In the pole position?
Visconti has always been one of those brands where the design of the pens always appealed to me but for some reason I couldn’t get into the material choices – to each his own I suppose. When I saw the Opera Metal series I knew this is where I would jump into the deep end of the pool and buy my first Visconti. The pen is based on their circling the square design and made from brushed Avional (which is just aluminum mixed with a little copper, magnesium and silicon). The aluminum is anodized in satin black for the body and cap and red for the clip, end cap, cap ring, and section.
The cap uses Visconti’s hook and lock system that works by pushing down on the cap and twisting slightly to release the cap. The design is nice as it aligns the flat surface of the cap and barrel with no adjusting. The finial features the Visconti MyPen system – this magnetic system allows you to swap out the Visconti logo with your initials, gemstones, or zodiac icons. The clip is the standard Visconti bridge design with good tension, but it does require working by hand to clip it in a sleeve instead of opening easily by itself. The cap band is simply etched with “Monza” which is home to the famous Formula 1 track in Italy and the designation for this Red/Black color combo. Other colors in the lineup include a Black/Yellow “Roadster”, a Silver/Grey “Silver Shadow” and a Silver/Blue “Speedboat”.
The black Chromium-18 nib on this pen is a SmarTouch tubular 1.3mm stub. The round nib has a very slight upturn at the tip which helps if you tend to hold the pen at a steep angle. The nib is engraved with “SmarTouch Chromium 18” along with some decorative scroll work. The black nib is a nice touch – keeping everything completely black and red. Unfortunately Visconti is known for having some QC issues with their nibs and this pen was no different. When I got the pen it would not write without tapping the nib constantly. After checking with a loupe I could see the tines were spread so far apart the ink could not travel down the ink channel. I spent some time applying light pressure to each tine–pressing it towards the other. After a few minutes the problem was partially solved, able to write but still prone to random stops. I think the best bet is to get it out to an expert but it’s a bit sad that my $40 Lamy Safari Stub is more reliable.
The pen is a converter design and the quality on the converter is excellent with lots of metal where most manufacturers opt for plastic. It fits snugly into the section and holds about 1mil of ink. It works well with the nib design which does not require you to dip the pen up to the section in order to properly pull in a solid ink fill.
Weight is actually good for a pen that looks like it weighs a ton. Balance is great uncapped and still centered when capped but far too long for me to write with it that way. Length is 130mm and increases to 140mm when the cap is on. Posted it grows to an unwieldy 166mm but again I don’t think posting is necessary.
Overall it’s a great pen design and with a little tweaking it will be fantastic – I just wish it had started out that way at the price point.
