Oh, B2, how much I want to absolutely love you, like I do my v2, yet you toy with my heart. B2 has given their website a facelift, in their words: “We realized how annoying and non-user friendly our site was, so our goal for the start of the year was to bring you guys an updated website with more of user friendly navigation! “. And more user friendly they made it.
The star of this particular website release is obviously their new B2® F-22™ (my God, I love all those squiggles so it looks all official and shit!) PRE-SALE! In a move that makes me proud of myself, you can nab yourself a pre-sale order for the F-22 at the price of $239.99. Let’s remember a veritable captain of the community calling it quite some time ago. And let’s notice that this is the pre-sale price, as it will retail for $279.99 afterwards.Now let’s see what you get for your money:
Oh boy, oh boy, oh boy. So let’s have a look at some of these absolutely amazing things it offers:
Domestic materials
Awesome, I have a KM at home that’s made with wild materials and it keeps trying to bite me when I ash my coals.
Modular pieces
Available in a variety of different colors
- Silver (Guaranteed)
- Penny Copper or Turquoise (Not fully decided)
- Unreleased Limited Color (Dual Color, colors not decided)
So that’s 3, one of which isn’t really a color. It’s also fucking amazing how the second color is either Penny Copper or Turquoise. I can only imagine wanting turquoise and getting penny copper. It’s like, almost the same, man. Hope you didn’t order a base beforehand too. Same goes for the unreleased limited color which hasn’t been decided yet, but that’s how special offers for pre-orders go. Right, guys? Right?
Unique Purge exhaust
I’ll give you that. Though in a world where we have the AMY Rocket, the Alpha Model X, or even the goddamn Shishabucks having a cool purge is only going to get you so far. Also note, every one of these is cheaper and includes a base and you also know what colours you get. Just sayin’.
Multi-use with different accessories which will be available
If the V2 is any indication whatsoever, there won’t be any accessories, maybe just a version of Precious Cut for the F-22 or *gasp* a screw-in diffuser.
Minimal ghosting
It’s well implied from being 6061 Aerospace Grade Aluminum with Aerospace Anodization but the picture we added on the website was very large so we needed more bullets.
Easy disassembly for quick cleaning
- That’s already implied by having “Modular pieces”.
- Contrary to what most people would have you believe, it’s easier to shove a 10$ brush inside a big-ass stem, scrub it for a … I don’t know, 30 fucking seconds? then run water through it, than disassemble your hookah into a million pieces to clean the threads of molasses that wouldn’t have been there if the hookah wasn’t disassemble-able in the first place. “Easy disassembly for quick and cheaper CNC-ing” sounds a lot more accurate to me and I’ll happily take it since CNC-ing a whole hookah sounds both hard as fuck and expensive as even fuck-er. But don’t tell me it’s because this way you can clean it more easily.
So what do you get for your money?
For your 239.99 (on sale, that is!) you get:
- 1 F-22 Tray piece
- 1 F-22 Body piece
- 1 F-22 Heart piece
- 1 F-22 Down stem piece
- 1 F-22 Tray
- A what pretty much amounts to a mystery color
- No base
- No hose
- STILL NO FUCKING GROMMETS
Here’s a thought: Why push these pre-orders in the first place? The whole pre-sale they made here looks like a badly run kickstarter and I honestly expected B2 to do better. My honest guess, is that this is because they had to put it out before HookahJohn releases his SAOCCA which he claimed was due in January. It seems to be delayed, but still gonna land pretty soon. It’s going to be also anodized, also with a cool purge system, also aluminum, also with threading for disassembly, but the pre-sale price was $190 shipped, it’s going to be widely availble (he says 5000 units) and it comes with fucking grommets.
Hookah Rants 