Taking it old school.

[fourthrok]

I'm pretty old school, myself. After a flurry of "advancing" between 2011 and the end of 2013 with RBAs, mechs, bottom feeders, VW/VV etc. I suddenly got tired of all the fiddling and fussing and charging batteries, and messing with making coils etc., plus doing my DIY juice too. I chucked all that and went back to eGo passthroughs (the kind you can unplug and use stand alone whenever you want...the PT feature was just keeping my charge topped off) and carto tanks. This worked golden for me about a year and a half. Easy peasy, inexpensive (I got lots of good deals on passthrough Joye eGos during that time), reliable. Great flavor, satisfying vapor, I was on vaping easy street. But then last May things went south. I never have figured out what happened ...maybe the taste was effected by a broken tooth I had? Maybe I'd been hoarding my cartos too long and they were getting stale? Maybe it was just something psychological or physiological that I don't understand. But the bottom line was cartos were not lasting me more than 24 hours. They used to last between a week and 3 weeks. I'm an extremely heavy chain vaper. They'd be fine for about a day...but suddenly start tasting "flat". Yuck. And I use a strong menthol/peppermint DIY juice exclusively. I've been making that juice the same way with the same ingredients since 2012. I plunged into despair and depression, thinking I'd be forced to give up vaping because NO WAY was I going back to spending a fortune and fiddling/fussing again.

Anyway...long story a bit shorter now. Some friends convinced me to try the new type tanks with the BVCs and BDCs and to try using something like the iStick. I was skeptical..and it did take a while for me to adapt and figure out how to get my sweet spot with the new stuff (at first the coils weren't lasting any better than the cartos) . Then, one day a little over a month ago everything fell into place. Dunno what happened...but the winner was iStick 30W or it's sister the TC 40W, and the GS Air M tank with the 1.5ohm coils. I still vape low watt/voltage (around 3.1 volts and 6 to 6.5 watts on the iStick) and have zero interest in cloud chasing or experimenting with the TC feature of the 40W iStick, or trying out sub ohms. I developed my juice to taste best at the level I vape. No desire to try to come up with a new recipe. I love the one I have...why mess with perfection? I had to adapt to using 1.5ohms though, as I was accustomed to 2ohm. Anyway..things are even a little more simple with the iStick and GS Air M tank than they were with the eGo and carto tanks. I can still use the passthrough feature, too! So I'm pretty happy for now! I'm going through a bit more juice...but I'll deal with it. Still...I'm told what I'm using is still considered "old school". haha!

So yeah. Some of us dinosaurs still roam the earth, I guess!

 

[NealBJr]

I relate to the changes with our computers. Anyone remember doing about as much on a 8 bit computer with 4 meg of ram and a 40 meg hard drive?
As advances in equipment happen we tend to become less efficient in how we use them.

Regardless of how much we might like the cloud or flavor, high wattage/sub ohm are the least efficient ways to vape.

This monstrosity of a quad processor 64 bit, 8 gig memory, and 1T hard drive isn't a bit faster than my old 286 was.

Funny you mention that. My father was cleaning out his attic, and pulled out a box of stuff that I had in his attic. In the box, was an old 40 meg hard drive, some SCSI cables, and about 30 3/12" floppies. Windows 3.1, QEMM 8.0, and Telix were among some of the labels on the disk. Maybe someone is trying to tell me something.

Isn't it amazing how quickly things become "old school" in the vaping world

Yes, this is an industry that is only a few years old. When I started, Carto-tanks were popular, Stardust was the atomizer of choice, and many people made their own mechanical mod. I paid $80 for a starter kit which included two ego batteries, five stardusts, and some starter juices. I'm not complaining about the price, Getting off of smoking was worth more than $80. Now, it's common to see a mod that's smart enough to know when the coil should be dry, it links via bluetooth, and the tanks can be rebuilt or use replaceable heads. It's rare to see an atomizer with silica nowadays... all for a cheaper price than you could've gotten an ego and a stardust for a few years ago. It's all just gotten better.

The only thing is, subohming is the thing nowdays... not much is being released in the 1.4+ ohm range.

 

[DingerCPA]

My PT2s are pretty much my daily gear - at least when I'm to and from work. I'll play with an RDA or a Subtank (or even a kayfun) when I'm at home. I run 30g and simple cotton balls. Juice is 20-30VG, depending on the recipe. Airflow controllers on all the PT2s. My only difference is that these are generally sitting atop an iStick 30.

I can make more-than-sufficient cloud. It's a tasty vape. I keep thinking I want a different mod or a different topper, but I just can't wrap my head around what's better than what I already have. Granted, I wanted to play with "squonking", so I snagged a Smokeless Owl. I wanted a different atty than what comes stock, so I ordered a couple of Velocity RDAs with changeable center pin. $45 for "experimentation" purposes. Heck, I even threw an old carto (from my cigalike days) on the Owl, and it vaped just fine!

@NealBJr - embrace the throw-back! I pulled out my VV3 and an old EVOD the other day - still works just fine!

