Visconti Divina Proportions LE-review

[alvarez57]

I arrived kinda late to the review and enjoyed it very much! How it goes from a pen to aesthetics, philosophy, mathematics and unoffensive sexual connotations! Excellent!

Not a pen I would buy, but I will say it is very original and I like Visconti pens in general.

After these few years, Amir, how is it performing? Do you use it very frequently and when, if I may ask, because it is definitely an attention-getter.

[bartlee01]

I'm thinking of selling it and getting an Aurora Optima.

The Divina Proportions is a gorgeous pen which is also an amazing writer.

Buying it means you want more then just a good writing pen, it means you want a pen which is very unique and uncommon on top of being a solid good writer (with a cool filling mechanism and an eye popping box).

 

I agree and that's why I bought mine in the first place. The problem is that even after sending it back to Visconti because of a cracked collar, the replacement pen still gets ink around the collar (the first pen did not despite having a cracked collar). The first Divina had a scratchy nib too for a while and then seemed to smooth out. The second pen's nib was great but I just don't think such an expensive pen should be anything but perfect before it leaves the factory. I don't mind that it has a tiny ink capacity as it's obviously not a "practical" pen and isn't meant to be (that's now why I bought it). Also even though the pen has a warranty it cost about $100 to post it back to Italy and have it replaced.

 

My Aurora 88 from Richard Binder is absolutely perfect quality. It did write a little dry to start with but a few good flushes with cold water fixed that. I am confident if I bought the Auroloide Optima from Mr Binder it would write perfectly. The Divina can't be disassembled to clean etc. (I sent it to Richard Binder and he thought it was too risky to even try) and it just shouldn't get ink on the collar. I have tried washing out the cap and making sure it's completely dry and that doesn't fix the problem. I have 7 fountain pens and can adjust the nibs myself to adjust flow and ensure they start properly (it's actually quite easy) and when a friend totally bent the nib on my Pelikan M205 by trying to write with it sideways and just pushing harder when it didn't work I fixed it with just my finger nails and the metal rim of the cap and now it writes better than when it was new.

 

The Divina is an awesome looking pen and it's great you enjoy yours but Visconti's quality control seems to be non-existent and the Divina is not maintenance friendly. I think a pen should work perfectly regardless of whether it's a practical writer or not (even if it has $10,000 worth of diamonds stuck to it).

[goodguy]

Visconti's quality control seems to be non-existent and the Divina is not maintenance friendly.

I cant be blamed for being a Visconti fanatic (a MB yes but not a Visconti LOL) but all my Visconti pens and I had more then few were excellent from the moment they landed into my hands.

Sorry about your bad experience.

 

If you dont like your Visconti may I suggest trying Montblanc ?

[Russ]

You could also try a Taccia Momenta, the poor man's Divina Proportions. The steel nib can be made very smooth... All for about $100 USD. :ph34r:

 

It's not quite as nice as the Visconti, but I keep putting it back in rotation.

Edited April 11, 2011 by Russ

[bartlee01]

Visconti's quality control seems to be non-existent and the Divina is not maintenance friendly.

I cant be blamed for being a Visconti fanatic (a MB yes but not a Visconti LOL) but all my Visconti pens and I had more then few were excellent from the moment they landed into my hands.

Sorry about your bad experience.

 

If you dont like your Visconti may I suggest trying Montblanc ?

 

Stop it! I don't need anyone telling me to buy more pens!

[goodguy]

Visconti's quality control seems to be non-existent and the Divina is not maintenance friendly.

I cant be blamed for being a Visconti fanatic (a MB yes but not a Visconti LOL) but all my Visconti pens and I had more then few were excellent from the moment they landed into my hands.

Sorry about your bad experience.

 

If you dont like your Visconti may I suggest trying Montblanc ?

 

Stop it! I don't need anyone telling me to buy more pens!

But you know you wanna :ltcapd:

[lewis]

What a beautiful pen. Thanks for sharing!

[bartlee01]

I thought I better post this because I just fixed the ink on the collar problem on my Visconti Divina. I also have an Aurora 88 and looked up how to disassemble it so I could make sure the feed is clean and maybe adjust it to make it write a bit wetter. This is done very easily. You just grab the nib and feed and pull and it comes straight out (no screwing). Sure enough there was some gunk lodged in the feed in one of the channels so I rinsed it thoroughly and used a knife to slightly deepen the two cross marks are the writing end of the feed and the channel that takes ink from the reservoir. This made it write perfectly and was very easy to do.

 

Then I decided to just randomly check if the Divina feed will come out the same way and it does! And very easily. After cleaning a little gunk from the feed I pushed it back in very firmly and now no more ink gets on the collar after leaving it capped.

 

This is excellent and I will now be keeping this pen. It writes extremely well. I wish I had known how to do this a long time ago. I suspect a lot of fountain pens have feeds that can be pulled straight out.

 

In case you were wondering, the Aurora 88 feed can be pulled straight out, or you can screw it and another piece will come out that's wrapped around it. But to get at the feed you have to screw back into the barrel and just pull it straight out.

 

I don't think the Divina feed can be screwed out to also remove the round part that wraps around it from the barrel. I tried twisting it a little but I'm too scared to try and force it.