well, to any owners of this device who are not sure about cleaning the ceramic filter...just do it. i finally got around to cleaning mine after its daily use of a couple years and damn what a difference. it was clogged enough that igniting the herb became impossible which i kind of liked but the control was gone. i just used a hand vac + torch flame with a small pair of pliers much like the website suggests, was super paranoid about damaging the filter (im attached to this guy, even the filter lol) but i took my time and was cake.