Well first off let me apologize for being so silent on the Pod testing front. I hadn't had a chance to spend some quality time with my Pod until last weekend. and I felt we needed some real together time before i commented. I was, gladly, able to get some time to give it a good test on Sunday.
As far as the Pod itself, first impressions are very impressive. It runs as good as it looks. It's been plugged in 24/7 and I've settled on 13.6 as a good vaping voltage. It produces a good amount of heat and the holes on the top half let out enough for me to feel little "hot spots" where the holes are. I haven't looked much at the internals, nor the cord as they are working fine. My wife says I need to get rid of the see-through 1970's power cord. On the cord front I am finding the cord length a little short for my use, but as I have mentioned before, it is an easy piece to replace.
I did spend a fair amount of time with the glass pieces. For comparison purposes I used my maple Zap, which Fredrick is familiar with, and my Glass Blowers Direct FC bubbler, which others of you are familiar with. I found the Pod had no trouble milking a larger bubbler like that, though I think it is better paired with a smaller bubbler.
Using the direct draw stem and I found it's short length and dry draw a little too harsh for me. This is no different then any of my other vapes, I just don't care for direct draw. If I were to change anything about the direct draw it would be a longer stem.
Using the WPA stem was a good experience, like my other log vapes the Pod seems made to be paired with a bubbler (but that could just be me). Both stems are easy to load, fit nicely in the heat port, and produced excellent vapor.
One of the things I had to adjust for with the WPA was the screen. I found the weave a little too open. I also had trouble keeping it at one depth, so I ended up replacing it with another larger screen with a tighter weave. I found a drill bit that fit inside the WPA with a little wiggle room and crimped the screen around it with some pliers, and pushed it in. The larger size of the screen gave it a little more grip.
I tried different bowl "sizes" by moving the screen up and down, with a deeper bowl it seemed that the top would get nicely toasted but the bottom would stay a little green. So I ended up setting it fairly close to the top for a smaller bowl. I found this way it gets nicely toasted in the first hit.
The problem this causes is; I can clear a bowl like that in one hit. To load another bowl I have to grab this hot little nubbin' of a bowl if I'm using it in a 14mm joint.
An 18mm reducer solves this problem by giving you something other then the bowl to grab onto.
I haven't formulated a concrete solution to this but have a couple of thoughts. I'm am going to get some other glass joints and let the thoughts flow.
In terms of over all proformance it is passing with flying colors. I find that it uses about as much as my Zap, and gets it to a nice toasty brown
So far it is all systems go with the Pod.
