Gains with the Phallosan alone are really slow. I understand the concept of not wanting to overtrain and that less in some situations means more, but personally, I think regardless of what device you use, to some extent you should still be doing manual stretches as well. One of the main reasons I do both is because the Phallosan simply can't give as strong of a pull as other types of extenders. That and once I've finished a manual routine or pumping, I want to prevent retracting as much as possible. This has helped me improve my natural flaccid size as well.
I see your point, and I agree partially. In fact I suggested to add manual stretching once you reached a dead point with the ads. All PE is a very slow process, and trying to accelerate it may be counter productive. It would be interesting to have other opinions on this, Ultimate Burrito for example had good results with ADS before switching to manual, I dunno if he id a period of both at the same time. I've read also people who just used the ads, as you say, to prevent retracting, and it may be a good theory as well, but it's not exactly what they're made for.
We also have to consider that eveybody have a different feedback from different approaches: low tension high volume vs high tension - low volume, and there's also people who went for hight tension high volume, where the last is easily the worst one.
There are many example of people who gained a good amount of lenght and girth by using the ads only, as well as people who gained nothing (often because they rushed the process and added too much load too early).
At the same time is plenty of example of people who went only manual and reached their goals as well, other regardless of the exercice find hard to obtain any significant result.
So in the end is trying to find the better route for yourself, taking into consideration all the experiences coming form the others, but using this knowledge to build your own custom program.
Any other contribution is as always more than welcome.