I now had the pleasure to use the Musa-510 for the last week and so far I like it, this is the kind of vape that will grow on you the more you use it. But I'm getting ahead of myself, I need to start by talking about the costumer service. If you look back at my last post you'll see that the first thing I did with my Musa was to fuck up the coil with my clumsy hands. I wanted to look at the coil so I removed the wood cover but the cover was pretty tight so I did go slowly but when the cover pop out I also pushed it sideways and push the coil so it looked like this:
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After a quick discussion with
@MUSA Vaporizer via email everything was working properly. The coil was easy to reshape and install, nothing I could not handle but since I had no idea what I was doing he took the time to explain me how to do it. This is the thing that stood out to me the most: this was one of the best interaction I ever had with a retailer online. He answer all my question and he even sent me an email the following day to give me additional info on the device. All this time I never had the impression I was bothering the guy, the discussion was very friendly and relaxed, so big big thumbs up for the CS.
As for the unit itself I like it. It's been a while since I last used a 510 vape and it was a Splinter, so when I tried my Musa I realized I had forgotten everything about those vapes. This is the kind of vape you need to take your time and learn how it works or you gonna have a bit of a combustion problem. This is an on demand convection vape and you need to know how to use it. The tricky part comes from learning your timing: how long to hold the fire button to heat it up, how long to inhale while you keep pushing the button, how long to inhale after you have released the button. First part is easy the instruction say to put your mod at 37W (only wattage mode for this vape) and fire it for 4 seconds to build the heat up. Then you can start to inhale with the heater still activated to start the production of vapor. This is where it gets a little more complex, my mod shut off after 10 seconds so after the 4 second of heat up I'm now left with 6 seconds to vape but if you want to keep the heater going you will need to pulse the button to refresh the shut off timer. Those timing will change if your vape still has some heat left from your previous puff and also your herb will be drier so it will need a little bit less heat. The first couple of times you will use this vape you will be learning what those timings are. Everything will be determined by the feeling of the vapor in your mouth and it can go good to bad very fast. The problem is if you go too slow and don't have enough heat the vapor will be very low, and if you are like me you will get tired of this and push the heat a bit too much an combust. You need to be patient, push the heat a little longer each time until you learn how long you need to keep the heat to get the vapor you want. I'm now at the point where I can feel the vapor heat up and I can feel when the taste start to change telling me to let go of the button and finish the rest of the bowl with the residual heat. Be careful you can still combust after releasing the button with just the residual heat so keep that in mind . This is my experience with the Musa and the Splinter and I'm pretty sure other 510 mods using wattage mode, it's like manual driving, you need to be in control and be ready to let go of the gas or add more to get exactly what you want.
Also a good idea is to use a heat sink on your Mod because the vape will transfer some heat to the Mod and I don't think it's good for the long term health of the Mod or the batteries.
The Musa is made of wood, the craftsmanship is really good on both of my purchases ( I also bought the other vape from Musa the V2 with the halogen bulb, still not tried it but I will do a review when the time is right, still waiting on an power adapter for US, comes with one for EU) Simple design but it works, what can I say I love wood vapes. Now is the thing that will divide a lot of people on if they like the device or not, you can taste the wood. Like I said it's been a while but I don't remember the splinter tasting like wood ( the vape is lined in glass so that make sense) but I haven't tried my Dreamwood Glow18 yet but I'm pretty sure you can taste the wood on it since the thing is all wood inside. I know some people don't like it when a vape taste like wood so sorry but I don't think you will like this vape. In my case I love it, when I used to combust I was more of a pipe guy than a joint guy so I'm used to the taste of heated wood in my smoke. I think it helps to give character to the vapor, It's a subtle wood taste in the background and it's constant during the session (compared to a Sticky Brick that will taste like wood more at the end of a session). Unlike the taste of the herb that goes away after the first couples of puff, the wood taste will stay until the end. This will give the taste of the vapor a unique profile combining the taste of the herb to the taste of the wood. If you are looking for the purest taste from your herb this vape is not for you. In my case I use it more and more to give taste to some CBD herb that has almost no taste past the first puff, but when I vape it in the Musa I can enjoy the session until the last sip. Honestly I wasn't expecting to use this as much as I do, I bought it because I was buying the other vape and I said to myself I should buy this vape too just to add to my collection, I have 510 vapes but don't use them . At the end of the day you will love it or hate it depending on your stance with wood taste in vapor. It might be a good vape to try if you are trying to get away from smoking since you will feel the vapor a little bit more in your throat but maybe my judgment is screwed because of my bias toward pipe smoking, who knows?
Now the big difference when you compare the Musa to the other 510 vapes is the use of the Arizer stems. The Solo2 was my first quality vape I bought so I already have a lot of stems to use for this. The Musa comes with the smallest stem from Arizer, it's perfect for the size of the vape to easily conceal when outside and it do the job for cooling the vapor but not for a long time. The good news is you can use all the other size of stems from Arizer, I use the 110mm on mine and the vapor is perfect for me, exactly like when I use the Solo2. You can also use the multitude of different kind of stems that are available online like the nipple stems, glass bead stems or even a water tools like a water straw or the Sneaky Pete BubbleMax. Remember that when you change the stem, the feeling of the vapor in your mouth will change and this might cause you to combust, that goes double for when you use water tools, don't ask me how I know this.
The stem feels secure when put on the vape but is very easy to remove if I compare it to the Solo2, I can put it on and remove it with one hand. The stem comes with a screen but I removed it since I'm used to it and the glass screen does a good job of keeping the herb out of my mouth. I used the Brillant Cut Grinder with the medium plate and everything was nicely vaped. I try not to put too much herb in the stem so the herb is extracted more evenly, and I don't like to stir because it makes a mess more than anything. The nice thing about the coil is that you can move it a bit if your herb doesn't cook evenly, no more hot spots just spread the coil and problem solved. The clean up could not be an easier, just put the stem in ISO an let it do the work for you, the rest of the unit doesn't need a lot of attention maybe just remove the herb crumbs from the bottom screen inside and that's it.
The vape itself is solid. I beat up the coil, dropped the metal base on the floor coil first and nothing was broken. The wood part should not be a problem unless you try very hard to break it. The only weak point is the glass stem but it's glass, what do you expect? Also there's a couple of wood stems available for Arizer ( the one from Ed's TNT comes to mind) so if you want something that won't break it's easily achievable. Battery life will depends entirely on the Mod you choose to use, most of the Mods have batteries that you can swap out so that shouldn't be a problem.
If you already have a Mod or have a couple of Arizer stems and you would like to add a vape to your collection this 510 vape from Musa might interest you. This is one of those cases that you won't know if it's for you until you try it, but remember if you don't take chances you won't get a reward. In this case the reward is tasty tasty vapor.