Silver Supporter
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The SVEA is an awesome stove.I have way too many stoves. None in my BOB but Petes advice seems sound to me. Light is nice in an emergency.
I'm out in the woods a lot and use backpacking stoves in all kinds of conditions. Current stove is the MSR Reactor (Butane canister). It's won all kinds of awards, and will boil water faster than any other stove, but I'm Meh about it. Slightly larger is the Jetboil, mine has an ignition button, which the MSR lacks. I ding the MSR big for the lack of the igniton lighter button. It's a big thing and a nice feature to have. You have to unscrew the top of the Reactor to light it, and it's easy to burn yourself, all while wasting fuel.
I have a Whisperlight too, nice stove. But my precious is a SVEA stove I bought brand new for $15 from REI 46 years ago. It is a single unit, takes white gas and I've resorted to burning unleaded gas as well. For a SHTF kind of thing, MSR makes a multifuel, but this is close behind it in my mind. I've fired that up after it's sat there for years and it still burns. Maybe 3 times in it's life, the nozzel gets clogged, they make a little pin wire device you hit the nozzel and are good to go for years. Grabbed a pic off the internet and see they are over $100 now. Ouch. They are the Coleman stove of backpacking stoves if that tells you anything. Very reliable. I've used mine a bunch, never replaced a thing. The cons are that the small base makes it unstable, and to fire it up you have to pressure the fuel container part of the stove either by warming it up, or pumping, but you have to take off the upper housing (which is easy)
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I have a Phoebus 625 which is a Hall-of-Famer as well.
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