Reddit reviews Pilot Fountain Pen Converter (CON-50)

Pilot Metro $11.80. Comes with a CON-20 converter. Can add a CON-50 for $6.74 for a total of $18.54.

Or just about any Jinhao pen would work as well.

You want this converter: https://www.amazon.com/Pilot-Fountain-Pen-Converter-CON-50/dp/B0016YWJZ8

Pilot uses a proprietary converter/cartridge so you have to use Pilot converters and cartridges. You can use any FP ink you want.

A cartridge is disposable and comes prefilled with ink. This is a cartridge for a Pilot MR Metropolitan

A converter takes the place of a cartridge and you fill it with bottled ink. They (typically) have a piston that you twist that sucks the ink up into it. This is a converter for a pilot MR Metropolitan

You CAN technically refill cartridges with a blunt tip syringe (because I know someone will try to correct me on this). I hope that helps!

i got these two with a metro

hope i got the right stuff lol

To add to this, the con-50 converter is a great addition to the metro. I really prefer this converter to the one included with the pen. It's an easy swap to make and the clear container makes it much easier to see the level of ink.

Lol. It kind of depends. There are a lot of variables. I'll list out a few options for you.

• Pilot Metro - This is one of the gold standards in fountain pens right now. Pilot doesn't fuck around when it comes to making nibs. Out of the box this thing should write like a dream. If you're getting the one linked, you'll also want to do yourself a favor and get yourself a piston converter for the pen. Unless you don't plan to ever use bottled ink. In that case you can buy cartridges to your heart's content and be just fine. so in total, your cost of entry is like $20-ish.
  
  
• TWSBI ECO - This is, in my opinion, the highest bang for your buck option in entry level pens. I love demonstrators. Having the clear barrel so you can see your ink sloshing around is sweet. The nibs are pretty decent, and the piston filling mechanism is awesome. If you're writing all the time, the huge ink capacity means you'll be able to write a lot with it before you need to re-fill. Cost of entry here is roughly $30.
  
  
• Jinhao X450 - Every time I've used one of these super cheap Chinese fountain pens I've been incredibly pleasantly surprised. The nibs are actually pretty decent. There's some issues with quality control on some of them. Weird things like loos caps or loose grip sections or loose converters inside could potentially make for a less than great experience, but you can find lots of these on ebay, like 10 for 5 bucks. You'll have to wait a few weeks to get them from China, but they're great for being able to take with you and have 0 worries of breaking or losing them. Cost of entry is roughly $5
  
  Those are the 3 pen models I personally recommend, although if you ask around you'll also find people recommending the Lamy Safari/Vista/Al-star (same model, different materials). It's not a bad pen, I've owned a couple and like them, but they're in the price range between the Metro and the ECO, and the ECO and Metro are so much better that I don't feel comfortable recommending the Safari over either of them, unless you have a boner for German engineering, haha.
  
  In terms of ink, there's so much stuff out there that there's really no place to start in terms of explaining it. I'd be happy to send some samples your way, though, if you were interested in getting started.
  
  The biggest favor you can do for yourself when you get into fountain pens is to buy yourself some quality paper to write on. It's a night and day difference between shitty standard copy paper and a nice fountain pen friendly notebook.
  
  One of my favorites is the Black n' Red. Writing on it is smooth, and there's no bleeding or ghosting of ink, and if you get some ink that does some cool stuff, this paper will let it do the cool stuff.
  
  Please feel free to PM me or even reach out to people on r/fountainpens if you have any questions. We'd be more than happy to help you get started!

it might be, but i'm back to the Pilot converter that comes with it. I also have the con50. I havent tried the con50 with it, just the stock converter.

The Pilot Metropolitan only takes Pilot converters, which are the con-20, con-50, and con-70. The con-70 isn't very common, and I don't know a lot about it. The con-20 seems to hold more ink than the con-50, but by using the con-50 you can see how much ink you have left in the pen, compared to the con-20 which isn't transparent.

EDIT: wrong pen, whoops.

Sorry - It's a CON-50.

http://www.amazon.com/Pilot-Fountain-Pen-Converter-CON-50/dp/B0016YWJZ8/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1456842895&sr=8-1&keywords=con-50