What in the world is going on?

[thared33]

I had an RSST and I failed miserably with it. There was an extremely harsh taste coming from it. I gave up and bought an IGO-L, and this one isn't too much better.

With the IGO-L I've used both unbleached cotton and silica, and I've used various gauges of Kanthal but I find that 32G works the best for it. I've built about 10 of my own coils and I've had about 8 of them built for me by a Pro who sells his coils on ebay.

No matter what I do - tweak, and tweak, and tweak, and tweak, there's just too much of a harsh taste coming from the IGO L. I've tried everything! There's no way that I'm building my own coils wrong seeing that I've got some near-perfect ones built by someone else that give me the same thing, so I'm out of ideas.

The ONLY thing I haven't tried is using ejuice with less nicotine in it. I'm used to vaping 18mg juice and it tastes just right in my other atomizers (mostly those Joyetech 510s). Smooth and no problem.

Do people usually need to downgrade their nicotine level when switching over to an RDA? That's the only thing I can think of at this point.

 

[VaPreis]

Did you ever drill out the top cap? As it comes stock, the air hole is very restrictive on the Igo-L top cap. You should try drilling to 1/16" to start, and move up as you find necessary.

For the matter, the RSST air hole isn't much better out of the box.

 

[thared33]

I haven't tried drilling it out, no. I'm going to test with some pure VG and see if that helps. If not, I'll try drilling hole bigger.

 

[TheOnyxEgg]

Haven't used the IGO, but have been using an RSST for several months. (I also drilled my air hole out to 1/16")

I had to drop from 12mg to 6 mg when I switched to the RSST from cartotanks. (I'm now down to 3mg.) So that's definitely worth trying.

Another thing to check is that the air hole is lined up with your coil. The further the air hole is from the coil, the more throat hit you get.

Lastly, at least on the RSST, (realizing I'm not sure if you used mesh for the wick or not) if you have any hot spots where the coil isn't making good contact with the wick (or a hot leg) you'll get a very harsh lung full.

Some things to try at least, like you said I don't think that your coils are the problem.

 

[thared33]

Ok, even with the pure VG in there, it's still a little too much. I've got to find a drill and try getting that hole bigger.

I can tell that dropping the nicotine definitely helped smooth it out, but the nastiness is still there.

I haven't fooled with my RSST in ages. I thought that all the RSST could take was mesh but apparently I can use silica too? I have some left over so I might just in fact try rebuilding it...

 

[twgbonehead]

Are you sure you aren't tasting machine oil? Often these heads need a very good cleaning to get rid of any traces of oil; even a tiny bit will make everything taste nasty!

 

[thared33]

I've actually had this for 4-5 months or so, the IGO-L, and the RSST for even longer. I put them through enough uses that they would've been fine by now I think. I'll see what I can whip up.

 

[jaxgator]

Is your air hole directly in front of the coil(s)? If so, is the coil close to the air hole?

 

[novamatt]

Don't know much about the RSST, but on the igo, nobody's mentioned airflow positioning yet. That's something to check before you start drilling. Are you making sure you've got the holes lined up with your coils? You want the coils as close to the vents as possible without shorting out, with the air aimed at the bottom of the coil. If you're not paying attention when you put the top cap on and don't line it up with the coils, you'll definitely get a really harsh vape. You need air flowing across the coils while you're firing or they get too hot.

And as you've noticed, yes, people definitely need to drop their nic level when they move to a rebuildable. I had to go from 12mg to 6, and over time, as I learned to build better coils and started using more powerful devices, I dropped again to 3. If you're used to 18, you definitely need to try 12. You may even want to try some 9 or 6. But trying the plain VG with your airflow set up correctly will help figure out if that's part of the problem.

 

[Pensilac]

I think it's probably the 18mg nic that's causing most of the harshness. When I got my first dripper I was using 18mg and knew after the first vape that it was way too much for me, it was very harsh. I switched to 12mg and it was quite a bit better though still harsh at times. I'm at 6mg now and don't ever really encounter the harshness anymore.

Besides the nic level, higher pg juices can also be quite harsh in a dripper even at lower nic levels. Personally, for me anything more than 50% pg is way too harsh and unpleasant in a dripper.

If it isn't the juice that's causing the issue then it may be that you don't have the air flow centered on the coil properly or you're using either too little or too much wick. You want to make sure the whole inside of the coil is making contact with the wick but also want to make sure that it isn't too tight in there so that if you try to pull on it it's moving your coil around.

 

[JD1]

Ok, even with the pure VG in there, it's still a little too much. I've got to find a drill and try getting that hole bigger.

I can tell that dropping the nicotine definitely helped smooth it out, but the nastiness is still there.

I haven't fooled with my RSST in ages. I thought that all the RSST could take was mesh but apparently I can use silica too? I have some left over so I might just in fact try rebuilding it...

