Pelikan Souverän M 400 Review

BACK IN TIME

An 180 year old maker of fountain pens and their paraphernalia, coupled with the fact that your collection is rather incomplete without a Pelikan, was enough to provide momentum for my first purchase. Pelikan had launched its first fountain pen back in 1929. As for me, having already witnessed the writing finesse of a steel nibbed M 205, which I had to trade off, it was time to witness the real 14K Gold nib. And of course, these Swiss-incorporated German pen makers are credited with the genesis of piston filling mechanism with a differential spindle gear. It means that the piston knob is also threaded so that it unscrews a bit when the piston moves outward, thus delivering a greater ink-suction. Hungarian engineer Theodor Kovacs is credited with the invention of the original filling mechanism before selling off the patent to Günther Wagner (the man who established Pelikan) in 1927.

The M4XX is usually considered to be a logical next step to M2XX. As with the model numbers, there is a general increase in nib size & specs, in addition to overall dimensions, when you move from M4XX to M1XXX. Brass piston fittings in 8XX/1XXX series, render additional weight. The designs of the striped 400/600/800/1000 are pretty linearly recurring over the entire writing range except for several special editions. 405/605/805/1005s refer to the similar pens with silver accents, plated with noble metals (like Palladium or Rhodium), unless it’s a special or demonstrator model. The other model numbers refer to special/limited editions. One such alluring model is Souverän M 625 with sterling silver fittings (Ag 92.5%). And the green-striped M400 embarks the 1929 classical design with a translucent striped barrel. 

The logos have changed over the years starting from a mother pelican with four chicks to a one-to-one correspondence from 2003 onwards.

PRESENTATION

The pen comes in a standard G15 gift box, constituted of thick cardboard with dimensions in the range of 20 X 9 X 5.5 cm, in a top-bottom slider configuration. 

On opening the box, you would at once notice a white synthetic-leather pouch, secured by a brown strap with a plastic emblem, which mimics a wax seal. The pouch contains your pen and there is a separator holding the warranty and catalogue beneath.

DESIGN - THE STRIPED TRANSLUCENCY (6/6)

The m400 comes in five standard designs, four striped translucencies - Green, Blue, Red, Tortoiseshell White and one Classical Black with a Green Ink Window, across four different nib widths - EF, F, M and B although a custom grind is offered for a italic nib by some of the authorised sellers. The m405s now come in silver trimmed versions of Striped Blue and Black/Ink Window with monotone rhodiated nibs. Personally, I prefer the earlier two-tone nibs on them.

A touch would unveil the subtle craftsmanship associated in building the writing instrument. Through its light-weightiness, it apparently belies any effort for transforming thoughts into words. The black and green striped shaft has stood the test of time since the 1950s. The barrel made up of extremely smooth pelikan famed ‘cellulose acetate’ with its diamond cut contours, partially revealing the necessities like the piston end or ink level, while concealing the irrelevant ones.

Light and dark play differently with the barrels, which dazzles your eyes, rather than the lenses. 

The striped transparent sleeve gleams in gold with ambient light and these effects proliferate with sunlight. The golden radiance is matched throughout the pen starting from the famed finial and the pelican beak (clip) through the concentric bands in the cap, finally converging with the concentric piston rings. 

The cap feels light and unscrews with a single turn, revealing a dazzling two-tone nib. The grip reveals another knot of glitter, towards the nib end. The transparency does reveal the inside works of its piston mechanism.

Two concentric golden bands with a gold plated crown embossed with the pelikan logo, adorn the cap with a signature pelican beak-shaped clip (with a face!). The thicker one carries the brand imprint of PELIKAN SOUVERÄN GERMANY. A high degree of polish gives it a gleam which can coax the lustre of the gold plated bands. The logo on the finial is the one embraced by Pelikan post 2003, that of a mother pelican and its chick, gleaming in brushed gold or brushed palladium.

The significance of these bands is that somehow they seem to be intrinsically associated with the design rather than just differentiating the aesthetics. 

FILLING SYSTEM (6/6)

A piston filler with a sturdy knob is embellished with two concentric golden loops. Apart from their enchanting looks, like any other pelikan, it's an easy and hassle-free mechanism. The piston end unscrews with three to four rotations and ink is sucked in, with quite a gush, once the piston is screwed back on. And of course, you can observe the thing in action through the striped windows. A plastic spindle connector in the m4XX/6XX limits weight. M4XX fills upto 1.3 mL of ink. However, given the wet flow of the flock, it does not get a long time to use this capacity.

One thing to note here is that these piston mechanisms are not supposed to be dismantled using a wrench. In case of problems other than lubricating the piston seal, it’s better to send the pen to Pelikan Germany/Country Authorized Service Center. Pelikan does have an excellent customer service.

NIB - ALL THAT MATTERS* (4/6)

The nib/feed section is screw-fit and comes in a standard 14k two-tone design across four stock widths - EF, F, M & B. It has the standard pelikan design with the usual convenience of a screw-fit section.

