The Great Quartz Banger Debate
Dab accessories like a quartz banger, an oil rig, or a dab stick can be expensive as hell. But do you get what you pay for? Does hella cash lead to a high quality quartz banger? Or is a cheap China-made banger destined to blow up in your face after you use it few times? We put Mat Lee to the test. He hit each-50 times.
By Mat Lee—I’m all about buying local and supporting starving artists. Hell, I’m a starving artist myself in the capacity that writing and dabbling in music is somewhat of an art form. But all that aside, let’s get down to the meat of the matter.
For the last couple of weeks we’ve put the American-made Fadespace XXL jacketed banger up against a thick bottom China jacketed banger. As they say opinions are like assholes and everyone has one—this is mine. Your results may vary.
Quartz Banger Test Process
That being said the experiment goes like this, every time I take a dab out of one banger, I take a dab out of the other. I clean and care for them the same. No super hot dabs, no shitty rosin or poop soup. The idea is that most people say the difference is in the quality of materials. While I don’t argue that point, because there certainly are a bunch of shitty China bangers out there, but I feel like there are also some good ones. And once you find them and take care of them properly they can last just as long as any American made banger.
USA Quartz Banger v China-Made
Assuming the starting materials are the same, I postulate that getting a quality hit over and over is dependent on how the quartz banger is used and cared for. Any asshole can torch the shit out of a banger. But it takes a dedicated dapper dabbing stoner to take care of the quartz properly. Not everyone gives a shit and that’s fine too. I have bangers for every occasion and every level of dabber to break out when people come sesh. I know better than to let some of you use my fine China or nice American bangers—because you will ruin them. That’s why we have enails. I’m always down to offer an enail dab.
Anyhow if you have the money to spend on an expensive American-made banger then more power to you. For the rest of us though as much as we would love to support those American quartz workers we’re trying to feed ourselves as well. So buying an expensive quartz banger like the ones Fadespace offers, or a Quave Club banger, or even a real Thermal P from Pukinbeagle if you can find one—is just not in the cards.
Since we don’t have access to the equipment to test the actual purity of each quartz banger, We were going to do the water thermal expansion test. I was told by a couple of extremely smart people in the industry that wouldn’t really prove anything. So aside from crushing the bangers up into tiny pieces and feeding them to a mass spec we did the only thing we knew how. Dabs yo. Lots and lots of dabs.
As I said before, every time a dab was dabbed out of one banger the same dab was dabbed out of the other. I then swabbed the excess reclaim out of the bangers, lightly torched, then swabbed again to wipe the creeper ring before completely torch cleaning it.
By doing this you aren’t building up the carbon thus making it harder to get off causing more oxidation to the quartz. By cleaning the quartz in this way you will greatly increase the life of your banger. I’ll write a more in depth, how to care for your quartz piece properly after I get a few other articles and reviews out. But for now that’s the quartz care summary.
Quartz Banger Test Results
- After running 10 dabs out of each banger and taking care to wipe and torch clean, the bangers look the same.
- Taking 25 dabs through each banger, taking the same care, the quartz bangers look the same.
- After a total of 50 dabs through each banger—they both look the same.
USA v China-Made Quartz Banger Conclusion
Obviously not every quartz banger is made equally. The main differences I found were in the welds and the diameter of the tubes attached to the joint. The China bangers definitely don’t sport a very clean weld, although if you order several of them, some will be much nicer than others. The Fadespace banger definitely looks a lot more clean. The weld is nice and the tube diameter is consistent.
Is that worth the extra expense? That’s going to depend on each individual’s financial situation. Personally, I don’t think it is, especially when there are other American quartz makers who aren’t charging near as much and a China quartz banger for a fraction of the cost.
I’m also curious about your experience with bangers. Drop a line in the comments and holla!
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