The Lamy Safari is cheap but perfect for my uses. The clip on the cap is especially good: it's big, sturdy, and attractive. I bought the pen, a refillable cartridge, and a big old bottle of blue ink. It's serving me well and works great on most paper and pretty good on the rest.
They're gateway drugs to other fountain pens :-) I had a lamy fountain pen, tried with noodler's ink, and eventually gave up on the fiddliness of it. It was always dry.
I had the same problem with Lamy, but not other brands. But it had a plastic nib, and that was probably 10 years ago.
A plastic nib? Are you sure that's possible?
It wasn't awesome but I'm pretty sure that's what it was. $20 would have been a bit cheap for carbon fiber.
Like Sailor. Damn they're expensive. But they're also the best.