Well, my glossy black-rainbow "rainbows end" SSV showed up today from vapeworld.com. Everything was packaged in the case (MUCH better than the DBVs case) and inside of a really sturdy type of box, with heavy over-lapping flaps, i think everyone should ship vapes/glass in these sort of boxes.
But enough about the box. Along with the usual SSV case contents (owners manual+ spare screens, 2 SSV stickers, wand, tubing, and mouthpiece) VW also threw in a pretty nice 2" 3 piece grinder. I find that, unlike my now-retired, convenience store bought 3-piece grinder, this one gets the pieces to reasonably small chunks before allowing them to pass to the collection area, great size to start vaping in the SSV, but i'll definitely be sticking with my 2-piece to get the finer grind for my LB, as well as to help break up the SSV bowls after a dozen or so hits. The grinder came in its own little felt bag, which i thought was pretty cool.
Other than the shininess and beauty of the vape itself, the first thing that caught my eye was the wand. It seems proportioned differently than SSV wands i've seen in the past. The bowl is deeper and takes up more of the overall wand length, making the part between the screen and the tubing hole shorter. It also feels like it has a bit more girth. I'm not sure if this is a big bowl type of wand and the ppl at VW included it because it was the only type of bowl they had for standard heatcovers, since their default is the ground glass stuff, or if this is just the new standard.
The only thing i've found that i dont really like about the wand is the opening where the hose goes in. On other/older SSVs and DBVs, the bottom of the wand flares out (kinda like the tip of the bowl but not as much) and wetting the hose and sliding it in the hole took a bit more effort, but sealed up and held very well as it was tight along the whole inserted length. This wands opening tapers in and is narrower than the rest of the wand however, and when you insert the hose it is tight around this lip on the very end, but not as snug anywhere else. I'm not sure what caused them to change this design, but i wish they wouldnt have. Maybe having the hose easier to pull out is a good thing to some, but i like to have it stuck in there tight so i never had to worry about it. Still, after shoving the hose up the wand a bit further than i would have liked ( i like as much glass exposed in the wand to help collect wandhash) it seems to be pretty firmly in place.
Compared to my previous daily-drivers standard wand (dbv), this one feels heavier and of better quality. Because of the depth of the bowl, you can load a much larger load into it than the dbv's , if you are so inclined. However, it's about the same width (maybe seems a slight bit narrower), so it's still just as efficient with smaller loads.
After a few uses with it, the main difference I appreciate between it and its cheaper brother are about what i expected (i'm gonna bullet this cause i'm still very baked and need help organizing my thoughts
):
- The downward angle and smaller opening of the heater cover, the depth of the bowl, and gravity work together to make the vape session more care-free, as you don't have to really worry about bits falling on your heating element if things get tipped, bumped, or blown slightly.
- The absence of ground-glass makes it much easier to use, as you dont have to worry about the bowl either getting stuck or being so loose that is slips out at the slightest tug. I like to twist the bowl while hitting and stir between hits to vape loads as evenly as possible, GG was nothing but an obstacle for me. It was also a visual obstacle, as the frosted look of the GG on the dbvs bowl didnt allow me to clearly see the contents of the bowl as i was hitting it, from the side.
The hosing in the above image is old hosing, not the new stuff that came with it. I had planned on using old stuff at first in case i fuck up and turn the knob too high while i'm finding the best setting for it. I decided i was definitely going to use old hose once i saw how tightly coiled and kinked the included hose was.
Does anyone what the best way to get this type of hose to straighten out is?
Anyways, the hits from this thing are great and tasty, as i expected. I haven't familiarized myself with its temp range quite enough to vape loads as fully as i could with my dbv, so it's been very pleasant lower-temp hits so far that are still very consistent and powerful. I'm sure that by the end of the day i'll be a pro and will producing the darker brown abv.
In the end, I am 100% pleased with my decision to upgrade to a SSV, it was like trading in a ford for a porsche. The ford got me there alright, but the porsche is just so much more fun to drive.
And now for some more pics:
!! That is usually when they understand my obsession, and promotion, of vaporization.
. The wand/heatcover/mouthpiece are easy enough to clean the smell/taste out of by boiling, and I've actually had pretty good luck cleaning out hosing by plugging one end and filling 1/3 or so full of iso and then plug the other end and shake it around a lot for about half a minute and then dump it out. Then i put a funnel in the one end of the whip and pour scalding hot water through it. Worked much better than i thought it would.
