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Sorry I accidentally hit sendentries I finished or could male myself clearer

I have 2 machines (liner/ shader). My shader is an Custom Ernie D that I love and my liner is a Dringenberg shader that is set as a liner (also loved). Ive been running my Ernie at about 4.2 and it stays very consistent and hits very hard (no give). Recently I've become worried that it hits too hard. When I do black and grey I worry that I am damaging the skin unnecessarily on the light parts. Also I have to be crazy careful not to get too dark. When I barrow other shaders I run them around double the volts but I feel they hit softer. The thing is that I don't think I am in a position to buy another machine. I think well I have 2 really good machines and I'm learning so I should just be working with those and not buying machines. When my mentor sold me the Ernie D he told me it was a great color packer but that I could use it for all my shading. He used to use it for all his pieces; big, little, color, b&g portraits and all. So my question is should I buy another machine, change the tuning on the machine I have for every tattoo despite how great it runs, or just continue to try and get things right with how it's running now. After all he did great work in all styles with it. I have tuned machines but I'm not a big fan of messing with a good thing. I figured many of you started off with 1 or 2 machines and you probably went through using those machines for everything at one point so I would like to hear what you did and your opinions on what I should do. Thanks 

Also I don't do portraits on any realism at this point. I'm pretty much doing flowers and fist size pieces. 

i had the same problem mate, till i tried a swashdrive gen7 im useing the give clip witch comes standard and it alows you to build up your blackandgrey without causing much truama to the skin in my opinon switch to a good rotary such as a swashdrive, stigma, swiss ect it helped me


hopfully this helps

hey cam,the give clip in swashdrive make a big diference?

yeah mate, it depends on what effect your trying to achieve if your trying to get really soft greys i would go for the give clip, i use it for everything from solid colour packing, colour blending, black and grey, solid black tribal, like i said before it alowes you to build and not damage the skin to much out of all the rotarys i found the swashdrive to be the better choice

i would suggest getn more machines. at least one more for now. iv used neumas for 2yrs n up until about 5 months ago iv had 2 machines to work with. it was a bit of a hassle to switch needles when i was doing a piece dat required different line sizes. i got a hybrid n now its as easy as plugging into another machine n continuing instead of stopping to switch needles.