Carlisle CC vs GTT Phantom: Which Production Bench Burner Fits Your Shop?

Short answer: The Carlisle CC (about $1,796 street) and the GTT Phantom (about $1,425 street) are both serious production bench burners, but they assume very different shops. The CC is a classic scientific-lineage cannon burner that wants boosted gas and a big oxygen supply: the manual specs 5 psi natural gas with 10 psi oxygen, or 5 psi propane with 25 psi oxygen, which puts unboosted household natural gas out of the question. The Phantom is a 22-jet Triple Mix torch that GTT rates to run on fuel pressure as low as 1/4 psi, so it works on an ordinary residential natural gas line with no booster. If your infrastructure is a shop with boosted gas and plenty of oxygen, the CC’s bigger flame ceiling rewards it. If you are wiring a serious torch into a home studio, the Phantom asks far less of your utilities.

Both torches run propane or natural gas, and both sit well past the beginner tier. This comparison is for someone stepping up to a burner they expect to earn its keep, so the honest question is not “which is better” but “which one can your gas and oxygen supply actually feed.”

The two designs, briefly

The CC is one of the oldest production torch designs still made. Carlisle has been building burners since 1918 (originally as Carlisle Gas Burner Corp), and the CC itself dates to 1939, developed in conjunction with Corning Inc for scientific glassworking. The company calls it a “cannon style” burner: a brass shell (stainless optional) with an aluminum finned heat exchanger and four color-coded metering valves, green for oxygen and red for gas, with crossover attachments so a standard CC needs only two feed hoses. It produces two distinctive flames: a premixed centerfire that is hot and detailed, and a surface-mix outer fire that is bushy and soaking. Three centerfire tips are offered; the #5 (the largest piloted orifice) is the natural gas standard, while the smaller, more defined #3 suits propane. In our catalog the CC is classified as a surface-mix bench burner, consistent with how combination burners are grouped.

The Phantom is a two-stage GTT torch: a Lynx 7-jet center fire (the center stage is literally a GTT Lynx) surrounded by a ring of 15 outer jets, 22 jets total. GTT describes it as completely surface mix using the company’s patented Triple Mix technology, which surrounds the fuel with oxygen and injects oxygen directly down the fuel stream so the fuel burns completely. The claimed result, in GTT’s own framing, is a hotter, cleaner flame with a chemistry range from fuel-rich reduction through neutral to oxidizing and over-oxidizing, and a character range from soft and bushy to hard and driving. It comes in Standard or Snub Nose versions with a 4-stud manifold, ships with a base, instructions, cleaning kit, and 3/16 inch hose with adapters to 1/4 inch grade T hose, and is also offered as a hand torch with a thumb switch for the outer fire and with a compressed-air option. For the mechanism in depth, see our Triple Mix technology guide.

Side by side

Editor’s note: the oxygen figures above are max-usable-flame placements, not minimums; both torches spend most of a working day well below them. The CC’s 26 LPM is an owner-judgment placement in our catalog (roughly GTT Mirage class), while the Phantom’s 16.5 LPM comes from GTT’s published flow-rates table on propane. Different measurement bases, so treat the comparison as approximate.

The infrastructure story: this is the real decision

Residential natural gas is delivered at roughly 6 to 8 inches of water column, commonly cited as about 7 inches WC, which is approximately 0.25 psi. That single number decides most of this comparison.

The full-size CC manual wants 5 psi of natural gas at the torch, twenty times what a house line delivers, along with 10 psi of oxygen. On propane it wants 5 psi gas and 25 psi oxygen. There is no regulator trick that gets a household gas meter to 5 psi; you need a booster. G-TEC, which manufactures torch boosters, builds units that raise utility natural gas from house pressure into the 5 to 25 psi range, from the small TB-15 up to TB-250 and TB-500 units sized for schools. That is the infrastructure the CC assumes: a shop supply, not a wall tap. Follow the CC manual’s pressures exactly; the manual takes precedence over anything written here.

The Phantom flips the equation. GTT states that Triple Mix torches can run on fuel pressures as low as 1/4 psi on natural gas or propane, which is exactly the neighborhood of an unboosted household line. That is why a Phantom can plug into home natural gas service and simply work, a rare property in this class of torch. Our natural gas conversion guide covers the plumbing side of that decision.

