Doesn't seem many people here received July Shipments. Hopefully the next August Shipment Report will go better. I'd love to see some progression as far as upgrades and especially fit and finish.

I have been pulling ~6 double shots a day and steaming milk 75% of the time since I got the machine.
It hasn't skipped a beat once I got the initial brew switch fix out of the way.

Most of the minor issues surrounding the machine are only apparent when you are not plumbing the machine in which I did. That being said here is my fit/finish analysis.

- Cup warmer tray fits well, no scratches caused by removing it. It is a good tight fit. Could be a fraction of a mm smaller around all sites but its not a big deal IMHO.

- Cup warmer tray, was tight at first, everything settled nicely and now it requires no effort or scraping to remove.

- The outlet tube into the drip tray needed to be tweaked up and to the right in order for the drip tray to fit in easily each time. This was really a non issue. I blame this on UPS along with the brew level switch.

So in conclusion you have nothing to worry about slowrey. I would still pick the Alex Duetto II over the Vivaldi II any day of the week. At the end of the day that are the only DB machines in this price range.

Of course if you are not happy the Vivaldi II would be a great alternative. If you are not plumbing in then you can use the mini and save more money, but you lose pre-infusion :-\

I wish you the best of luck on the next shipment, I really hope you love it because the machine in terms of Espresso/Steaming capabilities is just unstoppable!

My Duetto has been performing fine. No issues to report. As others, my complaints would be the depth of the drip tray. Adding even one inch would do wonders. And the height between drip tray and grouphead could be better but easily solved with a bottomless PF.

Finally, the joystick steam/hot water controls are great except they're not made for the Duetto. They're made for Quick Mill Andreja and Vetrano (I think). The steam arm is about an inch or two longer than the stock Duetto steam arm. The joystick assembly also adds some more length. I swapped out the steam arm with the stock Duetto one to create more space, but it's still not enough. I don't think this qualifies as a complaint, but would be nice to see some arms made for the Duetto to avoid this (or the height of the next version of the Duetto is increased. Other than that, the joystick controls are great!

They're 70 bucks each.

I think they're exactly the same as the ones for the QM's, but I could be wrong.

The steam arm joint is the same size but the gasket and spring mechanism inside is bigger than stock.

Nonetheless, when I said I wanted it, it didn't seem like a big fuss (like custom fitting it to the Duetto).

As I said, the discrepancy will be noticed in the length of the steam arm (the hot water arm is fine).