Pilot Converters

NOTE added on February 2017: A newer, updated review of the Pilot's cartridges and converters can be found on the Chronicle Pilot Cartridges and Converters 2017.


Pilot is the only big pen company in Japan supporting the use of its old products. Pilot, I already said on these chronicles, still manufactures the CON-W converter to use pens from the early 1960s —those with “double spare” cartridges— despite the fact this system was short lived.

This Pilot pen needs the CON-W converter.

Pilot also produces the small squeezer converter –CON-20— to fit in all of its wide range of pocket pens. This, we have already seen, is not the case of Platinum or Sailor.

From left to right: CON-20, CON-50, CON-70, and CON-W.

And finally, two other converters are available for pens with longer or wider barrels—the small piston CON-50, and the very unique CON-70.

A cartridge for a Petit-1 pen, and the regular Pilot cartridge.

These are the capacities, as measured by myself, of these converters and of the regular cartridge.

Capacities and prices (in JPY, sale tax not included) of Pilot converters and of the current cartridges. The small cartridge can be used in any Pilot cartrdige/converter pen, but the regular cartridge cannot be used in the Petit-1 line of pens.

(Katoseisakusho 800F – Sailor “Hiroko’s green”)

Bruno Taut
March 13, 2011
[labels: Pilot, conversor]