Now that the skin on my shaft is toughened up a bit, I did a session with the vacuum extender ADS. It’s just a cheap eBay bell and sleeve with an elastic neck strap. I got four and a half hours before it got uncomfortable to the point where I had to take it off, though a bathroom break was imminent anyway.
The neck strap pulls the shaft straight up. I don’t know what the tension is, but I added a couple of carabiners to reduce it some, since it was probably not intended for men of my portly physique. I have a nice digital scale with hooks on each end, that I could have replaced the carabiners with, and I actually moved it out of the way on my desk while wearing the extender, but didn’t have the “aha!” (trans: ‘you dumbass’) moment until after I’d removed the extender.
Comfort: very comfortable to start with, other than occasional needle-stabs of pain here and there. I got similar stabs when I started pumping, and again when I began using the Size Doctor bell straight out with paracord and weights, and again with the Size Doctor in its normal extender configuration, where it generally points straight down. I didn’t expect straight up to do anything, but I guess that angle loads things differently. The pains are bits of scar tissue pulling loose; they should go away in a day or three.
The comfort faded over time. Even though I’d shaved in the morning, the stubble was enough to irritate the skin not covered by the sleeve. I have facial hair like broomstraws, and get five o’clock shadow by noon. My pubic hair is the same way. Then I started feeling a burning in the sulcus behind the glans, which got slowly worse.
The open edge of the bell falls in that area, but I suspect the problem is just stretching. The Size Doctor gasket rests in the same place, but the gasket compresses the flesh. The ADS bell is rigid, and that area isn’t used to stretching. (it doesn’t stretch noticeably in the tube, either). The neck strap may also be making more tension than I’m ready for.
The glans was fully expanded into the bell and hard; larger than then it comes out of the Size Doctor, though to remove it from the Size Doctor requires squeezing it through the not-very-expandable gasket which squeezes it down on the way out, so it might not be a good comparison.
I figure 4-1/2 hours isn’t bad for a first run, and the soreness went away in an hour or two.