UPDATE:
Pinned my let Quad on Wednesday (2nd on that side) and had a more moderate PIP than the first pin -- soreness is almost gone 3 days later (first time took almost a week). Got my .22 micron filters and filled yesterday's syringe with it, and pinned my right quad (3rd pin on that side). PIP is about the same as the unfiltered pin on the left side Wednesday.
So, I've about decided it's not the gear -- and thank goodness: it took me almost 15 minutes to fill 1ml of oil into the syringe! Not kidding. Plus there's oil in the filter and trapped in the needle because it's mostly one-way. Took forever, with waste. Even if it improved my PIP, I was considering just living with it considering how long it took to filter! Maybe I'm doing itwrong, but it doesn't seem like rocket surgery. So, it seems like the gear is fine and the second left quad pin went much easier. So I just need to man-up if I'm going to pin my quads.
Now for my cautionary tale -- my 2nd right quad pin was excruciating PIP. And I'm pretty sure it's because I pinned the wrong place. I pinned toward the lower end of the "box" area recommended. And I either got between the muscle, or into the lymphatic system, or didn't go deep enough (I did not insert the 1" needle all the way), based on reading other threads. Whatever the reason, my leg below the pin swelled up and took a week to go down. My knee ached, I had "cankles", and the sore patch near the pin site was much larger than usual (spreading downward toward the knee). I thought for sure I had an infection or an abscess, but I searched the forum for answers, waited it out since I never had a fever, and it wasn't getting worse after the third day. All's well that ends well, but from now on, I'm sticking that 1" needle all the way in as deep as possible, and keeping to the middle-to-upper area of the defined boundaries.
Thanks for all the replies and help that got me to this point!