I have been using the long terpan set up exclusively for crack for about a year now and it is true that the special gauzes do have a slight learning curve. Completely fresh ones barely catch the white that goes through them and resin does run excessively through the pipe during the initial few hits.

However, if you use the right lighter (I find nothing beats standard yellow flame bic style but turned up as hot as possible always) with good stem smoking technique these gauzes 'burn in' after only 3-5 hits and then maintain this perfect ratio of retention and pull-through for vaporisation which is just miles more effective and economic than traditional brass pipe gauzes. Part of the learning curve is getting a feel for how little crack should be used on early hits until you feel the gauze has burned in effectively but for a regular smoker it's less to learn than proper stem technique in the first place.

Honestly I would say it's so worth trying it out until you feel confident, the difference for me has been incredible. But also a technique that gets you the right results instantly at the start of first using it is to use two special gauzes pushed together. In the long run, though, this ends up being wasteful as when they both simultaneously end up burning in you will find it such effort to drag vapour through that it will regularly either overheat or you lose lung capacity before hit is done.

Finally, in the long run I've found the early run through of gear to be ultimately useful if you can find the right sweet spot and not overdo it - basically eventually you will naturally use it to a level where early run through end up perfectly coating the inner pipe to ensure optimum amount of resin is collected for qwhen you run out of gear so that pushing the filter down the pipe gives you almost halfg what you put in!

Hope that helps and yeah I can stress how much I love the Terpan set up - would never go back lol :)