I had forgotten about some silica wicking considered a ceramic, called Ready X or something like that. It may be a little easier on flavor transition, not sure.
Only issue I've had with SS or silica wicks is they dont do well at higher wattages.... or with really thirsty coils..... but a couple puffs at a time to taste test or chase flavor. They are great.
SS mesh wick and coil on my Sat22 are over 1 year old closer to 2 years... have a kayfun in rotation with 1 year old silica build.
With rayon, transitioning flavors isn't hard, though I run similar flavor profiles in my tank. I have some ceramic wick laying around that I bought some of (unless it's mesh, not sure, but I think it's ceramic) and haven't been able to rouse myself to do the research to use it. I don't have much of it either so hearing about the learning curve is a bit disheartening, but I am totally satisfied by rayon, for sure.
With the top cap off, I press the fire button in quick bursts (0.1 - 0.3 seconds) until the cotton is mostly dry. You'll start to see white / dry spots in the wick when this happens.
If the new flavor is fairly close to the original flavor (going from a vanilla cupcake to a frosted donut juice for example), I'll put 10-15 drops of the new juice directly into the juice well, not putting any juice directly on the coil or wicks.
After a few seconds for the new flavor to start saturating the wick, I vape until the juice well is empty again.
If I am moving between two very different juices, such as a banana/strawberry cupcake recipe to a Twinkie recipe, I follow the same procedure, but will first repeat it a few times using unflavored VG until the old flavor is gone. Then I'll start using the new flavor juice.
I have like 4 different ADV flavors and I don't change wicks until I finally burn them in half and they get stuck on the sides of the chamber and it stops hitting properly heh. Ill just vape a tank until its just about to the point its going to start dry hitting, and then put whatever into it. Flavor has never been affected by this.
I use cotton bacon. I rewick at about 20ml anyways. I like my first vape to be as good as my last vape. Changing juice which I do every couple days I pick something that I figure will mix well. Vaping a banana base I will switch to another fruit. If a peanut butter I will pick another peanut butter base vape or a vanilla base ect. Works well that way for me but I vape about 15 different juices in rotation and 2 mods with tanks on the go always. Switch back and forth between mods & tanks through out most days. CHEERS!
I have several tanks sitting around for backup and flavor changes. I vape 9mg during the day and 3mg nic at night. That's two, and there's several tanks with different flavors to switch back and forth. Coils and wicking last quite a while when you distribute usage among half a dozen RTA's.
I have 10 active setups going at one time usually. I don't have to worry about flavor profiles, and in my opinion, since I am never chain vaping on one setup, my coils and even wicks in RTAs last longer, they aren't getting heated up. So, it solves the flavor rotation with the bonus "my coils last longer" although to be fair, I am also DIY and use much less flavoring and sweetener that the storebought I used to use. With that said, even so, I think my coils last longer as they don't get stressed, temperature wise.
So, I do not regret all my setups, and I usually mix my flavor batches in about 10--15, so as I use up old flavors I can replace them with new ones.
It's working for me, so I don't sweat it, but I am starting to think that high temps and high wattage definitely shortens coil life in the long run.
Being both impatient and a flavor oriented person, I figured from the jump that I would want multiple tanks for flavor quick switching without worrying about cross contaminating tastes. I think another advantage to this may turn out to be "tuning" a tank for particular juices. It's too early for me to say anything solid on this, but others with more experience may be able to chip in.
For example, the more fruity or sweet juices with 70-30 pg/vg seem to be working well in the Siren 2 builds I'm doing. However, I am still working on getting this tank to bring out the flavor on juices like 50-50 pg/vg Black Flag Risen or Castle Long. Oddly, they taste great in my little Rubi pod device, so I know it's not the juice itself.
I was told at one point that rayon could "degunk" when rinsed with distilled water. I tried it and had some initial "meh" about it, but actually that set up continued to run, happily, for quite longer than I though it might.
I plan on "rinsing" my rayon after each flavor when I finally get around to testing my new ones. However, I can attest that it works (if one is careful) and it's an option for when one might want to change flavors, without any flavor "bleed." I wound up fairly astonished at how well it worked, got the idea from another member using rayon. So if you don't want flavor bleed, or to vape unflavored between flavors, it is a not totally unreasonable option (I kind of though it might turn out terribly, but actually my rayon held up pretty well, overall. Not quite as long lasting as a fresh wick, but it wasn't bad exactly, either. May be an option.
In my experience it takes a while for flavor to change even if you suck out the juice with a syringe and then refill the tank. The wick retains a lot of the flavor from the last juice and it takes a while for the new juice to purge the old flavor.
One way to change quickly would be to use a tank with replaceable coil heads. Keep them in individual zip lock bags marked with juice flavor, and swap to change flavor.
I change my Rayon when I recoil just because I have to remove it anyway. Rayon wicking always looks great after a week or two vaping, except for the gray stain that an SS coil imparts to the wick.
If I am going to change a tank to a different flavor, I don't see the sense in keeping an old wick, let alone if I am re-coiling. Rayon is so cheap, why not just take a minute to re-wick and you know the build will be great for a long time.
I might feel differently if I was changing from one juice to another in a tank frequently, but I tend to to keep the same flavor in a particular tank until I drop that e-liquid from use.
I like the idea of letting TC mode vape dry without burning the wick, then changing the juice. There's been several times where my rayon wick ran dry in 10W power mode from lack of juice feed. When I pulled it apart to change the wick, the wick was fine even though I got that yuck taste like it had burned. TC mode would accomplish that a little more elegantly.