jleiii, If I am reading your post right, you never did get the original Darkstar burner to work right? Can you share where you got the $9 banjo, and did it bolt right in?
Sorry, it was $12.95 (plus shipping of course), from
Agri Supply, however this is the first one I bought. Not sure where I got the second one. This is a short stem model to fit the other burner I have. The second is a longer stem on the DS burner, but should have used this one for the DS too.
After the massive soot on the first use, the useless air shutter, and the experience with the this style on my other burner, I did not even give it a second try. Hot spots, crappy performance, etc. The banjo style is vastly better.
They all use a 6mm screw, but since the banjo's mount closer (higher) I had to use a longer screw. I also had to punch a new hole/slot in both to get them mounted higher. For anyone considering this look for cheap conduit punches. 'Real' ones are very expensive, but the cheap imports are not - check harbor freight and ebay.
The other burner came from
Bass Pro Shop although it looks slightly different from this one, but still all stainless. It was on sale for $125 at the time.
The turkey fryer burner has a timed burner control, but 5 minutes on the internet and you can find instructions on how to remove the control and modify the gas fitting. Takes about 15 min to do.
Reminder - these burners are LOW PRESSURE but work fine with the 5 lb regulators that came with my original burners. You can't turn them up too high, but for 5 gallon batches I don't need to.