"I can get maybe... maybe 2 to 4 decent draws - then blech - the taste and smell is horrid."
This is basically what I am getting... since this is my first time trying to vap, I don't know what decent is... but after an alcohol in cartridge soak, or DD that is about all I get before I get that headache inducing bad taste/smell.
Ryum, I'm pretty new as well and I honestly thought it was
me.
I thought that I had to be doing something wrong. I'd researched for two months before I placed my order. Despite everything I learned in that time, despite feeling completely comfortable, confident and knowledgeable from the day I received my 510 - I still believed I was either doing something wrong, or going bonky.
I'm 3 weeks in now and it's only getting worse. I think the most frustrating part of it is that I'm also experiencing really, really hard draw as I vape on them. I don't vape thick or sweet smoke-juice, I build good carts... nothing seems to make logical sense as to what the problem could be. I even get the "hard draw" with direct dripping, no gurgling, it's not flooded...
I decided to keep track today. This morning I put on a fresh, virtually unused atty. I stuck with one e-liquid which is clean, colorless and not thick.
The draw was pretty easy, everything seemed fine. It was probably the best "morning coffee vape" I've had in a while.
I'd consider myself a "heavy vaper" (I was a heavy-smoker) - but I know that there are many here who use a 510 and report they vape heavily, so I'm not going to factor that in as a possible cause.
Everything was going fine. I DD sometimes (because I realize I'm getting a little frustrated and I tend to soothe any cravings quicker that way for whatever reason). I stuck with ONE cart (fluval with straw-mod) all day and topped it off as needed.
By 5:00pm - I was once again ready to tear my hair out. The harsh burned smell and disgusting burned taste returned with a vengeance. I'd experienced it a few times as the afternoon wore on, and it just got worse and worse.
Keep in mind - over the past two weeks I've learned to overlook and ignore what I explained in the statement I made in the post you quoted above.
As the day went on the draw got harder and harder. When I experience the hard draw, I reflexively think I may have a flooded atty so I remove it and gently blow it out. I tail-pipe it to clear it so I did this a few times... and then it hit me.
I started vaping at about noon (yeah, late night, slept in
) and as the day went on, the entire problem escalated until I realized I was once again doing my "crazy-chick" ritual of DD, tail-piping, blowing it out, checking the cartridge, staring down into the atty as if it was going to magically speak to me and explain itself...
I was frustrated again, as usual.
I realized that during the day, the problem was escalating, and once it got bad enough, I fell right into the routine I've trained myself to do as described above.
I swapped the atty out and the one I put on to replace it is one I've obviously experienced the problem with before because right away it was just "off". Hard draw and after a few pulls, the disgusting burned taste.
I emailed the supplier about this on 1/11/10 - and being so new at that point I really did chalk it up to "new user error". I soaked the 2 atties I was using at that time as per the suggestion I received in the supplier's reply and just waited for my second order to arrive hoping the new atties would be better.
They are all performing exactly the same.
Since I have nothing to lose at this point I am going to use my hand-held steamer on one of my atties tonight. If I kill it - oh well... at least right now I have back-ups. They're not dead - they're just not right
Don't give up! You're not alone. I am sure someone will figure out why this is happening to so many of us right now.
It's frustrating, but now I'm laughing because I know I'm not "imagining it" - or "going bonky" 