 

[choochoogranny]

Like you, Dinger, I'm cruizin' on my PT2's as well. When I change over to the Subtank mini or the Nautilus, there's no difference in the taste to me......maybe a bit more vapor; but not much more. Set all the toppers on my MVP's, ProVaris, Subox, VaporShark, and Coolfires. All work the same as I do keep the voltage/wattage pretty much the same as my coils' ohms are near the same.......G A D !!!! Have I peaked? Ha!

 

[Belhade]

I've been in this game for over five years. Still have a lot of leftover crap to prove it (boxes of cartos, 650mah egos, etc) as well as some EVOD BCCs which I still use. I've got a mod (Sigelei mini), an RDA (Plume Veil, currently single coil 28g @ 1.8Ω) and recently I traded my Goliath tank for a Kayfun...which I have since abandoned (for now) in lieu of my two year old ProTank2. Currently running on bigger eGos and Vision Spinners. the PT2 is perfect for going out and about, running errands, etc. These replaceable coils are a bit harder to rebuild than true RBAs, but overall much simpler than, say...a KF4.

 

[Grimwald]

I go old school in my dreams, literally. Every night I put away my mods, drippers, kayfuns, and grab an evod battery and tank. That's what I go to bed with and wake up to...oh yeah, and my wife as well. It sits in a shot glass on my bed stand--the evod, not my wife. I vape it empty most mornings before I go back to my high power stuff. Of course I'm an old guy who gets up every couple of hours to pee and roam around the house, so the evod is convenient for that.

 

[grandmato5]

I was never a carto fan even back when we had ONLY two choices- atomizers or cartomizers, but a few weeks ago I pulled out of my stash a BOGE carto (bought pre-Bogegate) and put it on my Reo Grand and I swear it's working and tasting better then it ever did years ago.

 

[NealBJr]

My Kayfun clone is a lil over 9 months old. Aside from a couple of scratches from being dropped it's still almost like new. 7 coils (the first 4 were experiments to see what I liked on it), a dozen new wicks (mostly from changing flavors)... I bet it hasn't cost me $2 since I bought it. Same with my drippers. I can't see the upside to $5 coils for subtanks.

I bought a kanger Subtank a few months ago...the occ coils are rebuildable, and I rebuild them, so they're in the same price category as an RBA.

My protank II that I'm using now was bought on April of last year.. I still use the same two coils that came with the tank... I Just rebuild them. I have been rebuilding protank II/stardust clearomizers since I bought my first roll of kanthal. I bought the protank II because eventually the plastic tanks will crack so I wanted a glass one.. it's still going strong.

 

[ENAUD]

Ha ha! I never stopped using ProTank 2's, when they first came out I learned to re-wick and re-build the coils with cotton, these days it's a lot easier with the KGD having the fibers all in line. I run all kinds of setups, REOs, drippers, Nautilus ( the wires from the Nautilus coils make a great no-res res no-res coil for the PT2 heads ), but my every day no worries fail proof tanks have been the PT 2's since they first came out. Old school or not, they work great, and the coils last me for months with regular re-wicking.

 

[misterholidayhouse]

Great thread, great topic, and great timing. I do predict a full circle in coming years for a number of reasons. Glad to hear from all of you here. I barely participate in the forum anymore. Not because I begrudge anyone their new toys and the evolution of juice to go with them. It's just that it doesn't interest me. I feel at home in this thread. Lol.

 

[stevegmu]

I recently bought 3 Zen Attys. Love them. 2.2 ohm 32 gauge coil, wicked with ReadyxWick at 3.6 volts. My out and about setup is a 2ohm Smok carto in an IBTanked carto tank at around 3.8 volts on a ProVari or ProVape-1...

 

[Vaslovik]

Sad but true. They don't want you buying a system that will not need to be replaced.

A very good point, and I think it's why none of the B&Ms sell gennies anymore. When I went to gennies on mechs and started making my own juice I didn't need the B&M's for anything anymore. When you can make your own wicks and wind your own coils and make your own juice the B&M's have no use for you.

 

[tj99959]

Sooner or later vaping starts to feel like this:

and then "old school" starts to taste pretty good.

 

[fourthrok]

Great thread, great topic, and great timing. I do predict a full circle in coming years for a number of reasons. Glad to hear from all of you here. I barely participate in the forum anymore. Not because I begrudge anyone their new toys and the evolution of juice to go with them. It's just that it doesn't interest me. I feel at home in this thread. Lol.

I pretty much stopped coming here in late 2013 when I went back to my eGos and carto tanks. I didn't feel like I'd find many people I'd have much in common with...so why bother, right? I didn't feel like reading endless jabber about making coils and what type cotton to use, and the DNA stuff and sub ohm stuff and "my tube is bigger than your tube!" or "My clouds are bigger than your clouds", and stuff. I just didn't feel like I fit in. Sort of fell between the cracks. Not a newbie...but not interested in the uber advanced stuff anymore.

Only reason I am trying to stick my toe back in the water is because a couple of friends asked me to, and because I'm now using the iStick and GS Air coils....which makes me a trifle less marginalized! haha!