Pen Diagnostic Help Please

I have a Monteverde Impressa with a flow issue, and I was hoping for some help diagnosing the problem.

When I got the pen, it was used, and the previous owner said that he needed to prime the pen if it had been sitting uncapped for a while. When I got it, its fine factory nib wrote very dryly. So I checked the fitment and found that my #6 Goulet nib seemed to fit. I flushed it and the converter well with distilled water, swapped out the nib for the Goulet medium, inked it up, and TaDa! It wrote terrifically. Very smooth. I was thrilled, because I paid a "problem pen" price for it.

Then it slowly dried up as I wrote, gradually getting dryer and dryer. I tweaked the converter thinking I had an air bubble, and it started writing great again. Then it gradually got dryer and dryer. I've flushed and refilled, and the pattern repeated.

It has this problem whereby when it's first inked or just after having the converter twisted to force a drop, it writes great for a paragraph or two. Then the nib gradually starts feeling dry and textured, then skipping, then almost no ink at all. It also writes really well for a few lines right after it's been sitting nib down in its rack for a while. Then it dries up again.

Because the nib is a new Goulet that performs great for a while, I'm thinking it's not the nib. And the converter is a standard international that I've cleaned well and looks fine. So I'm thinking it's the feed? It's like the feed is having trouble getting saturated enough to feed the nib. But it I force feed it by screwing down the converter or by inking it from the nib, or if I just let it sit so ink slowly drains into the feed, it works. Then it's as though the plentiful ink in the feed is drawn out the nib while writing, and we're back to dry. It kind of works like a dip pen in that respect.

Does my diagnosis of the feed make sense? Are there other likely problems I might be overlooking?

I've flushed the pen and converter again with distilled water and put both in a glass of distilled water with a few drops of dish soap to see if maybe there is dried ink inside that ordinary flushing isn't reaching. Is there something else I should do?

Any help would be appreciated. It's a lovely pen to look at and hold.

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Pen Diagnostic Help Please