Leonardo Officina Italiana - Momento Zero Regular - Coral red

[MarcoA63]

I ordered and received my first, maybe last Leonardo, Momento Zero Regular in Coral Red. The body is in a nicely made resin. It feels cold at first and warms up while you write, which is nice. The shiny veneered Coral red is stunning. I chose a Medium steel nib as steel is the only available.
Compared to Ranga's medium nibs I have, but JoWo, this writes like, IMO, a fine nib.
Before inking it I flushed the nib and feed, so the whole section, with plain water and all went well.
The nib, somebody told me Leonardo uses Bock' s, is very stiff but at least is smooth on the Rhodia pages I'm using and doesn't scratch.
I have to say I like writing with it, although the Ranga ebonite pens with gold JoWo nibs are more flexible and real medium nibs.

 

There is no instruction booklet in the box so, just by chance, I discovered that you can unscrew the end bit of the barrell and you have access to the converter, so you can either ink the pen in the classic way, unscrew the barrell and twist the converter once the nib is immersed in the ink bottle or just remove the end of the barrell and ink it without having to take it apart. Cool. This is also why, and I thought about it, the converter is finished in polished aluminiium

 

I bought it directly from Italy as I could not find any of the usual UK sellers I use that stocked it.
Price was affordable, 112 Pounds, from Italy. Ordered it on the 15th and arrived the afternoon of the 16th, so very quick with UPS.
UK Custom duties, 70 Pounds, were a pain.
Amount was computed on what was printed on the waybill, so ask seller to indicate, always, real cost of pen and no fancy amounts as Customs look at what is printed on waybill and don't look at the invoice in the package.
Overall an interesting pen. Nice to look at and hold in my hand. Stiff nib. Maybe a broad nib would have been more appropriate
And now some comparison pictures including an Aurora, unknown model, a Platinum 3776 Century and the MZ

As you can see the MZ is similar to the Aurora in size and the Platinum is slimmer.

 

 

 

[Karmachanic]

1 hour ago, MarcoA63 said:

UK Custom duties, 70 Pounds, were a pain.

 

That's the UPS version of UK Customs.

20% VAT - £22.40, £8 handling fee. Duty around £4-5 = £35 +/-

 

Leonardo changed to Jowo in the New Year, so your nib depends upon when the pen was made.

[MarcoA63]

I don't know how they do it. Amounts were all in Euros both on the waybyll and invoice, which was not taken into any account to charge me.

UPS charges 16 Pounds to collect money.

[maclink]

I was one of the earlier purchasers of the Momento Zero.  It's a nice pen, isn't it? 

 

Pros for me:

- It's a great size.

- It has great ergonomics which I find superior to the Platinum 3776.  The wider profile extending longer along the barrel to the blind cap makes all the difference when using this pen un-posted. The balance is also good.

- It's great value for what you get

 

My personal problem with it has been the nib.  Leonardo had a stormy start with nib performance.  My first MZ was with a broad nib.  That worked flawlessly but was so boring since the grind was like a blob with zero character.  Me second was with a M nib.  This nib skipped, hard started and was not smooth.  Turns out one of the tines was tilted relative to the other.  It wasn't a vertical, but a horizontal misalignment.  Tougher to address.  I've yet to resolve this issue since this is an earlier generation Leonardo pen that has the section/nib-feed-housing all glued together with a complete replacement being required.

 

Later generation Leonardo's are now designed for easy nib interchange.

 

My latest is the MZ Grande.  Now this one came with a wonderful M nib.  It's like a makeup for the previous.  It's among my favourite nibs.... certainly the top 5.  It's a steel M and boy, oh boy, it so well tuned and writes so nicely on Tamoe River paper and Yama Guri ink!! 

[MarcoA63]

@maclink, I see what you mean. The two sections, 3776 Century and Momento Zero, are completely different. The first, is a straight piece while the latter's continues a bit off the barrell and the shrinks down. Interesting study of ergonomics. None bother me when writing though. So far the nib has performed as I was expecting it to even though the M is more similar to an F.

A bit hard to write with, maybe because it is steel that I can't feel it being flexible like other more flexible ones I have. But nonetheless it is a nice pen to write with at a very affordable price, if you don't fall in the import duty trap :-)

 

I bought a Delta Dolcevita Medium, maybe 20 years ago, made by the father of the founders of Leonardo (this is what I understtod).

Couldn't find a stupid spare as the ball on the clip then and this says it all.

I would never spend 300 - 400 euros / dollars /pounds on a product that has no production history at all, maybe in 20 years time if they are still around.

Pelikan, Montblanc and similar yes, but a new kid on the market no way !!

 

Let us enjoy what pleasure these pens bring us :-)

Cheers

[maclink]

Yes.  I agree with what you mean about production history since the Leonardo pens have been evolving with subtle adjustments in form as well as assembly/maintenance since I first bought one.  They also changed nib source (Bock to Schmidt, I think) because of the problems during their early periods of production (my being an early customer caught up in it).  It can be nice to be involved in this evolution, but I agree that it wouldn't be wise to be digging really deep to spend on a pen with a high likelihood of needing design modification to iron out a vulnerability or 'defect'.  If you don't dig deep the discovery, feedback and evolution can be rewarding.

 

I hope to resolve the nib issue with my MZ since I otherwise find the pen to be great in design.

[EmJ]

Yea, love my momento zero, but could not get along with the nib. I ended up replacing it with a franklin christoph sig and now it's one of my favorite pens - so beautiful and comfortable!