I bought this at Mazza Stilografiche when I visited Italy for some work last month. Considering I’d walked into the store and asked if they had any Omas left over, I guess they were pretty disappointed I only spent €15 in there…

The Pelikan Jazz was released just before the equally-budget Stola lines, and caters to those who like smaller and lighter pens. Both are made of metal, though the build of the Jazz is much slimmer, and therefore significantly lighter. Similarly, both are also only available in medium nibs, though the Jazz comes in quite a wide range of colours and even has some matte-finish options.

It’s a cartridge/converter pen as one would expect at this price point, and the nib is not removable (similar to the Stola). The barrel is only thin enough to hold one cartridge, so it doesn’t have the advantage of having a spare ready at all times. The clip is also more “boring”, bearing no resemblance to other Pelikan clips. Instead it has a hinge, and clips tightly to a shirt pocket. Overall it’s a much more understated design, and definitely looks to avoid making a statement.

The nib itself is a simple affair: it’s very plain and only has the Pelikan logo on it, without even a nib width indication. It’s a stainless steel nib, and writes a dependable medium.

But of course I didn’t buy the pen just to use as a medium: I’ve turned my Stola into a cursive italic (see below), and so I had to muck around with this nib as well.

I wanted to see just how fine I could go before the limiting factor became the width of the ink slit. And so I imitated Sailor’s saibi-togi nib, using the actual one as a model, and bottomed out at 0.05mm:

A fuller writing sample at normal sizes can be found below. It’s a very scratchy nib, due to its size, and I’m very pleased.

It’s not very practical as it is, but then this pen was always intended to be a little bit of a guinea pig. I use my Souverän pens far more, but would heartily recommend the Jazz as a pen to chuck in a pencil case or purse to have around when you need!