VG just seems to be a real pain in the ....! I can't vape PG without getting piercing headaches afterward, so I'm stuck in the same boat as you. I got my mini sub carto tank to work using ST 1.7s with three holes punched, which gives pretty decent vapor production, but the flavor and throat hit are all but non-existent, and they get clogged and burnt way to quickly to justify the cost.
510-Ts used to treat me ok with VG juice despite what everyone else on the forums said about them, until some unknown change came about with my supplier's tank atties and I couldn't vape them for 30 minutes without getting a permanent burnt taste and clogging soon after. Having just about given up on the ST cartos for the experience they're robbing me of, I decided to look into the newer eGo-Cs in hopes they would give me what I came to love from the 510-Ts so long ago. The eGo-T is close enough that I figured it'd be best to see how well a single unit works with VG before dropping the big bucks on the startup cost of the eGo-C, so that's the route I took.
Long story short, the eGo-T gave me a lot of the flavor that I was missing from the cartos, but at the cost of vapor production. The vapor wasn't bad, but it wasn't like the clouds I used to get from my STs. Unfortunately, the throat hit still wasn't there. I have to thin it anyway to get the VG to wick properly, so maybe next time I'll use PGA instead of distilled water as that's proven to add at least some throat hit in my experience. I can't say much for the life of the atomizers, however, because I switched juices on my first tank refill on the first day - a terrible menthol flavor I mixed with DIY flavoring and VG nic base - and tried to switch back, only to have the disgusting flavor of my second juice linger more prevalently than the original (Boba's Bounty). I boiled and dry burned my atty before giving BB another go, which instilled burnt flavor to the wick that I can't get rid of, so needless to say, my atty's done... on the first day.
From what I could gather on that first day, though, Joye's eGo tank systems seem to do ok, or at least comparably to my caro tank. The flavor I got in the eGo-T gave it the upper hand, so I think I'm going to give the eGo-C a shot and hope for the best, using a little PGA in my next batch of BB to reclaim some of the still lost throat hit. I can sacrifice a little vapor production for that.
All this to say I don't think there's an efficient system out there to use as-is for VG without diluting your juice, which really lowers a good juice's potential. There just aren't enough VG-only vapers out there yet, and for some reason all the newer clearos and mods that most vapers currently enjoy have top-wicking coils that make finding good hardware even more difficult for us. For now, I think the eGo-C is the best I can do with VG considering the price and nearly hassle-free maintenance (just no more dry burning for me), but my fingers are crossed for something new that'll give me the same vaping experience that most other PG users are accustomed to. In the meantime, I'll pick up a couple regular 510 atties and try to get used to dripping when I'm at my computer and save the eGo-C for on-the-go situations.
I know you asked about carto/clearo suggestions and the eGo-C is neither. I'm not trying to recommend it so much as to throw in my two cents and hope someone else picks up on this thread to shed some light on the subject. It's a frustrating process trying to find good hardware, but at least you're getting some kind of enjoyment out of your ST cartos for now. I'd be very interested to know about any other users who have had luck using other tanks or clearos with VG successfully. Oh, and I know someone's bound to recommend the ViVi Nova, but I've been there / done that. They're worse than cartos in my experience.
