DISCLAIMER: I had not intended this to be so friggin' long. I really didn't mean this to be a treatise on the Revelations about Battery Performance over Time in the Real World. However, I think it's worthy of publication in either
Science Today ... or
Psychology Today.
@Baron23 that was really a helpful observation, thank you!
I have been going through this same saga with my Ti's.
I do
exactly as you, with a 4-battery rotation in the Nicore.
This made me realize something I would like to share, hoping it's a "useful awareness".
• I'm on my second rotation of 4 batteries over the past full year (rough idea for purposes of my point).
• I consume about 3 modestly-filled chambers per day, and desire/expect a respectable ABV color. Point being that the hopper is used all day, several to many times a day. I hit once/twice, and lay it down. Lather, rinse, repeat.
Perhaps the #1 Frustration with the battery rituals is knowing when to swap batteries.
When I'd decided to swap out the
first rotation of batteries 5-6 months after I began with them, it was a pain in the ASS, and now I understand why: I was too hung up on the
life of the battery as a measure of the battery's 'health', and ignoring maybe the other factor:
performance when fairly charged.
I'm sure someone out there can answer the question, "How many
well-toasted chambers
will a fresh GBH2 produce on a single charge?" Perhaps that is a "gold standard" against which a mid-life battery could be measured. Because I think that after mid-life, the battery might LAST (roughly) as long as a new one, but actually underperform, making the hopper look like the problem. Upping the Temperature to T5 is always an option, I suppose, but when one is not used to doing that for the first "3 months", one tends to avoid breaking that habit for the "last 3 months". And still, that doesn't answer the question of whether the hopper is the problem.
Hence, my mind was blown: It's time to replace the batteries when I start really questioning whether I should do the RMA-dance. Throw a fresh battery in it. See what happens.
So that's what I did. And like yours,
@Baron23 , my hopper jumped right back to top-shelf hitting.
Bottom line, for me, is, how much am I willing to put up with sub-standard performance? Pretty long, if I know it's not the Hopper, but just the battery getting tired.