The Complete Guide to Modern Lamy Nibs

Lamy pens are well known for their iconic nibs, which feature flat tops, angular edges and minimalist styling. And more importantly, almost all Lamy nibs are interchangeable. They all have the same basic form factor and can be swapped between Lamy pens quite freely. You can find replacement nibs at many Lamy stockists and changing a Lamy pen’s nib is a very simple process.

Although Lamy pens are generally all compatible with the full range of Lamy nibs, different nibs are designed and styled to suit different pens. This won’t stop you swapping the nibs, but will impact how the pen looks.

The Lamy 2000 is different and uses a custom nib which can’t be used on any other Lamy pen

Nib Widths

Lamy nibs come in a range of sizes; this refers to the tip size, and doesn’t limit which pens you can use the nib on. The standard widths are as follows:

Nib Size	Width and Tolerance
EF	0.36mm ± 0.06mm
F	0.46mm ± 0.06mm
M	0.56mm ± 0.06mm
B	0.675mm ± 0.075mm
A	0.56mm ± 0.06mm
LH	0.56mm ± 0.06mm

The LH nib is a Medium designed for left-handed writers, and the A nib is a more forgiving Medium nib intended for beginners. Lamy also offers BB or Extra Broad in some nibs, but this size may already be discontinued and can be hard to find.

OM, OB and OBB widths are also available for Lamy’s gold nibs; these are left-oblique versions of the standard widths. Again, OBB may be discontinued.

Inconsistent Widths?

Many users report that Lamy nib widths are inconsistent, with some nibs performing like a wider or narrower nib.

Given Lamy’s accepted tolerances for variations in nib size, the broadest versions of a given nib size will be smaller than the narrowest versions of the next size up – you might see a Fine nib reaching 0.52 mm compared with a Medium nib as small as 0.50 mm.

Update! April 2026

I used to link to Lamy’s own nib guide to show the information on nib width tolerances; however, it seems that Lamy’s nib guide no longer includes this information so I’ve included the tolerances in the table of nib widths above.

Nib Options

Lamy nibs are all identified with a Z## code:

Nib Code	Widths	Material	Notes	Model Default
Z50	EF, F, M, B, BB	Steel	Lamy’s “standard” nib. Comes in stainless or black-coated.	Safari, Vista, Al-Star Pur, CP1, Scala Accent, Studio (steel)
Z50	LH	Steel	Similar to M but slightly oblique for left-handed writers.
Z50	A	Steel	“Beginner”. Similar to M width but with a more forgiving tip.	ABC, Nexx, Nexx M
Z50	1.1, 1.5, 1.9	Steel	Stub/calligraphy nibs with a straight edge tip.	Joy
Z52	EF, F, M, B	Steel	Styled for the Lamy Lx. PVD coated, black.	Lx
Z53	F, M, B	Steel	Styled for the Aion, with a special curved shape.	Aion, Ideos
Z55	EF, F, M, B, OM, OB	Gold	Bicolour, partially platinum.	Accent, Studio (gold) Dialog
Z56	EF, F, M, B, OM, OB	Gold	Styled for the Imporium. Bicolour, no breather hole.	Imporium
Z57	EF, F, M, B, OM, OB	Gold	Styled for the Imporium. As Z56 but black and gold PVD.	Imporium
Z58	F, M, B	Gold	Styled for Dialog CC. As Z56 but with rose gold.	Dialog CC
Z59	C	Steel	Known as the Chinese, Cursive, or “Han”/”Hanzi” nib.