Keepers (2) - Pelikan M600

This pen was a gift, so a keeper regardless, but of all the Pelikan Souverän series, the M600 is the one that suits me most. 

Let me get the gripes out of the way first. As with all Souvräns, the section is really short and the threads are on the sharp side. This is the one area where the desire to match the styling of the original 400 seems like the wrong decision. Obviously it means there's more of the celluloid "binde" to see, but a good centimetre of it is hidden by the cap most of the time, so I don't see why they couldn't have gone for the Aurora Optima solution and have a longer section.

Modern Pelikan nibs aren't all super exciting either — my experience with the mediums in particular is that they're wet, but pretty featureless otherwise, prone to overpolishing, with little in the way of bounce or line variation. I've had better experience at the extremes, though — I have a lovely 14k extra-fine that I salvaged from an old M250, and the broad nib that I have on this pen at the moment has just enough stubbishness to make it interesting.

But the pens are undoubtedly classics - generally understated but distinct and instantly recognisable. Almost literally iconic if you like worshipping pelicans. If only because of the clip, you could call the aesthetics Art Deco and the lines are clean enough to be very pleasing to the eye. Not minimalist by any means — but not post-modern either. Slightly ironic, perhaps, as you can make an argument that the re-release of the M400 in the early-1980s marked the beginning of this "post-modern" era of fountain pens (I'll come back to that in a separate post). 

They're also extremely functional (nib quibbles aside) — the piston mechanism is elegant and reliable. Unlike some other piston-fillers, they're easy to clean, as the nib units unscrew to allow access to the barrel. And those unscrewable nib units mean it's in principle easy to change nib gauge without going out and purchasing a full separate pen or risking damaging a friction-fit feed.

These days, the Souverän series runs from the M400 (and the steel-nibbed M200, which is the same size but not strictly a Souverän) up to the humongous M1000. Of those, the M600 is goldilocks size for me. That's partly because I don't have particularly large hands, but also because the piston mechanism is plastic rather than brass. I find the brass pistons of the M800 and M1000 materially backweight these larger models and making them unwieldy and a bit unbalanced. The M600 size is big enough to feel like a full-sized pen, but light enough to keep the nib on the page.

The other advantage of the M600 is that the threading on the nib units is the same as on both the M200 and M400 — and also on the 400, 400N and 400NNs of the 1950s. So get yourself an M600 and in principle you have a platform to accommodate any nib from the vintage or modern 400 series too. In practice, it takes a bit of hunting - standalone Pelikan nib units aren't that common and don't tend to be that much cheaper than a full pen. But still...

Stats

Length (capped) - 133mm

Length (uncapped) - 124mm

Length (posted) - 153mm

Section diameter - 10mm

Balancing point (unposted) - 66mm or 53% along the length of the barrel from the nib (compared with 80mm or 63% for the M800)

Weight - 18g (capped), 11g (uncapped)