I've never tried it myself, but I think I remember several posts where silica won't wick fast enough. You might try cotton instead.

I think you'll be surprised at how much difference (for the better) that drilling the air hole to 1/16th will make.

 

[MrPlink]

Here is a theory: your juice isn't compatible with rebuildable attys or just outright sucks.

Compared to most clearos and cartos a well built rebuildable will easily win for flavor. But the knife cuts both ways. It can bring forward very tasty notes you aren't able to get otherwise but it can also advance horrible tastes that you wouldn't notice on a more pedestrian type of atty.

Edit: having a well built coil is only a small portion of the equation. The physical placement of the coil (ie where it is located in relation to air holes, posts, juice well etc etc) and the wicking method are more crucial to good results than having a pretty coil.

Matter of fact, all other external factors being equal I would rather have an ugly looking coil in the right position and with proper wicking than a pretty looking coil that is poorly placed with poor wicking.

The effects of coil placement vary from device to device, as does wicking style in relation to not only the device used by the type of coil used as well.

2 rules of thumb to consider (but not hard and fast ones by any means)

1) keep the coil(s) close to the air source.
2) it is usually better to err on the side of too little wick than too much.

 

[AndriaD]

Here is a theory: your juice isn't compatible with rebuildable attys or just outright sucks.

Compared to most clearos and cartos a well built rebuildable will easily win for flavor. But the knife cuts both ways. It can bring forward very tasty notes you aren't able to get otherwise but it can also advance horrible tastes that you wouldn't notice on a more pedestrian type of atty.

Yes, this -- I love my blueberry muffin, but it tastes terrible in a kayfun, much too sharp. In a carto or cartotank, it's perfect. The kayfun delivers flavors so clearly, that some flavors just don't taste good from it.

I have in fact heard/read a great deal about needing to lower nic levels in higher-delivering devices; I thought it was because of getting nic sick, but maybe it's for taste, too. And ditto that for PG -- when I first got a kayfun, the 85% PG I was using at the time to try and get throat hit from a T3S, was too much; I went down to 75%-80% PG, and it was much better.

Andria

 

[rsimpson]

I'm kinda with MrPlink on this one.
I've had juices I absolutely loved using cartos but tasted horrible on my RDAs. I've also had some juices that tasted great on one of my RDAs and tasted like crap on another. Whenever I find one like this I either mix a little more VG into it to dilute the flavor or I chunk it if it doesn't taste good on any of my devices. Before I did some experimenting I didn't realize how much airflow and RDA design played into the flavor as well as coil design and count, wick material, etc.
For me I seemed to have more flavor issues on silica and (believe it or not) cotton. I pretty much stay with rayon now since rayon has no affect on flavor.

Good Luck, hope you find a combo you like

 

[Rat2chat2]

I didn't think it was possible for me to enjoy dripping any better but I have since I started using rayon and Koh Gen Do for my wicking material. I make my own juice and have for a long time and when I tried the KGD, flavors I had been using. . . got better. Whether the effect is in my head or in my rebuildable, it doesn't matter. . . I'm ecstatic.

 

[vapomike]

I think it's your juice... I mean if you been messing with it for this long and you've never got a good vape from it than I'm going to say it's the juice. Seriously you've probably put it together as far as coil placement and wicking goes a few times correctly even if it was an accident. When I switched to rebuildables I tried it with my normal juices. It was a bad time man and I actually overdid it on the nic. Look for high VG juices around 3-6mg they'll give you the smoothest vape out of a rebuildable other than 0mg VG. I personally started doing my DIY for my drippers because one they drink juice like no one's business. The second reason is I can get max VG with them. I use a nic vg base and pure vg base with super concentrated flavorings. Most of my juices that I've came up with are 2-3% flavoring with the rest being VG and 3mg nic. I'm not saying you have to DIY. I'm saying though that the juice you find suitable in a 510/clearo/tank/carto or etc. is probably not going to transfer well to a dripper. It also works the other way around I would never put my DIY juice in anything but my drippers or Atlantis. As far as regular tanks and prebuilt equipment goes it will struggle to deal with the thickness of the dripper juices I make for myself.

So basically go out and find you some juice that is compatible with your dripper. You want something High vg.... it'll say something like high vg or max vg depending the vendor. If they give ratios I'd recommend and 20/80 and nothing under 30/70. If you are still having problems after that then start looking at your hardware. At this point it sounds like you've tried everything else except to change the juice. Do trust once you get a juice that is for dripping rebuildables it will change the vape drastically. Probably more than you think... since you haven't already tried it yet.

 

[TheOnyxEgg]

Too be fair, I've never had an issue running 50/50 stuff in the RSST (or my DID) so you may not need to go to 100% vg or 20/80 to get good results. I've always tried to order juice from vendors that allow you to select the ratio and nic levels with a good degree of flexibility. I prefer the "mixed to order" stuff to the "off the shelf".

I should probably give DIY a try at some point here...