I had read about "the Marilyn" so I wasn't surprised how cheerful and capable she was in handling a bit exchange last week. I think all MM roads either begin with her or pass through her. She's the type of employee that makes a business shine, especially in fixing problems.
The shank insert vies with stem quality for the biggest problems with their pipes. However so long as I remain a non-stem chewer and buy pipes big enough to have the capacity that I want despite the insert, I'm very good with cobs. The complaints about the quality of their stems being just cheap plastic bypass the fact that a cob is going to become non-smokeable at some point. The closest that I've come to that point is the walls going out of round; there's a lot of life left in those cobs. Other than an accident, even though much more breakable than briar, it would seem that cobs are most at risk for bowl degradation But given that that is likely but as yet on the horizon, why do I need better stem material for a product that by design is going to become non-smokable at some point? In this light cob pairs well with a plastic stem, and to me Forever Stems seem nothing more than pipe consumer culture. I know a lot of guys like them, but the number of times that I stop to admire the stem while I'm smoking have been very few.
As regards the insert, I was all set to remove every last one of them a year ago until I burned through one and had and found I had a bigger chamber. But what I hadn't noticed was that the draft thereby was now a few millimeters above the bottom of the chamber. I know that is generally poor design. So now I ignore the insert and judge capacity by the chamber above it. I just got 10 MM Mark Twains, and their capacity, measured by loading a pipe that I judge to be a solid 4, is duplicated by the Mark Twain.