I saw a sample of this ink on Brad Dowdy’s review of the Pilot Prera CM from way back and it looked amazing. So on my next order from Goulet pens, I decided to add this to my cart. I had initially thought to put the whole bottle in but on second thought I decided only to order a sample of it and I’m pretty glad I went for the second option.

I have had a rocky relationship with the Noodler’s inks I’ve owned so far. My first was Bad Belted Kingfisher, which I loved with its dusky blue/green hue. But subsequent purchases have been a bit underwhelming – not really the fault of the ink, just my change of heart after purchasing. I bought Navy after preferring its bluey/green tones compared to a traditional Navy but when I received it, it was too green. The same went for Turquoise.

In Brad’s photo, the ink looked like a dark turquoise with fantastic shading, which looked perfect to me. When I loaded it up in my pens, the ink was green. Green is not a colour of choice for me, although blue/greens are, so it was a disappointment.

Performance wise, it takes a while to dry – hence the smudge. It was a little difficult to clean out, which is pretty standard for Noodler’s inks anyway. I guess that, coupled with the less than overwhelming colour, just made me grumpy at the end of the day.

The Pilot Custom Heritage 74 usually ends up on nearly every pen blogger’s “upgrade from beginner” fountain pen list. Its easy to understand why. Pilot are one of the “big 3” fountain pen makers in Japan, with the other two being Platinum and Sailor. Pilot is also the sister brand to Namiki, the crazy maki-e people who make astonishingly beautiful works of art, disguised as high end fountain pens. These can run up to the thousands of dollars.

The Pilot Custom Heritage 74 is a humbler pen by far and is available in demonstrator and opaque plastic finishes. The other very cool thing about the Pilot Custom Heritage 74 is the many nib options that are available. The standard EF, F, M, B options are available, along with Music, Soft fine, Soft fine medium and Soft medium. And the nibs are 14kt gold. And the converter (Con-70) holds a massive amount of ink (1.0 mL). And the Custom 74 only costs ~US$74 (+shipping, from eBay and a bit more for the music nib).

I have heard that some people have had problems with their nibs being too dry. Fortunately, I didn’t have that issue (and I did buy mine from eBay). Some retailers, like Classic Fountain Pens, will adjust your nib to your liking prior to shipping out to you, but if you do get stuck with a bung nib, there are plenty of instructional videos out there to help you adjust it to your liking.

The nib I have on mine is a wet medium and a wide medium for a Japanese fountain pen, unlike the Pilot steel medium nib found on the Prera I reviewed a while back. To my eye, it writes to a similar width as the Jowo Steel #6 medium on my Franklin Christoph. It’s a little springy, and definitely more so than other Japanese gold nibs, like the Platinum 3776 nib or the Sailor gold nibs, and you do see a marginal line difference, but I think it just lays down more ink most of the time. Compared with the Sailor (1911 21K M nib) this performs very consistently and reliably with all inks I’ve tried (the Sailor suffers from sensitive sweet spot).

Image from Cult Pens (I ran out of light)

The Con-70 converter is the largest Pilot offers and fits into the larger pens Pilot has to offer, including the Custom 74. At first, it was quite novel and different, in that it is a button filler. Essentially you press the back button gently until the whole converter fills up – on each push of the button, the converter fills up marginally more than the previous. It has a centre needle thing, which I think helps the button to work and a little rattly bit (descriptive I know) on the actual needle, which I assume helps agitate the ink to keep it free flowing. Despite the initial novelty of the converter, I find it to be a pain in the bum – the button is quite stiff and makes it difficult to do one handed fills (which I like to do and angle the bottle with my other hand to help the nib fully submerge into the ink). The other thing that’s a bit annoying with this converter is that it is very difficult to clean! Ink always manages to catch into the rattly bit, between it and the needle and no matter how much you clean it, it manages to stay whatever colour you last inked it with. Perhaps it would do well with a sonicator?

I started refilling old ink cartridges with a needle on my opaque 74, but then I find the pen to be too light. Pilot has a host of other converter options, so if like me you are OCD about cleaning, you have the Con-20; Con-40 and Con-50 (discontinued?) to pick from.

From left to right: Platinum 3776 (Shoji), Sailor 1911 Large, Pilot Custom 74

For the price, the Pilot Custom Heritage 74 is one of the cheapest gold nibbed fountain pens you can buy. The only cheaper option I can think of is the Platinum PTL 5000 which is about US$50. For the amount of nib options, the reliability of performance and the price at which it is available, I heartily recommend this pen. Despite having some significantly more expensive pens in my collection since purchasing this, this remains a pleasure to use.