The polymer coating that is used in recent times to protect brass is very good. My 1999 Europiccola's brass parts still look great, the only plated metal on it is the group handle. La Pavoni on this particular machine apparently treated the copper boiler with some sort of chemical treatment that did not stand up well at all. I generally polish it at the two month general service. It still looks good two months later, but not as good as about a week after the polish! For some reason the polymer coating on the brass also holds up quite well on the group, but the steam against the portafilter causes its polymer coating to degrade quickly. I stripped my brass portafilters some time ago with paint remover. As long as I simply wipe them with a towel after each use they stay beautiful. The advantage to real brass and copper is that there is no plating to peel! Furthermore the base is not plated steel so it does not rust.

Nomadic_Lemon wrote:when I asked about a copper/brass version they told me it is no longer produced.

That is interesting that your two vendors are both saying no more brass plating.

Those PRG models do appear to have kept the natural brass and copper of at least the boiler. (The boiler body of copper, and the threaded top, bottom, and group flange of the boiler in brass.) That would be good if true, however the pictures from those sellers appear to be stock pictures of the PRH machines, so before buying it might be good to ask if they have an actual picture of the model they are selling, maybe even ask them which parts are gold plated, which parts are natural brass/copper, and which parts of the machine are laquered.

I can't really tell the difference between brass and gold plate until it shows some tarnish. Downside to gold is that there is a cost incentive to plate it too thinly.

yakster wrote:When I hover over the filter baskets on the second link, it explains no camicia means no jacket, I guess that means that they're not pressurized filter baskets.

But ... who would have ever thought to look for a pressurized filter basket here? Has La Pavoni ever done this?

Another thing to look for is the group design, where I think they not too long ago introduced a plastic (nylon?) sleeve for temperature stability. And then maybe abandoned the idea - I'd be surprised to see that in a new model, but haven't been keeping track. No idea how they'd say that in Italian - probably not camicia, but maybe Italian has only a few dozen basic words and if they don't call it "jacket" the closest alternative is "onion."

donn wrote:Another thing to look for is the group design, where I think they not too long ago introduced a plastic (nylon?) sleeve for temperature stability. And then maybe abandoned the idea - I'd be surprised to see that in a new model, but haven't been keeping track.

The plastic sleeve seems to be here for a while. Their newest group design (the Stradivari) uses that same sleeve. They have abandoned some things: the plastic piston, the plastic boiler ring, and the squared-off group gasket.

donn wrote:But ... who would have ever thought to look for a pressurized filter basket here? Has La Pavoni ever done this?

No, but they have done things to baskets and shower screens to better accommodate ESE pods.