Visconti Homo Sapiens

Most people start their pen collection with inexpensive, steel nib pens. I started with Visconti Homo Sapiens.

This was the first pen that I bought after getting job. When I started reading about fountain pens I came across the Nibs.com website. I would spend hours and hours on this website browsing various brands of pen. When I first saw Visconti Homo Sapiens I just thought - this pen is special. It was made from the basaltic lava of Mount Etna, one of the most famous volcanoes. Instead of screw threads it has a unique locking system and a Vac filling system.

Packaging(2/2)
I bought this pen from a reputed seller on FPN and I received it without any hassle. The pen came in a Visconti faux leather box which was inside a cardboard box with a Visconti logo over it . The faux leather box had satin interior and the pen was held in a groove.

 
Weight and Balance
The first thing I noticed about this pen was how heavy it is. The pen weighs 30 gms uncapped and 44 gms capped. The pen is heavier towards piston which perhaps is perhaps a serious flaw given how heavy the pen is overall. I cannot write more than 2-3 A4 size pages at once with it. Nowadays, I mostly use it to take short notes or writing daily dairy. The pen was more suitable for occasional note taking rather than a long duration writer. 

Design - The pen has a hour glass section which is comfortable to hold, fingers just sit there and it's length is optimum. The pen caps using the Visconti 'Hook Safe Lock', a unique capping system which insures that the pen doesn't unscrews accidently causing a leakage. The vacuum power filler of Visconti Homo Sapiens is made of titanium which resists ink corrosion. The clip is spring loaded and is suitable if someone want to carry it in shirt pocket (why would anyone though?).

Nib(2/10)
Visconti Homo Sapiens Bronze Age came with a dual tone 23k Palladium Dreamtouch nib. Visconti has phased out this nib and currently this model comes with a monochrome 18k gold nib. These nibs were manufactured by Bock while current models have in-house made nibs.

The nib was a 23k Palladium Fine with the most beautiful scrollwork I have ever seen. Unfortunately, that was the only positive thing about the nib. I learned later and with my own experience that Visconti nibs are not known for quality control. The nib skipped frequently and even after changing inks and flushing it several there was no change in the performance. The nib was the most disappointing aspect of this pen. When I first wrote with this pen it wrote normally for a few minutes but then it started skipping. It happened occasionally even when I was not writing at a faster pace. The flow was wetter for a F nib with Montblanc Toffee Brown ink but it was not an issue for me.

Overall Rating - (07/20)
After experimenting with the pen several times I came to the conclusion that it is not a good writer. Not even an average one actually. It's more of a collector's pen than a writer's pen. It is heavy, has poor balance and is equipped with a nib which is practically unusable. After keeping - not much using - it for more than six years, I sold it. I have decided not to buy another Visconti pen and to be cautious with other Italian brands.