Which To Buy? Waterman Carène? Or Modern Parker Sonnet?

[Mercian]

 

I agree about the Carene but marmite? Vegemite is the only correct yeast based topping for toast.

 

Steady on there mate, them’s fighting words!

[pajaro]

90%+ of the content of this thread is about the Sonnet. In summary, not much to say about the Carene... it just works. But that is not necessarily a good thing. I have a lot of time and passion invested in my pens that arrived not quite right. Meanwhile, my Carene worked like a charm from day 1. Unfortunatly I have a few pens that I never had to put my special touch on to get them to work like I like, they were already that way... and for the most part, in hindsight, I find myself less emotionally attached to my pens that were perfect out of the box. The Carene is great, but I don't ink it often because I never had to overcome a struggle with it... missing that emotional attachment. I didn't even have a 3 week wait from Europe to dream about the possibilities... on sale through a domestic online retailer and I had it in 24 hours.

 

This sort of emotional attachment is what sets me against a pen. I understand what you wrote, though. Pen hobbyists like to have reasons to work with their pens, by and large. If there is nothing to be fixed, they often seem to find something that needs to be done to improve the writing experience. Having to do nothing with a pen endears them to me. This was especially true during my earlier days. Knew little, and problems were intimidating. No FPN in those days, and no help. Every attempt to fix something ended in a broken pen. I came to understand the value of "if it ain't broke, don't fix it."

[Tweel]

If someone made a Sonnet cap replica that didn't evaporate at a reasonable price I would jump on it... I don't see how Parker managed to get into this mess...

 

See:

 

The Better Sonnet

Edited February 23, 2020 by Tweel