Hello everyone,
(You may tell me what you think of the MDX, how would you rank it against any other grinder, and possibly answer the question in the title without having to read all this. I am only sharing my ideas!)
I believe that I am amongst the most stringent when it comes to the part of grinding, to the extent that I suddenly started adopting a confusing construction, saying that "my Pavoni can only let me taste the KitchenAid grind", while trying, desperately, to explain to my mom the cause of the various imperfections that frequently arise in her cup. Now, after months of tasting the KicthenAid, we have finally moved to tasting the Zassenhaus grind! Which is also, in my opinion, way less than what my Professional deserves. In my estimation, what a lever would really need to do its best is a grinder that can show excellent uniformity and lack of dust at the very fine settings. I noticed that the Zassenhaus Turkish 175M has relatively good uniformity at the fine settings, but still produces a lot of dust that doesn't allow me to dose proper amounts of coffee at these settings without clogging the machine, and hence my dilemma with the "stupid grinder" continues.
My modified KitchenAid has two modes; in one of the two modes the auger crushing action against the back of the stationary burr is avoided, whereas in the other mode the same crushing action is present (as in the original grinder). Note that in both modes the fine-tuning phase (the actual grinding phase) is improved by resorting to a non-original good-quality Mazzer Mini burr. The first mode admittedly goes against the whole design of the grinder, including for example the motor speed, resulting in an awfully slow grinding process, whereas in the second mode, the grinder is as fast as an unmodified KitchenAid, which is by the way "pretty darn fast" relative to an rpm of around 450 and a flat-burr configuration (A combination that can't be seen anywhere else I believe!). In the first mode the grind quality is astonishing and I cannot achieve a good pour on the Professional (pretty fast) even at the finest setting, even though the grind looks and feels fine enough. In the second, I can do good pulls, with the disadvantages of dust and slightly-poor repeatability reminiscent of the "randomness" of the initial crushing phase (Which IS the major problem of the original ProLine).
What I am trying to say is that I am tired of trying to get a decent grind, honestly; not very good grind, but only decent. Not for me being picky, but rather for the espresso extraction method being so demanding in that regard. So I am recently thinking about purchasing one of those grinders that everyone is continuously talking about, that is, one of the ubiquitous horizontal-arrangement flat-burr grinders that I see everywhere in cafes, from which I have started thinking about the Nuova Simonelli MDX. Like I said (or didn't), the prices of equipment in my place are pretty random, with cheap equipment frequently being mysteriously over-priced and very good equipment being frequently sold for unexplainably-low prices. The only grinder that I found in my place of the second type was the MDX, which is why I am asking about this grinder. Is it close to the Mazzers? Namely to the Super Jolly since it has the same burr size?
I learnt that although all these grinders are similar, including the burrs themselves, the thing that really matters is how solid the mounting of the upper carrier is. However, the only exploded diagram that gives me peace of mind when I look at it in this regard is that of the Mazzers, namely because of the thick springs. I don't say that there is no other (better) mechanism to achieve the same goal, maybe a mechanism that doesn't stiffen the dialing as much, but what I am saying is that someone like me would like to see "design guarantees" in this regard, rather than just relying on good luck (which don't seem to be working well with me until now).
