C’est Magnifique!

“Canneberge Nouveau” (New Cranberry) – The latest special edition Pilot Pro Gear Slim arrived this week from the folks at Bungbox. I have found their collaborations with Sailor to have that extra added effort put into the design, opting to go beyond just changing the cap band and calling it a day. This is the second pen in the “Nouveau” series (Norwegian Wood was released earlier in the year) and it shares some of the same design elements.

The first thing I wanted to make sure I did when ordering was get one with a Music nib <MS> as I had yet to try one from Sailor. I knew it did not use the traditional double slit approach and was curious how the nib would perform. It comes with a 14k gold nib that is silver plated to match the design and has “Ink tells more” inscribed (not etched – which is nice) on top. I do find it a bit too plain in design and would have liked to see something a bit more ornamental.

The body comes in a beautiful dark cranberry color and silver flakes suspended within – creating shades of silver, red, and pink depending on how deep they are. The traditional anchor on the finial has been replaced with a design resembling a cluster of cranberries. The cap band is engraved with “Canneberge Nouveau * Bungbox Japan” and the rest of the bands and clip are finished in silver to match.

The nib itself is fantastic, and provides the extra smooth feel while delivering a fantastic transition from thin to juicy stub width lines depending on how you hold the pen. There is a little flex (given it’s single slit) in the nib and the feed does a great job of keeping the lines nice and wet for prolonged periods – no skipping at all. Once loaded up with some Sailor Jentle Oku-Yama writing with the pen in normal position renders a stub like width with nice wet lines and a good transition to thin horizontal strokes. The rounded edges of the music nib grind mean similar smooth lines when writing with the pen rotated 90 degrees (as it is intended when writing notes and staves – thus the name).

As per usual the pen was delivered in gift wrapping and Bungbox was very good at both letting me know when the pen had shipped, and reaching out when it had arrived to check that everything was ok. It’s this small business approach to transactions that will keep me coming back.