The EQ and bubbler in my avatar (dry) have been working out well for several sessions so far. I have been using a glass adapter fitted with a 2mm restriction and without (open-flow pass-thru). Also tried both leaving the glass adapter unheated as well as heating it up by EQ unit. Note, I normally do not use a cyclone/elbow/tubing with my EQ at all, i just load the herb on top of a screen fitted below the 18mm female joint of a pass-thru glass adapter -- so it was easy to just add the silicone restriction to the other end of the same pass-thru glass adapter.
Test process: Prior to a session i let the EQ come up to temp for at least 15 minutes and run it set to 356f/180c. Using the same GSC strain, load .04g in glass adapter screen bowl, take 1 long hit, exhale and note taste, dump and save abv to compare with remaining hits in session, repeat 3 more times resulting in 4 hits/abv piles per session. For each hit in session, i would change one variable:
- hit1: unheated glass adapter without restriction
- hit2: unheated glass adapter with 2mm restriction
- hit3: heated glass adapter without restriction (adapter heated on EQ for 5 minutes prior)
- hit4: heated glass adapter with 2mm restriction (adapter heated on EQ for 5 minutes prior)
Here are videos of a set of 4 hits from a recent session:
Here are a few observations after some sessions, that may change after more testing:
- the abv for hits 1 and 2 appear the same shade to me, if there is a difference in shade it is very slight to point where I cannot detect.
- the abv for hits 3 and 4 are darker than hits 1 and 2, with hit 4's abv being darkest of all and hit 3's abv only slightly ligher.
- all hits were smooth, none made me cough, all tasted good, the lighter the abv the better the taste.
- the vapor appears quicker when the glass adapter is heated on the EQ prior to taking a hit (regardless of restriction used or not).
- with restriction present, it does seem more heat is being kept in contact with herb longer. restriction also governs the inhalation speed, which reserves lung capacity needed to take a longer hit without having to focus as much on technique. found it is important to pull rather hard initially otherwise it would take longer for vapor to start flowing, and after it started flowing then slight changes in suck pressure would not interfere with the draw's vapor flow.
- without restriction present, along with the EQ's native non-restrictive draw path and no water in bubbler resulting in even less drag, found it important to pull medium draw speed initially to start vapor flowing and then ease up inhalation speed and suck pressure to ensure enough lung capacity for remainder of long hit. This last bit of technique was learned from FC posts last year when I was learning how to get big hits off of my EQ and bubbler last year. With EQ's non-restricted air flow setup plus open flow glass adapters with no restriction changes in draw speed/suck pressure can quickly be reflected in the air/vapor mix being delivered, kinda more touchier to get a good long slow hit when there is no restriction present but it was totally doable with a little practice.
- I see thickish vapor generating in the bubbler at about 8 seconds with EQ, a little faster if glass adapter is heated.
On the VXC, the vapor starts flowing in bubbler after a few seconds maybe 4 seconds max, and Sub seems to do it even faster which seems nicer to me. As good as that would be it is not critical to me especially if it means a compromise of taste. The Sublimator videos show vapor flowing in glass tube almost instantly. I was not able to come close to that performance with my heated/restricted setups in EQ nor with VXC. I guess the Sub may have appropriate materials and design that can go to high temp quickly, vape the herb in a flash, then cool down quickly to avoid too dark of abv, while the atomizer/restriction helps make it easy to honk hard on the piece while governing the heated airflow over the herb?
