This fall I replaced my ceramic combustor with a stainless steel model from stovecombustors.com, and thanks to this early season cold spell I have a few days of burn time on it. Observations so far. It seem to light off sooner, on this mornings reload when the flu pipe thermometer reached 350 closed the bypass and it lite right off. I used to go to well past 400 for a reliable lite off, so some improvement there. The highest temp. I've seen so far was 1100 degrees The ceramic would some times reach 1200. The replacement is about an inch shorter than the old one so I had to buy a thermometer with a longer probe to get what I think are more accurate readings. So far so good.