The Visconti Homo Sapiens Revisited — The Gentleman Stationer

Look, I’m not a Visconti “hater”, even if I’m not a Superfan. I have no axe to grind agains the company, and I enjoy their designs, with two expensive pens in my personal collection that I purchased with my own money. Moreover, my experience is consistent with other reviewers. It still frustrates me, however, to see the price of these pens climb ever higher without corresponding improvements in quality control, with the company likely banking on the fact that people will like the unique designs enough to overlook the continued nib inconsistency. Nib issues on Visconti pens have persisted for years, and even it QC is anecdotally “better” with the gold nibs than it was with the Dreamtouch, Visconti has a long way to go. Yesterday I did an unofficial (and admittedly unscientific) Instagram poll, and 36 out of the 60 respondents reported that their Visconti did not write correctly out of the box (approximately 60%). Is that possibly overstated? Sure, since there’s a bias towards those who experienced problems with a product being more willing to report an issue than people who didn’t. But that’s a lot of people who bought expensive pens, and it does reflect my own experience. The three Viscontis that I’ve purchased myself (disregarding those sent to me specifically for review) all required nib adjustments for issues ranging from the minor (inconsistent flow/baby’s bottom) to the major (bent tines). As one nib worker messaged me in response to my post, “Visconti keeps me in business.”