I'm back to correct myself. Using non-resistance wire for the leads makes a HUGE difference! Also, I'm certain I was wrong about the pre-made coil. It had to be dual-wire. It's just hard to see the tiny little knots on an old crusty used coil =)
After my last post, I tried a coil with a single piece of 32 AWG Kanthal. It was not even close to the same as the premade coil, with muted flavor and inferior vapor production. Boosting the voltage had little effect. In the mean time, the bottom metal cap of my tank was heating up much faster than before. If you use resistance wire for the leads there's just too much heat being wasted away from the coil where you want it.
Fast forward to today. I made a coil out of a single strand of 32 Kanthal, but I used twisted double strands for the leads (effectively cutting the leads' resistance in half, to mimic non-resistance wire). It was a bit tricky feeding the twisted leads through the holes in the ceramic and the center pin had a tough time going in but it worked and what a difference it makes.
I've got a spool of 32 awg pure nickel wire on the way to make proper single-stranded non-resistance leads, but in the mean time this is working great. The moral of the story is using non-resistance wire is important. If you're worried about difficulty setting it up, I can tell you that and it's still easier to set up and get working correctly than my cobra genesis atty.