Diamine Music Inks, Part 1

I’ve had the Diamine Music set for quite some time, but I realized I’ve never reviewed it so it’s time to take care of that. At Cult Pens you can either buy the inks in the boxed set, or in individual 30ml bottles. As far as I know, Cult Pens is the only store that sells them individually. The set includes 10 inks based on different composers, so today we are going to take a look at half of them.

Swabs:

Left to right: Vivaldi, Chopin, Bach, Mozart, and Strauss.

Writing samples:

Let's take a look at how the ink behaves on fountain pen friendly papers: Rhodia, Tomoe River, and Leuchtturm.

Water resistance: Low

Feathering: Low-there was a little bit of feathering in the flex nib.

Show through: Medium

Bleeding: Low-there is some bleeding in the flex nib.

Other properties: low shading, low sheen, and no shimmer. I only saw sheen in the flex nib on Tomoe River paper.

On Staples 24 lb copy paper there was lots of feathering in every nib size as well as bleeding, so I would not recommend these inks for cheap paper.

Comparison Swabs:

Vivaldi is similar to 3 Oysters Purple Gray, but is less saturated.

Chopin is an unsaturated neutral, somewhere between blue black and grey. In writing I think it’s closer to blue black. It’s similar to Sailor Jentle Blue Black.

Bach is a warm brown, similar to Robert Oster Golden Brown.

Mozart is a dark red, similar to Robert Oster 1789 Maroon.

Strauss is an unsaturated Red, similar to Organics Studio Mercury Red.

The full set inked up.

I used a Lochby Lined Blank A5 notebook (Tomoe River 68gsm). All of the inks had an average flow.

Overall, I enjoyed using all of these inks. Out of these five I think Vivaldi and Chopin are my favorite.

Disclaimer: I purchased these inks myself, and all photos and opinions are my own. This page does not contain affiliate links, and is not sponsored in any way.