By the way, thanks for the ECM/Profitec caution!
Clearly, the ability to enjoy burr experimentation is hugely important for most!

Even if you rewire it for the other direction, the sweepers will be "backwards". It's also a little more complicated with an AC motor than a DC motor.

I can't get excited about whose engineering it is. It's an old design, it uses old burrs, it is an old grinder. It might be an upgrade to a Rocky, but not much more. For old-school shots, you can get Mythos-style burrs in the Atom 75 which are well regarded for that style of espresso. The stock SJ burrs don't suck and you have the option to buy 64 HUs or 64 CV2s, or whatever else comes along.

Within the price range, with the OP ruling out Chinese-made products, there aren't any good, single-dosing grinders. There are lots of hacks and some optimistic marketing, but all that I'm aware of have significant retention problems.

So if the OP were to bend his "no China constraint," what do you like for under $1500? How about the DF83, and is there anything wrong with the Ceado 83mm burr grinder?

Probably a topic for another thread. TL;DR -- I wouldn't buy either.

(If you want to split off the thread, PM me or "report" the post and I'll either split or delete these two posts if you start another thread)

Jeff wrote:Even if you rewire it for the other direction, the sweepers will be "backwards". It's also a little more complicated with an AC motor than a DC motor.

I can't get excited about whose engineering it is. It's an old design, it uses old burrs, it is an old grinder. It might be an upgrade to a Rocky, but not much more. For old-school shots, you can get Mythos-style burrs in the Atom 75 which are well regarded for that style of espresso. The stock SJ burrs don't suck and you have the option to buy 64 HUs or 64 CV2s, or whatever else comes along.

Within the price range, with the OP ruling out Chinese-made products, there aren't any good, single-dosing grinders. There are lots of hacks and some optimistic marketing, but all that I'm aware of have significant retention problems.

What if I go to $2,000? Does that open any doors?

This has also intrigued me:

https://www.malwani.de/english-1/produc ... nder-livi/

Thoughts? It's the closest thing I could find in the grinder world to the Strietman CT2.

I have heard good things about the Livi. I haven't followed it closely as I did my stint with a hand-cranker when the Pharos first came out. It certainly seems to be a great stylistic match to a Strietman!

At $2,000, you might be able to land an older, used Kafatek. They are at least assembled in America, even if the burrs in some of the models are SSP (Taiwan). I don't know the origin of the motors or controllers. As one example that sold recently (I don't know the seller or their grinder) [SOLD] Monolith Flat with SSW Burrs

There is an older monolith conical for sale on the kafatek forum for $1600 shipped. It's not shiny, but I don't think you can do a lot better for the price.

A 2nd hand Monolith for that price can't be beat. Else I'd go for the Eureka Atom with it's pretty small footprint and superb grind quality. It matches the Strietman nice as I've had them next to one another at a meet a couple of years ago and it looked great. I'd avoid grind on demand conical grinders.

But first you need to figure out if you want a grind on demand or singledose grinder. Without that it's pretty hard to give good advice. My LWW HG-1 also looked really nice next to the Strietman and so will a LWW Key grinder.

My only concern about the older monolith conicals is their retention, a problem that was fixed in the current version.

Thanks guys, I'm currently talking with the owner of Malwani to try and order one of these:

https://miro.medium.com/max/1200/1*Wjzq ... M6YjQ.jpeg