Long time lurker - 1st time poster
I bought the Pax two weeks ago and its been a love/hate relationship. I have tinkered with it and have some unusual suggestions for enjoying it more.
1stly I am a bong smoker of 20 years who recently gave up smoking tobacco and wants to enjoy many more years of herbal enjoyment without killing myself doing so!
So I have been switching to vaporizing with a vaporlution (1) but it wasnt gettong me the hit i wanted and seemed to go through my stash like 3X my normal intake. I decided to upgrade and get a Pax as I just loved the design and figured spending $250 would force me to switch to Vapes full-time. Its taken me a while to get what i want from it but here's my results after 2 weeks of experimenting.
BTW - I don't smoke for health reasons pure recreation so these are not medical suggestions....purely for getting baked at the end of the day!
1. (Warning this may invalidate your warranty - I'm UK so mines invalid any way as i bought it off a ebay importer)
DO you find the pull a bit too like a thick McD style milkshake? Open up the hole on the top of the mouth-piece (i used a scapel) so you have a nice round "O" instead of a tiny slit - you should be able to see light down it. Blow through it to get rid of any shards of plastic and put it back on. You will now find that it drags through pretty freely now and is much easier to clean as the pipe cleaner goes all the way through! Some may say that you will get tiny bits of herb on your tongue but I don't mind 1 bit adds to flavor!
2. Deep-throat it! Keep the mouth-piece on and instead of sucking through it, stick your pax right deep in your mouth and take a long slow pull. Hits you like a sack full of door-knobs with huge clouds - only downside is you burn through a full oven in 5-6 pulls.
3. Blends - I liked smoking tobacco with Weed so I tried with a old style mix up roughly 50/50 ground dried weed and tobacco. This is not for everyone of course but it is pretty nice in my opinion. The taste of tobacco without burning is really mellow and smooth and with the herb is a nice treat. You do get a nicotine hit too and the vapor is a gentle blue and thicker. If you like tobacco and are low on herb before payday it will certainly help stretch out your stash. I also like to take my ego-cig just after a pure Pax hit and enjoy the two highs together. I find just smoking the pax with pure herb is not quite enough for me and the added nicotine replicates the old weed/tobacco water bong high enough to keep me from combusting in my old shoot-through bong.
4. Keep the oven warm - I live in a cold part of the UK and have to vape outside in my shed cos I am a old man!
Anyways I was getting infuriated with my late night cold shed sessions with my pax constantly warming up or not. I find if I cup the bottom of it with my hands insulating it - I get a decent handwarmer with the Added bonus of keeping my oven light on blue (ready) pretty much all the time.
- good luck