He always rubs me the wrong way too.
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I’d go with Backcrossing as I have read that you would need to pop a whole lot of seeds to find something close to or better than the original.
There may be a third option although. I am currently looking into (In Vetro Tissue Culture and Cell Suspension) for the same reason as you, Preservation of my most prized and don’t want to have to hunt for something similar down the road.
Tissue culture kits are available online but, cell suspension is a whole different ball game.
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Imho, with any approach, the best outcome you can hope for is an approximation of the original. Clone only strains are often the result of a lucky pheno from some cross of someone else’s already good but probably also highly heterozygous gear. They are clone only strains because no seed they produce will breed true.
With either S1 or with an Introduced male you will likely end up with some offspring that are similar to the parent, though with either approach it’s a numbers game I.e. how many hundreds of plants you have to sort through to find the lucky one that happens to have the same alleles roughly in the same arrangement.
I mean if you don’t mind a bit of randomness then it doesn’t matter; S1 and in all likelihood you’ll find some stuff as good or sometimes even better than the original, along with the inevitable completely random assembly of different plants of course🤷♂️…
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Aggree…
Personally I’d take my “Prize clone” to keep as the mother, take more clones from the mother, reverse them and BX to the mother.
Always keep mother clone… Now you can repeatedly BX to mother untill you find something almost the same as mother I’m seed form.
You would have to grow out many seeds to confirm all seeds produce mother like trates.
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I have often thought this would be a good way to lock down the elite expression in seed form. A series of self backcrosses. You self the elite, then grow out the progeny( making sure to keep cuts of each). Sample the new generation and pick the one that closest resembles the elite and reverse the saved cut back onto your elite.SBX1. Grow out the progeny, keep cuts, pick the one that most resembles the elite and reverse the saved cut back onto the elite. SBX2 ect…
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Regardless of how to do it, keep clones of the elite cuts.
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Im too shy to pester Tony directly.
Did I hear that he documented the process really thoroughly on a different forum?
Meant to ask you this days ago but didn’t want to harass you at work
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Haha no problem, you can @ me anytime 
Tony did document his work thoroughly, he is/was at times more active on, I believe, zlabs othertimes on icmag. Goes way back to him running sour bubble on its own.
Tom hill (he can be quite a character, but he’s a walking encyclopedia) has been very vocal about breeding schemes. Lemme grab a quote from him (I feel lazy and it’s late lol)
Wall of text incoming
"
In my opinion selfing the clone is a viable first step. If the clone selfs well (gives you a high percentage of plants resembling your end goal) then you may likely be home or get home with a quick backcrossing program using the original clone as the recurrent parent. If the plant doesn’t self well then you may want to discount it as a final recurrent parent in a backcross breeding program anyway- without further filial inbreeding (you may never get there via backcrossing alone- the Chimera argument). I might let the outcome of the s1 determine the direction I’d take. The selfing of a plant remains the most powerful tool & quickest method of determining the genetic makeup of any given plant. It also has the tendency of providing the largest percentage of viable plan b’s.
Tom
Examples are best I think.
Self the SSH/PTK keeper. Grow out 100 S1’s. Save the top 5% for further testing. Self these (1)-(5) S1 keepers (candidates) and grow out at least 30 each of their S2 seed. Candidate (1) has 5 of 30 progeny that are any good, so we discard candidate (1). Candidate (2) has 10 of 30 that are good and is also discarded, etc, etc. Candidate (4) produces 25 outstanding plants out of 30 - ranking highest, candidate (4) is our breeder. Repeat the selfing of candidate (4), and release this as a female line and/or begin testing to other lines to release a truly superior F1 (or maybe cube (4) if adverse to fem seed). By testing to relatively removed and true breeding lines like Blueberry, NL, SK1, DC, C99 etc, we will increase the odds of a truly uniform and superior F1. This is how “real” breeders of outcrossing species (corn etc) often do things - more or less. -Tom"
More later…
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Once you get to about s4 the plants are usually very sick looking, slow an full of mutations. So you have to figure away around this.
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Great info! Thank you very much for sharing🙏🏼
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Thank you! 
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Yah for sure. And hermi prone if you don’t test properly, I imagine. Perhaps running a parallel line with a outcross to bump into the line losing vigour? I’ve heard breeder Steve talk about getting sterile plants around S5-6.
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Yes they usually have huge problems. But you could create two or 4 separate selfed lines an then join them together.
Tony uses a very good method an put in the hard work to achieve it . Ive not seen the results my self, I wonder if anyone has any pictures of the plants that come out of the finished seed so we can all maybe see results.
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That’s exactly it, combining two inbred families of the same strain will return some to most vigor. Resistance and more…
The numbers of generation you can self before getting problems if entirely dependant on how homozygous the starting clone/strain is.
An already inbred line (without large pop.) Will probably be done by s3. And a 12 strains Mashup could get to s8 without problems.
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See when for example you cross a s5 x s5 together , looking at it vigour seems to be restored. But is that just the hybrid vigor of that generation. How would it then behave in further generations an would those mutations quickly show back up especially when compared to a seed line made with healthy males an females. ?
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By s2-s3 you should already have discarded problem families, of course it may not be bulletproof when outcrossing. Trying different 1:1 mating until you hit the jackpot would be the way to go.
Regarding vigor:
strain a s3 x s3 brings back vigor
strain b s3 x s3 same
then if you cross strain a and b you would again see an increase in vigor. This phenomenon would theoretically happen again, until you reach ridiculous vigor 
And self or m/f breeding only differ in speed, due to the exploration of female side of thing without a male(half the genes/no Unknown male). To bring the line back to m/f, try different males and it should be easy to see what they bring then.
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Yes the outcrossing like your example says of one inbred selfed line to another restores vigour. But what happens when you start inbreeding those sort of lines back to them selves. I think I remember someone doing some comparison with lines built with regular males an females an those built buy multiple reversals outcrossed to other similar lines an the selfed again. Outdoors the results seemed to favour the genetics of the regular male female built plants. The defects seemed to be inbeded in the female only inbred lines wich seemed to be masked initially when one line was outcrossed to another by hybrid vigour.
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doesn’t it take 4 breeding of a strain to get back to it’s orginial genetics ? Orginal genetics to S-1 to S-2,to S-3, to S-4 thanks for the informarion - in breeding I can’'t really understand why some seeds a very expensive, example: pack of 10 for $500.00 have seen some for $1.500 a pack - please help me unserstand - Do understand that it’s the genetics but WOW unbelievable – if I win the lottery I will buy them !!!
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I’m no breeding expert but I’m pretty sure it’s not that simple unless you are talking to Mr. Soul😉
Seed prices aren’t rational. More about hype and marketing.
For instance, Seed junky has sherbet S1’s for $500 and CSI has the same for $120( I think).
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