Not trying to get confrontational, but if you're in the 'never disassemble the pipe save for a yearly deep cleaning', then yes, even an adapter can be a hassle.Yeah if you choose to use the adapter, you can mess around with a dirty adapter every time you clean your pipe
I take my pipes apart after every smoke, so I see no hassle at all in taking out a filter and tossing it and then putting in a new one. Frankly, washing the stem is more of a hassle than swapping a filter.