Two honest caveats on the Phantom’s low-pressure story. First, low pressure is not free heat: GTT’s own flow table shows the largest usable propane flame running at 10 psi fuel and 35 psi oxygen, and the catalog provenance notes that natural gas consumption runs roughly 2.5 times the propane volume. Second, community reports (Lampwork Etc.) say household 1/4 to 1/2 psi runs smaller torches fine, but some users with large GTT torches find the absolute top end is not there on unboosted house gas. G-TEC’s own TB-60 booster page names “an individual with a Nortel Major, GTT Phantom or similar torch” as a fit. So the fair summary is: the Phantom runs well on house gas, and a booster only enters the picture if you routinely want its very biggest flames; the CC does not run on house gas at all.

On the oxygen side, the CC is the hungrier torch at full song, around 26 LPM of usable flame against the Phantom’s roughly 16.5 LPM. Either figure is beyond a single small concentrator at maximum; see how many LPM does my torch need and the concentrators vs tanks comparison for sizing a supply honestly.

Editor’s note: the CC manual also lists a “Maximum Cubic Foot per Hour” figure of 180 CFH oxygen (about 85 LPM) on natural gas. That number is a capacity ceiling for the burner’s plumbing, not a consumption or working-flame figure. Do not size an oxygen supply from it.

Flame character and working feel

The CC’s two-flame design is its signature: a hot, detailed premix centerfire for pinpoint work inside a bushy, soaking surface-mix outer fire for mass heating. That combination is why the design survived from 1939 scientific glass through the 1980s and 90s artistic glass movement, when Carlisle added the CC Plus and the #3 centerfire tip. The trade-offs are equally traditional: the CC is robust but loud, and it is prone to a backfire “pop” if shut down out of sequence, so the manual’s shutdown order matters.

The Phantom’s Triple Mix flame is the modern alternative: one system that GTT says spans soft and bushy to hard and driving, with wide chemistry control, rather than two distinct fires. In a long-running Lampwork Etc. “GTT or Carlisle?” thread, posters describe GTT’s large torches (the Mirage in that discussion) as more efficient on gas and oxygen than a CC and faster at putting heat into the core of the glass, while acknowledging trade-offs and calling both great torches. Treat that as community opinion, not measured fact, but it matches the pattern: the CC is the proven workhorse with a big soaking fire, the Phantom the efficiency-minded design that does more with a leaner supply.

Fuels, variants, and near neighbors

Both torches in our catalog run propane or natural gas. Carlisle’s site notes the CC platform can be configured for hydrogen, but that is the dedicated CC-H variant with a non-piloted tip; the standard CC is not a hydrogen torch, and hydrogen work means ordering the CC-H specifically.

Do not confuse the CC with the Carlisle Mini CC. The Mini CC is a different, smaller model whose manual allows 0.25 to 3 psi on natural gas, so house pressure is fine there (propane wants 2 to 3 psi). The full-size CC’s 5 psi requirement is the booster-territory number; collapsing the two models into one “Carlisle pressure” claim is a common and expensive mistake. If you are actually shopping the entry tier, see Nortel Minor vs Carlisle Mini CC instead.

Within each family there are steps in both directions: Carlisle’s CC Plus extends the CC platform upward, and GTT’s Sidewinder is a 22-jet, two-stage sibling of the Phantom at about $1,125 street.

Verdict

Buy the Carlisle CC if you have, or are building, shop infrastructure: boosted gas at 5 psi, oxygen delivery comfortable around 26 LPM at full flame, and you value the two-flame cannon-burner working style with eighty-plus years of production history behind it. Buy the Phantom if you want a serious two-stage torch that runs on an ordinary home natural gas line, uses meaningfully less oxygen at its top end, and costs about $370 less. For most home studios stepping up from a mid-size torch, the infrastructure math alone points to the Phantom; the CC makes its case where the utilities already exist to feed it.

Related guides

• GTT Triple Mix technology explained
• Natural gas conversion guide
• How many LPM does my torch need?
• Oxygen concentrator vs tanks for lampworking
• Nortel Minor vs Carlisle Mini CC

Sources

• Carlisle Machine Works, “CC Bench Burner”: http://carlislemachine.com/as_benchburners/cc.php
• Carlisle Machine Works, “About” (company and CC history): http://carlislemachine.com/about.php
• Glass Torch Technologies, “Phantom”: https://www.glasstorchtech.com/phantom
• Glass Torch Technologies, “Triple Mix Torches”: https://www.glasstorchtech.com/triple-mix-torches
• G-TEC, “Torch Boosters” (booster pressures and sizing): https://www.gas-tec.com/torch-boosters
• InspectApedia, “Gas Pressures” (residential WC figures): https://inspectapedia.com/plumbing/Gas_Pressures.php
• Lampwork Etc., “GTT or Carlisle?” (community comparison): http://www.lampworketc.com/forums/archive/index.php/t-25754.html