: It's such a nice color but it takes forever to dry. It even smears it a day after writing it on the page.

You might try Cobalt Jazz instead if you love the color. It even does the red sheen, and I assumed it was just Blue Velvet with glitter, but since it dries nicely, apparently it is not. You can use it mostly sans sparkles by not shaking up the bottle, or shaking it and then waiting until particles settle to the bottom before filling. I got a sample without realizing it was a Shimmertastic and it has been very well-behaved in my experience!

[Flaxmoore]

Noodler's Air Corps Blue-Black. It's not BB. It's green-black at best. Work at the time didn't tolerate any colors save blue/black/blue-black, the green component got me chewed out.

 

J. Herbin 1670 Bleu Ocean. Flat, boring blue. Simply boring. Got traded off.

 

J. Herbin Perle Noir. Never got it to flow worth a damn.

[lgsoltek]

Those Sailor STORiA inks.

[senzen]

I've learned to give inks a second or third chance, this eventually paid off for Tsuyu Kusa which just required a wet pen, and Kon Peki, which needed a dry pen. You also need a lot of patience with Rouge Hematite, it will inevitably gunk up the pen.

 

The one ink I can't stand is Violette Pensée, and I had to let Myosotis go, just too bland except when it looked very dark after evaporation.

[minddance]

Inks are like perfumes: on different people and in different climates, produce vastly different results.

 

So far for me, Diamine Meadow, Sepia, Autumn Oak, Misty Blue, Beau Blue, Grey, Monaco Red, Matador; R&K Scabiosa, Morinda; Herbin Vert Pre; Iroshizuku Chiku rin, Fuyu Syogun, Kirisame.

 

As one can see, many of these are lowly saturated inks and require pens and papers to curb the messy shadings. It took me a long time to get these inks 'right' for proper writing and legibility.

 

For fun in infinitely wet flex dip pens, they all work. Or as blotches and swabs and in brushes, they are fine. But in dry fine nibbed Platinum or Pilot gold nib pens, they won't work - for me, at least.

 

I was misled and feel 'cheated' by many ink 'reviews' and bought many of these inks as a result. Now, I read ink reviews with extra prudence.

 

Colour is not everything.

 

Fountain pen inks are specially designed for use in fountain pens and should be 'legible'.

 

I am not dismissing creative displays of inks and colours by brushes and super wet dip pens but they do not exhibit how inks write from a real everyday fountain pen - and can be profoundly misleading.

 

I urge new fountain pen users to read reviews with discretion.

Edited July 18, 2018 by minddance

[RoyalBlueNotebooks]

Diamine Steel Blue is a great color but stains like nobody's business.

 

Diamine Peach Haze is the driest of all my 12 Diamine bottles. Way too dry.

 

I've got beef with Pelikan 4001 Brilliant-Red for its name and packaging. You can't mislead customers like that. In no corner of the earth that color is red, let alone a brilliant red.

 

Caran d'Ache Chromatics Idyllic Blue. I've got it for one third of its price and it's still overpriced. I thought "with that pricetag it must have some nice properties right?" Nope. It's not nicely saturated, it's not wet, it doesn't have a lively sheen, it doesn't lubricate the nib. Apart from behaving well on crappy paper, underwhelming ink all around.

[gmax]

Diamine Earl Grey - I've tried it in all sorts of pens, but I just can't see what all the fuss has been about!

[Uncial]

Iro's Tsutsuji illicited a physical response from me. No other ink has managed that. I heave no idea why, but I found the colour to be really offensive.

[lgsoltek]

Iro's Tsutsuji illicited a physical response from me. No other ink has managed that. I heave no idea why, but I found the colour to be really offensive.

 

I'll gladly take it from you!

[penzel_washinkton]

Just about all Diamine inks I have tried....

Wow, exact opposite of mine. Diamine rarely disappoint for me.

 

The ink that disappointed me is the Iro Shin-Ryoku. I don't feel anything special with them to be honest. Just generic green.

Edited July 18, 2018 by penzel_washinkton

[JakobS]

I feel like topics such as these don't really weed out bad inks, just ink users idiosyncrasies.

 

Which is good in understanding how they view inks and the biases they hold when speaking about inks in general or specifically...

 

But.. make ink samples all the more important in really knowing if an ink is what you are looking for....

[JulieParadise]

Inks are a bit like dresses: Everybody's experience "wearing" them will differ. I have come to learn that almost every ink needs the right pen to fit in, unless it really is faulty (aged/too old, dried up, growing mold, [marred by unintended] mixing etc.).

 

Take MB Swan Illusion for example: The first pen made it into a really unassuming beige, so did the second, but a third pen, a much wetter writer, revealed a rich, interesting and truly unique tender greyish brown, a stunning colour. Other inks did the same for me, changing my opinion about then after trying them out in several different (and differently behaving!) pens.

 

So except the heavy sheeners (Organics Studio, I am looking at you and your smeary smudgy inks) and the gorgeous Noodler's Apache Sunset (a.k.a. the ink that never dries) I have never been disappointed by an ink. Even the really light inks do have a purpose for highlighting or underlining or even writing, all you have to do is finding the right pen to go with them.

[kestrel]

Robert Oster Khaki. The color reminded me of the color of a drowned corpse after two days in the water.

 

Noodler's North African Violet. The bottle I bought was horribly faded compared to the sample.

 

Noodler's Concord Bream. Like NAV, the bottle was much paler than the sample. It has seen some use in mixing with other inks and I love the label.

 

Private Reserve Black Cherry. Llllllllooooooooonnnnnnnggggggg drying times and within a year of purchase it had changed color to nasty looking brown.

 

Noodler's now discontinued Highland Heather. It clogged every pen I ever put it in and the color wasn't worth the effort to maintain the pens. I tried diluting, I tried surfactants, I tried language laced with colorful metaphors. I even got a friend to speak nicely to it in old Scots. Nothing worked. Unwilling to foist this disaster off on someone else I took it out back and dumped it. Where it landed on the grass the grass died.