Some juices other loves, has for me the taste of parfume and soap for washing machines.
I feel so lucky that I have yet to get the taste of soap! I hear a lot of people say that. So far I only get a weird almost alcohol chemical taste, perfume, and occasionally with cream vapes, rotting cheese and feet.
More often then not I end up finding a lot of juices I hate rather then love.
I totally know this feeling! At times I have more juices steeping than I have to vape, just HOPING they will turn into something vapeable. I don't even fully get how sometimes it works, since they mixed it months ago in many cases, and then I shake it, open it, try it, put it away, try it, and then it's suddenly okay... I've had juices that I wouldn't wish on my worst enemy suddenly be alright to vape after a week or two.
I've tried several cherry flavors, and I find that TFA's Cherry Extract is the best, hands down -- not too sweet, not too tart, not medicinal nor maraschino -- it's the Goldilocks of cherry flavors: just right.
If you ever do want an actual maraschino cherry flavor, LorAnn's is pretty good. If you want the taste of an actual cough drop, Inawera's Cherries can't be beat.
I haven't tried a lot of others, but TFA Cherry is alright. It's not nearly strong enough though. Mixing it with other flavors is very tough because of that. Someone on the forum mentioned using FA Black Cherry with it, and I tried that, and it worked pretty well. They compliment each other, and the final product is stronger than either alone, but it's still pretty weak. I might end up having to try that cough drop.
The ELR recommended % people are using are most often way off. Only takes a couple morons to input their recommended mixing % of 20% on bilberry to totally whack the averages.
They can be way off, but it does give you a starting point, where you can test it, and then either move up or down. Listening to some random guy on a forum carries the same risk. It's a less cautious way to get a measure on the juice. Even after a single taste, if I want to, I can try a few mixes, with lower percentages, and see how that works out. That's not "running before I can walk", that's experimentation. But, that's only when I feel adventurous, and then it might take a ton of mixes after that before I get what I want. So far, most of the time, I try a single flavor at one percentage, then I judge if I should try a lower or higher percentage, or both. After I get more of a handle on the taste, I may test it with individual flavors, in lower percentages, to see how they interact, then adjust the levels in another test, and maybe another. If I feel like MAYBE I could get something that might taste really good, I might even add a third flavor, and then adjust it after I taste it, usually a few days later. Blindly testing percentages, I personally, have found to be a waste of time, and bottles. I'd much rather choose how I am going to use those bottles, after I've tested the flavor once.
Maybe find a couple highly rated recipes on ELR to try out. Would be a good way to start. And to get some experience mixing flavors and what results from it.
If I find one with flavors I have, or maybe one that sounds so good I'm willing to buy the flavors, sure, but chasing recipe flavors is a fool's errand. Every recipe has a few flavors you don't have, and before you know it, you could build a brick house of flavoring bottles. Besides, I already found out from 'premium' juices that my tastes are quite different than norm. The likelihood that I'll hate some guy's recipe is damn near similar to hating some guy's premium juice. I'm having fun experimenting, and already getting some vapeable things. I'm good here.
So that's why I started just using whatever I had, if I had any brand of whatever is called for. It might need adjusting, true, which you only discover when you actually mix the juice... but you gotta start somewhere, getting a feel for the relative merits and intensities of the various brands and flavors. Just doing the actual physical mixing of the juice is my biggest procrastination -- since I've had an ADV that I still love, since Dec 2014, I'm lazy as hell about actually putting the flavors together. 