Like all its cousins, the nib is exquisite and efficient. With a standard m4xx feed, the nib-section is an ensemble of efficiency and art. And this two-tone finish does converge with the golden/silver trims in terms of both glitter and glimmer.

The tail end specifies the nib-width and composition (14 C, 58.5% Au) of the gold-alloy used. Three arabesques diverge along the shoulders of the nib with two of them converging near the circular breather hole. The third curve runs across the tines towards the shoulders ending with the tail end of the nib, outside of which a golden decor runs along the shoulders across the outer tines, before converging onto the iridium tip. There is of-course the dazzling golden mother-baby pelikan logo, resting above the tail. 

This one in the picture is an Extra-Fine nib and writes smooth out of the box.

A standard black plastic feed (earlier ones had ebonite feeds) with closely spaced fins allows a good buffer capacity to hold ink with ambient pressure and temperature fluctuations.

*My first green striped M400, had a wet yet scratchy nib. No doubt, it drained my entire emotional elation all of a sudden, when I started writing with it. Upon close inspection with a 20X loupe, I found tines misaligned by a considerable extent. But still due to wet flow, it laid a broader line than a pilot 14k medium nib, concealing most of the scratchiness, unless I wrote a looped ‘r’ or ‘s’. The next day, taking the loupe I did spend two hours, routinely lifting the right tine from the middle with my fingernail to align it with the left, although it kept coming back with amazing flex. An hour and a half later, the loupe showed both the tines to be more or less aligned and yes the scratchiness was almost gone. But the inertia of scratchiness still carried on the back of my head. Finally, I sent the nib back for a free replacement. The next m40Xs were gliders right out of the box and needed no such effort. But I did expect a better QC from Pelikan.

PHYSICS OF IT (5/6) – RELATIVELY SPEAKING

It does give a comfortable feel to write with the pen with the cap posted. The overall capped length is around 12.5 cm. The total weight of m400 has a third of contribution from the cap and it feels very light without posting the cap. The pen does get some heft from the ink inside the barrel.

• Uncapped Length ~ 12 cm
• Posted Length ~ 15 cm
• Nib Leverage ~ 2 cm
• Overall Weight ~ 16 g (Cap Weight ~ 6 g)

Capped, uncapped and posted comparisons with its cousins - m605 and a m805 go below. A m20X with a steel nib shares the same measurements as a m40X.

ECONOMIC VALUE (5/6)

The m400 retails at around USD 300 - 400, though it might be available at lower street prices. I was able to get the pens at a good discounted price in an online action at the bay, however the subsequent custom duty was high. I would not undervalue this rating by much, because in the end, I do consider the pen a workhorse.

OVERALL (5.2/6)

These 14k nibs have a smooth and wet flow. The nibs have a slight bit of spring and softness in them, without any noticeable line variation. Being extremely wet writers out of the box, the Fine nib puts a line which takes around 40 seconds to dry on MD Paper (for the Extra-Fine one, it takes 30 seconds to dry a line-width falling between a pilot 14K Fine and Medium nib)

Some of the links which I can happily share : Nib Adjustment, Souverän M625, Patent, Piston mechanisms, 2-Special Editions (m640/605), Gentleman's Gazette

Thank you for going through the review. Hope you enjoyed it.

More pen and paraphernalia reviews here.

Time and ‘Alka Aunty’ wait for none

It’s been quite a while now, in real terms say around nine hundred and forty six million seconds, since it all began. That is about the time I have been serving on this planet or it might as well be the other way round. From the nine hundred and forty six million seconds, it takes a normal human being less than thirty one million seconds to understand the nature of life and its materialistic incongruence, once he or she is able to apply Pythagoras Theorem in school. However, for me it took around two hundred and thirty million seconds, which is about the time in which one would have reached Uranus starting on a normal space shuttle from Earth, cruising along at a constant speed of 28000 mph. That’s about 100 times faster than the Volkswagen groups’ Bugatti Veyron Super Sport (Originally French), the fastest production car till date. Production car means you can actually sit on its seat, supported by gravity on your bum, while its wheels are turning and travel from Mumbai to New Delhi in less than three and a half hours over a perfectly deserted freeway sans any potholes or bumps without seeing any death angels. The absence of potholes is completely theoretical since it would render around ten million citizens jobless, and many more contractors and city municipal corporations penniless at the same time. And as someone had said, even the moon is envious of potholes in Mumbai roads. Pardon me for my mathematical analogies, for my dreams most certainly pertain to John Von Neumann types whereas outside the matrix it’s a cubicle with a dizzy screen to stare at and do whatever I am told by an assortment of Weasels^#.  And that dizzy screen is also my own laptop’s, since we had byod (brick bring your own device).

