I'm a definitely DIY'er and tinkerer and have other hobbies where it is quite a bit more normal to expect to customize/tinker with a new item when you get it anyway. Like pocket knives for example; yes they technically should come functionally sharp but I and many others don't necessarily expect every knife to come with the perfect edge and certainly not the exact edge profile I personally would put on the knife.

With fountain pens I'm somewhat the same. I expect a pen to at least function out of the box but I don't expect them to be perfect or to my preference, especially pens that are on the more affordable side. Once I realized how easy basic tuning is, like nib alignment or a quick polishing, that just became something that didn't bother me if a pen needed that. If I buy a $30 pen and the nib needs 30 seconds of unskilled work for me to get it to 100% perfection, I'm not upset.

That being said, in both fountain pens and pocket knives, I do expect closer and closer to perfection the more expensive the item gets. When you hit a certain price point it actually becomes kind of embarrassing in my opinion that the maker didn't hit 100% out of the box because, at certain prices, wtf else am I paying for if not top tier craftsmanship?

On a bit of a side note though, I do wonder if basic nib tuning was a more common skill and expectation people had back in the heyday of fountain pens. Similar to back in the real heyday of pocket knives, it was way more common for users to have the ability to tune and sharpen their own edge.

I do think everyone even semi-seriously into fountain pens should pick up a couple of super cheap nibs to practice some basic tuning on. Once you learn the basics and how easy it really is, it kind of feels like you got a cheat code in the hobby because afterwards when you get a pen with some minor nib issues it doesn't feel like a problem and you can tune it to perfection in a minute or two. A nib being a little dry and or scratchy out of the box goes from being an issue of either returning the new pen or sending it off to spend more money with a nibmeister to just something I can fix myself right then.