Plastic pipe bits

Oh yeah, but more like two condoms. I'd rather get the real feel for sure! ....We're still talking pipes, right? :roll:

If you are talking about the softy bite tips, I love them. Save your teeth and stem. But I do trim off the thick part of them and only use the thinner part.

I like some kind of cushioning on my bits too, but also find the standard softy bits are way too thick. I used to just wind some electrical tape (the black, plasticky stuff) around the bit a couple of times. That's easy to do, provides just a bit of cushion for the teeth, and is completely tasteless. However, after about 10 smokes it degrades into a chewed-up, sticky mess. Recently, I took a tip from a forum post here and switched to heat-shrink tubing, which I find is a nice improvement. It's a bit thicker than electrical tape but holds up a lot better. It still gets chewed up eventually, but a little heat from a lighter flame will fix that up (At least it will work a few times, though eventually it will need to be replaced). The right way to apply heat-shrink is with a heat gun, but I've found that just using my old Zippo works well enough. Light it, set it down, and wave the tubed bit about a inch over the flame very quickly. Obviously, you can mess this up if you let it sit in the flame too long, but I haven't run into any problems so far. The 1/2" tubing works perfectly for most bits, though really wide fishtails might want 3/4" instead.

I agree I dislike plastic stems.

By the way, what are condoms?

Daniel, condoms are like the bags pipes come in. Great for protection, but you gotta remove them to smoke.