The butter base would be good because all the THCA would be thoroughly decarboxylized which is a requirement for efficient extraction.

That chemist said that chloroform extracts 98% of THC on its first pass. It sounds like that number is coming from somewhere, and it sounds like he knows what he's talking about so I'd go with that.

If you ran dried, ground bud through a Soxhlet extractor with a solvent that targeted 98% of the THC, then through a rotovap, then through column chromatography and rotovapped it again you'd have something pretty damn close to pure THC.

The next step after that would be isomerization, which involves a separatory funnel and tosic acid. It sounds kind of like a pain in the ass for the volume of product that you get. According to one guys experiments the result is a product so pure that you could dip your finger in it, lick it and be stoned. Isomerization also, apparently, creates a high that is much different from smoking THC along with the other cannabinoids. That's why I'm not interested in it.

Chemically pure THC is a transparent oil and gets even more complicated to produce than what you go through with isomerization, though that's a precursor. This guy explains it pretty well:

Amazon.com: Cannabis Alchemy: Art of Modern Hashmaking: Books: Gold

If you don't have access to a lab though it sounds like the setup would be pretty expensive.

That's why my goal is just the very pure non-isomerized honey oil. It's sounds like it'd be PLENTY strong without going through all that extra effort.