From the classical Indian context or say rather from the kaleidoscopic perspective of an Alka Aunty, a perfect life mandatorily constitutes of the following: Engineering from an IIT or NIT (by Alka Aunty’s exceptional mercy NITs were allowed to be on the list since 1990s via a special amendment) , MBA from an IIM (No other B-schools are approved by Alka Aunty within India, even if they feature within Top-10, MSc/PhD from the I-Bhee League was added later) OR a Hard-bard in US , an intra-caste marriage to a good-natured girl belonging to a decent family (Special approval may be sought for intra-caste love marriage against arranged ones), having kids who would always top from Pre-nursery to Post-Graduation and finally landing up with a aaMaNCee job, till death takes you apart. Pre 1990s, it was perhaps cracking the UPSC examination ending up with a high-profile government job instead of a MNC one, with other factors unchanged. Kids still had to stand first in each and every grade. All these things would be materially and spiritually fulfilling for the rest of one’s life. Social life in school should be pursued with like-minded people excelling in various fields and people aspiring to be a Dhoni or Sehwag (Tendulkars were alright though after he had won the Opel Astra[MoS] in Sharjah in 1998) neglecting studies lacking even the mild potential of a Gagan Khoda, are strictly untouchables. Boys looming behind girls are destined to end up as beggars or possibly lepers, in distant future and are worse than untouchables who have to be dealt with a poker-face insulting their intellect or rather the lack of it. This was about the idea.

This formulae is probably what Alka Aunty has seen succeed throughout her life. There might have been many others who would have been done things very differently and still would have done as well if not better in their lives. Limited to middle class towns, belonging to middle class families, these outliers or rather aliens like someone’s uncles’ sister’s son are simply ruled out by frame of reference, sometimes as myths and other times as lucky ones. Dinku has been voting for last ten years but is still living off his father’s pension at his father’s place, because he was hitting the cricket ball when he should have been reading books. And yes he could not equal Gagan Khoda forget a Sehwag or a Dhoni. Even worse, Dinku was composing love-letters to Dinki when he should have been solving quadratic equations. Dinki ignored those, thankfully to Dinku’s poor English and is now a successful and well-settled doctor. Had she not, she would have been selling vegetables after eloping with a vegetable seller on a bicycle which again would be a borrowed one, as her staunch father would have refused her any help. Though theoretically, she could have simply lived off Dinku’s father’s pension.

After performing the rituals one has to look higher up in Maslow’s pyramid for a challenging job. For someone like myself, both the person and the need is beyond comprehension. Something monotonous might require a change, but challenges beyond challenge is abominable. Long ago, our class-teacher asked the class to name of the tissue in the human eye where the image is formed. Amidst the chorus, one lanky bespectacled fellow firmly stood up and confidently answered it as “rectum”. The teacher almost fell off her chair in mirth, before correcting it as retina. That day he was probably written off from Alka Aunty’s books and possibly her alluring daughters’ too. Even that guy craves for a challenging job today, with incessant updates of his facebook status with thought-provoking latin maxims, either on world cup matches or during anything that is being broadcasted to two or more people. Even the concept of ambition is so abstruse, one frequently confuses with what someone wants to do and what others want one to do. My childhood ambition was limited to being a traffic cop, since you get to see all the cars from the front side. Gradually, giving in to my friends and relatives constant disapproval, I upgraded that to an engineer where I would still get to see those cars. Now, that was a secret till now. I am told that my next childhood ambition was to become a truck-driver, and my guess is that it might have been true. It must be fascinating to have a moving front view from a height of 8 to 10 feet. But it is not so fascinating for the people around me.

Lack of ambition for doing an MBA post engineering landed my friend in pre-marital affairs of a completely different sort. (Note - From Alka Aunty’s books, he is already written off) Although, post-engineering  he was doing great in his life in the US, he was bombarded with similar questions related to his ‘doing an MBA’ ambitions, whenever he met a prospect. The questions were either direct or carved out in utterly ingenious ways starting from, “my friend’s father’s uncle who is CEO of Y Company thinks that this world requires an advanced management degree to deal with todays business problems, so what is your opinion on that” to “all my other pretty friends are married to b-school grads, so will you please do it later ?”.  We learnt that this happened invariably when three conditions were met : (1) The prospective wife was very pretty (2) This was their second meeting (3) Third meeting never happened. So, his logical response should be to avoid meeting very pretty girls or just meet them for the first time and keep the memory. Being human, that too in the male format in late twenties, both were difficult and second response was possibly catastrophic. And in two to three weeks time, he would deluge himself with both gloom and Royal Stag, once he could see the engagement album of the earlier prospect in his facebook feed, till news of meeting the next prospect arrives. How did this happen ? Was it due mere lack of ambition for learning or simply a social cost ?

In contrast Learning seems to be the new buzzword to crack interviews. Even if you are sure that you are roughly ending up with a similar set of weasels, almost doing the same thing but with a pay hike, you have to emphasize on the steep learning curve the new weasels group would have for you,  ascending to newer heights of Weaselry. They all need a go-getter, self-starter ambitious little hog who would takeaway all the weasel work from them and yet stay motivated till the end.  What you do will perhaps never match with what you felt you were supposed to do.

Feeling mystified by ambitions, interest and social costs, most of us would keep thinking rather than working on newer things, keeping everything in eternal abeyance.

^#- Weasel is synonymous with office workers who can/will project your work as their own, It’s a Scott Adams invention