Al Fakher Medium Solid

[_L_]

Got mine today, it's beautiful. My only complaint is the glass bowl has a crack near the opening, it's on the inside, I smoked twice out of it already but I don't know if the crack formed during smoking or if it was shipped like that.... Luckily it isn't a fatal crack, I guess I'll live with it.

The hookah came with a 50g pack of Al Fakher shisha, coals, and a nice set of tongs... and of course the hose. The downstem is a bit short I guess, but for me that's OK cause I am an inexperienced shisha smoker. The 26" AF is my first hookah, I've been using a small $30 no-name hookah before, so the 26" Al Fakher is a delight. During the few sessions I've had the draw has always been super-smooth. I'd give this a 9/10, definitely worth buying.

[newsman]

Just got my AF 26" hookah today. Everything arrived intact and undamaged. Package included the following:

AF glass base
Brass and stainless stem
Diffuser
Two trays
MYA hose
Bowl
Tongs
Hose tips
50g sample of AF lemon

I have to say, this thing is substantial, well built and great looking. When I assembled it though, the base was too wide for the stem and included grommet. I had to wrap several layers of electrician's tape around the stem to get it to fit properly. That's no big deal. I'll hunt around for a grommet that fits better. Once I wrapped the tape, the hookah was airtight and ready to go.

The hose grommet didn't really work well, so I used a different one and all was fine.

The stem is, I think, too short for the base. Even with the diffuser on, I had to fill the base with water up into the neck. That doesn't leave a lot of room for smoke.

For the first smoke, I decided to use one of my funnel bowls instead of the bowl that was included. The one that was sent was made of a thin ceramic and was WAY too shallow to smoke well, in my opinion. I don't think I will ever use it.

I've gotten the negatives out of the way. Now let's talk about how it smokes. I loaded up a bowl of AF strawberry, my old standby, using two halves of a 3K coal split in two. In a nutshell, this thing smokes great, even with a stem that is as short as it is. I can see this becoming one of my favorites.

To sum up (and partially quoting DrunkenWizard):

Pros:
Very solid, well built.
Airtight, smokes great.
Looks awesome.
Diffuser rocks.
Cons:
Downstem is kinda short, needs a lot of water. I'll probably try to get some tubing to extend the downstem for an even better smoke.
Had to put tape under the grommet to make a tighter seal. (Not really an issue)
The hose grommet was inadequate (Not an issue)
The bowl included was unusable, IMO, and nothing like the one DrunkenWizard has in his pics.

In all, the pros far outweigh the cons (especially since these can so easily be fixed). This is a quality hookah and even though I missed the $55 sale, I think it is well worth the price I paid.

[Street]

My hookah came in about a week ago. First off, I'd like to say that the customer service at al fakher is without a doubt the best I've ever dealt with. Every email I sent was replied to within 3 hours. I emailed them at 12am once and they replied by around 1am. when I had made my order, I got a call from them to ask which flavor I wanted for the complimentary box of shisha!!
I live in Canada and Im usually very hesitant about buying stuff that has to go over the boarder, because of taxes and duties. And with the hookah I ordered 5 50gboxes of shisha and a box of coals. So this meant I shouldve had to pay both tobacco duties and the taxes. So I asked them to label the package as a gift and under $50 value. They were fine with that, and they even wrote a cute little letter to make it look legitimate. I did take a gamble with the shisha though, but I guess I was lucky because it doesnt look like customs checked the package or anything and I wasn't charged a penny when it arrived.
Now there isn't much I can say about the hookah that hasn't already been said. Its my first hookah, I had been looking around alot before I decided on this one, for the price it was definitely an easy choice. I agree the grommet is definitely too small, so I wrapped it in the black tape. The downstem is too short, water needs to be filled all the way to just below the crown logo. I noticed the design on my brass is different than drunkenwizard's, I like his better. I dont know why but I got two bowls with mine, a regular one and a shallow wide one, Ive only used the regular one and it works fine for me.

Really, its everything these guys say it is. I give it a 9.25/10

I'd really like to see some pictures of how you guys extended the downstem, that would be really helpful.

[racemyghost]

Hookah with my Tangiers Med. Phunnel bowl


First of all, I want to thank Sam from AlFakherOnline.com for being a great guy to work with. Al Fakher has always been my favorite brand of shisha and i take great pride in owning this hookah. It is solid, elegant, and simply beautiful. Can NOT be beat for the price. Many of you on here have addressed an issue about the stem being to short. I dont seem to find that a problem. I can blow huge clouds of smoke with this bad boy. There are 2 problems that i do have with this hookah. 1, the grommet provided to mate the stem and vase is not wide enough and causes the stem to wobble. Problem solved via couple layers of electrical tape (has no play what so ever now), 2nd, i thought i was receiving the Mya bowl just like drunkenwizard but i called Sam and he told me that the bowl i received was the new Al Fakher bowl manufactured by Al Fakher. I have not yet used this bowl and dont think i ever will. It is paper thin and very shallow. Im sure in about 10mins of smoking, you would burn the shisha (thank God for my phunnel). Other then those 2 complaints, i have nothing but good things to say about this hookah. And the Mya hose is excellent though i do not know if it is washable or not. The wood work on the handle is amazing.

[Zabiela]

I just took some photos of mine, nice afternoon on a sunny deck



I have had my hookah for about a year. I am very pleased with it. I did have to use tape to make the grommet wider, like the others above have explained, but it was quick and now it works absolutely fine. The only real problem with this hookah was the short stem, but I fashioned a diffuser that also lengthens it quite a bit. Other annoyance is the ball bearing in the release valve gets gunky after a while, then gets stuck, but I think this problem is not specific to this hookah.
I love how it looks, and it smokes great. Good price, and it came with a few extra goodies.
I give it an A.

