check the angle at which you are holding the nib.
This. I have a Parker Sonnet which is very sensitive to the angle that it's held between my fingers, anything other than just right and it feels like it's digging into the paper. I have a Sheaffer Prelude with an M nib that is the total opposite. No matter how it's held, nor at what angle, it lays down a lovely wet line of ink. That's my everyday pen.
I have owned many fountain pens over the years, none of them particularly expensive, but various Platinum and Platignum, Pilots, Watermans, lots of different Parkers, the list goes on. I went through a bit of a phase about 5 years ago where almost all of my disposible income went on fountain pens, but in the end I sold them all aside from the Sheaffer and a Baoer 388 (the Sonnet was an 18th birthday present from my father). There's something to be said for some Chinese pens, when you can buy a 5 or 10 pack, cherry pick the very best nib/body/lid/converter, put them all together to build the very best possible example of it's kind, perfectly suited to your writing preferences and then sell off all the others to end up with a near-perfect pen which will have cost you pennies, or maybe even made you some money. I love that Baoer, but I bought it when I was determined to like fine nibs, and now that I've expanded my ink buying I find I prefer a wider line. Go figure.
As for pencils, well I'm all about the mechanical pencils. I studied mechanical engineering in university, and it was long enough ago that we still did the proper technical drawing course as well as CAD, and that developed my respect for Rotring. I actually lost my oldest Rotring pencil not long before christmas which I was quite cut up about, so now I carry a cheapish Pilot in my diary as my default, but it's a similar story, I've owned many over the years but I find that all I care about it the weighting and the width of the barrel. I can appreciate a nicely made pencil, but it doesn't add as much to the experience of using it if it's made of exotic materials, so again I sold loads. I now have just a Steadler of some sort and the Pilot, although I fancy trying one of the newer Rotrings to see how it compares to the memory of my old one.
