Sounds hopeless, but I'm not sure why. My cheapo Saeco pulled great 100% crema shots with or without the pressurized pf:

Hey, I have a similar Delonghi machine, a bit cheaper, with more plastic, but I think insides could be the same. Unfortunately, I share a very alike experience with it. As I own a hand grinder only for a few days, I still haven't tried freshly roasted beans, but that comes soon, just I'm not very optimistic about that. Shots pulled with pre-grounded coffee or grounded from Lavazza beans were all watery... Did some adjusting at the grind for a double basket, managed to get 2oz/30secs, result being horrid for an espresso. First drops do look nice and thick, but the niceness quickly dissipates into that watery mess. Still don't want to blame the machine entirely, maybe I am the weakest link here - both about the technique and my usage of unusable coffee. But having learned about the importance of 'freshness in every way', I'll try locally roasted beans and post the results.

Terrible extraction pictures!

Finally got a chance to take pictures and it was one of the worst pulls i've attempted. Had a single sip and dumped it. Nevertheless, it looks pretty much similar to what I've been getting with the machine thus far. I had better luck this morning after reading the article on dialing in a new espresso machine, but not much better. Here goes:

Black, watery stuff with almost 0 crema - I used beans that were 2 weeks old and freshly ground from the Preciso. What might be wrong?

Channeling + overdosing perhaps? Looking at the puck here, those are my conclusions, but today's shot wasn't much better either despite a lower dose.


Pics of the basket - is it still pressurized? I figured I could make changes by removing the bottom screw under the basket, but it hasn't improved by much.

I won't say I'm getting frustrated, since I'm new to everything and can't expect immediate results, but I do wonder if it's the machine or me that's the limiting factor. I'm guessing it's both, but I'm hoping to improve upon myself to get the best out of it since I'm going to be stuck with it for a while...

The basket is definitely depressurized. I'm sorry you get such bad results. The question arises - maybe the pressurizing was meant actually to 'fix' the machine itself, not just to enable the user 'to get crema from stale coffee' to make them think they are doing a favor instead of building a bad machine. Dunno.
About the channeling - you could try measuring the time when the flow blonds, could help, I assume you're not going to chop off the portafilter to be able to observe what happens + buy a new basket as this one covers some of the holes so wouldn't be that helpful in seeing what could be the problem in the extraction.

I would check the beans to be sure they are really 2 weeks POST ROAST (not bought two weeks ago).

Have you tried grinding finer? If you grind so fine that you actually choke the machine, then grind a little coarser, that might help.