[seangreen100]

i have the exact same hookah. its a great hookah. i agree, it takes alot of water to fill the vase but it smokes great. the grommet tht came with it to connect the stem and vase is a bit loose so i replaced it with another one. it smokes alot better. one thing that impressed me alot was that the pice that holds the ash tray on skrews off and makes it easyer to clean, all the mollasel drips through this pices so it is very efficient to clean. love mine.

[chinamon]

Al Fakher Medium Solid

as you all know, i recently got one of the second generation al fakher hookahs, the 30" medium solid to be exact.

i packed a small tangiers phunnel with al fakher golden seal eskandarani apple, two chron hookah instant light coals, water in the base and the modified caravan washable hose. the reason why i call it "modified" is because the plastic tip was changed by alfakheronline.com to a smaller wood piece so it will fit better in the hose port.

i bring everything out to my garage in -2C temperatures (28F for the americans) and sat out there freezing my nuts off.

i was hitting full smoke by the second puff but noticed the draw wasnt what i was accustomed to on my KM. i continued smoking because the pull wasnt that bad. the purge seems a lot like my 20" mz safari.

after 30 minutes i decide to pack it up because i could barely feel my fingers. when i brought it back to this room i saw my blue razan hose sitting there so i decided to try a couple puffs with that. omg! what a huge difference! it was the hose all along. the bigger plastic tip doesnt fit so well so i might sand it down a little.

in conclusion, i am very happy with this hookah. it is my first time with a syrian and i am impressed. it was money well spent.

oops.. forgot i had pics of the hookah in this thread..
[url="http://www.hookahforum.com/index.php?showtopic=29663"]http://www.hookahforum.com/index.php?showtopic=29663[/url]

[foibled again]

Here are my comments/observations/thoughts on an AF Medium Solid after I've had it for a while and did some work on it:

The hookah is advertised everywhere as 30" but the box says 26". Actual measurement is about 24-3/4" from base to tip.

The weight of the stem comes from the several nickel and gold plated brass pieces that make up the decorative elements of the stem itself. From what I can tell, not all of them are solid but I wouldn't be able to tell for sure without disassembling it. The heart itself is hollow, not solid. It's formed in the shape of a solid heart unlike those with an open chamber and a cover plate. The diameter of the heart portion that inserts into a vase is 1.5".

The hose port bore is about 3/8" wide but it is constricted inside the hose adapter, which has a smaller inner diameter of slightly under 1/4" (about the same diameter of the purge port and that of Myas). The hose port opening is only 5/8". A Razan fits well enough in the hose adapter that there are no performance issues. A Narbish has to be jammed in there to fit with the gasket and even then it's not so secure but it works.

The purge valve opening is a measly 1/16" hole and the cap has four 1/16" holes on it's side. My purge cap came beat up and the purge port on mine came with a very small internal leak in it somewhere. When one end is plugged and I blow in the other, I can detect air coming out of the top portion of the bottom gold plated section of the stem. I could see some rough machining on the inside of the purge tube but it would be very difficult (read: nightmare) trying to get at it to repair and it's not worth butchering the hookah over. I decided to just enlargen the purge port hole to 3/16" and the purge cap holes to 3/32". It purges much better now and it doesn't seem to leak during normal use. I even did a bubble leak test to make sure. I should mention that I eventually replaced the purge valve ball as the original started rusting.

The down tube terminates ~2" above the bottom of the vase. I'm not impressed with the base and will swap it for a larger one once I find a suitable replacement that I like. The base is a typical 9.5" tall, 5.5" diameter base, and 1.75" diameter opening blue vase with gold stripes and three poorly painted AF logos on it.

The bowl tip of the hookah is removable and was very rough inside. I smoothened it out but I had to remove quite a bit of material to get all the rough spots out. This caused some thin areas where there are grooves on the outside. One in particular was very thin so I reinforced it with some silver solder from the inside. The point of the tip is 1/2" so fit may be an issue for bowls with smaller openings. One of my small Tangiers phunnels has an opening of 3/4" and it still wobbles a bit when it's tightly put on there. The one with a 7/8" opening fits fine. I did add a high temp Viton o-ring that goes between the the bowl tip and the tray as there is a potential air leak there through the threads. Myas come with a silicone one there.

The wooden handle on the included hose has two 2" cracks filled in with lacquer where they jammed in the metal tip. I probably won't ever use the hose and bowl that came with it as they aren't very good (read: POS). John was kind enough to give me a different set of tongs instead of the crappy one that AF includes (I didn't even have to ask!). I still use my Mya premium tongs though.

Functionally the hookah smokes just fine. Quality wise it's far from perfect, but really that can be expected from any hookah. If you think about how much they sell for and then deduct material costs, shipping costs, distributor and vendor profits, etc., there really isn't much left for manufacturing/assembly/labor so it's not surprising there are minor stuff like dings, splatters, crooked pieces, etc. That being said, there were some holes in the brazing of the stem tube at the top bowl end and around the hose port on the bottom of the heart that I wasn't happy about. They weren't through-wall but they irritated me enough that I decided to rebraze them. I also cleaned up the sloppy brazing around the purge and hose adapters as well as I could and removed the crooked donut thing that was badly put on the bottom of the down tube but the process did expose/wear away some of the nickel plating. If only AF sold it as a kit so I could assemble it myself!

Bottom line: Though it isn't perfect (no hookah is), the AF Medium Solid looks and smokes great. There's really nothing more you can ask for at that price, except for maybe no logos/branding for the anti-AF peoples.