Someone please help!

It's been a while since I've been on here, I'm gon a stay on here more often, anyway I became a single dad and had to lay down my machines for a while and just started back a couple months ago, I switched to a spectra edge x and started using fusion and ttech carts, my work is shit! Visible needle marks with my shading,my depth isnt consistent,I'm really slow putting color and shading if it packs in at all,so any advice on how to run the edge and using the give, I also switched to electrum stencil solution and I'm not use to the consistency so any tips on that, it seem like I always put too much on or not enough,thanks guys I really appreciate it

I have no experience with the spectra at all, maybe you should experiment with stroke lengths and speed,, people use this machine to good effect so it's not the machine causing your problems.
If your colour is not going in solid then I'd try turning up the power and/or slow your hand speed and maybe increase stroke to maximum or close to it and angle that machine..

I tried kneehigh's tip on Friday. Hand the needle out more, go in deeper and make sure the machine is angled. I wasn't packing colour but my shading went in faster so so far it worked for me

^^^ hang the needle out

Really glad to hear that mate... !! Keep at it and youll find the perfect hand movments, depth, angle, stretch etc for you... because theres no such thing as perfect way to do anything ... its just what fits you best... atleast thats how i see it !!

As far as the edge x goes, as Merit said its definetly not the machine ... the machine is really nice for pretty much any sort of aplication... what i found helped in colorwork... is again hanging the needle out more, and dont do large strokes... like lets say 0.5cms either back and forth but diagonaly (like make the needles in that magnum interlap) either circles... But work in very small areea at a time and try to do it in as less layers as posible !!

Sorry for the late reply my daughter been real sick, but I'll try using the longer stroke and slowing down, I can tell since I switched my depth has been all over the place and my whites haven't been going in, even when I hang the needle I can't gauge my depth right when I'm using give, and when I use no give everyone that looks at my work still says my depth is off, I always gauged it by vibration from my other hand but don't get that as much with rotarys, I'll try to figure out how to load a pic so you can see what I mean

How do you load a pic up?

I think I used photobucket to upload images

Switching to rotarys really threw me off

My depth is way off! I just started back so my work looks like shit,any help on my depth or any advice would help, it's been over a yr since I tattooed on skin,this was my 2nd one

The skin looks chewed up !! But its not necessary the lenght of the stroke imo... i think its more about how you move your hand (technique) .. you either layer too much to saturate, either stretch too hard and the skin tends to ripp easyer, either you stay too much in one place to saturate and end up with the trauma...
And theres really no much advice anyone could give you untill they see what youre actually doing... but id say its a tryal and error time... pull a line in a certain way, then see how well it goes.. if well, keep doing it untill you perfect it.. if not well :
1.change the hand speed (slow down if you end up with a shaded line, move faster if you end up with blowouts and things like that) you could also adjust the voltage to change the speed of the stroke if you wanna keep a more comfortable speed for your hand...
2. Change the angle you holding the machine
3. Change the depth
4. Change the stretch
Find a balance between things like this and youll find your way of doing that particualr thing...
After you learned the lines move on to the shading... and so on.. i think that way youll understand every aspect of tattooing... rather than taking it all at once and end up with a much longer leaning curve ...

Thank you for the advice, yeah my stretch hasn't been that great here lately, plus changing everything when I started back probably wasn't the best idea lol, I did another piece tonight and felt a lot more comfortable, I think my main problem is I'm thinking about it to much instead of just relying on what I know,this is the piece I did today

picture is awful, cant see much and still can see that the linework is wonky as hell, color choice again pretty bad considering its a tattoo not a drawing... try a more contrasted image, needs black and darker tones ... you basically struggled alot to pound these tones in and theyr not gonna be there for long... once because of them beeing so light and second because its not propperly packed into the skin !
Id say focus more on smaller traditional tattoos (Thick clean linework, 3-4 colors and loads of black) , try and do them as clean as posible (technically and ofcourse sanitary) and when you feel you started to get the technical aspect of things than you can move on... For now, you basically trying to run before you can walk