mdreuben wrote:If anyone could blind taste a difference when three or four beans popcorn I'd be amazed!

Sarcasm alert: I'm having terrible trouble with channeling because of the popcorning.

I don't want to write up too detailed a report but for me 3-4 popcorned beans roughly would be between 8-12 percent of a dose. Pretty sure I would never be able to notice a difference. Some of this stuff is the epitome of 'first world problems.'

Grabbed a white one, hopefully will receive it in July!

Thank you all for your many posts, it gave me courage to dive in and purchase one. I had no complaints on my trusty and beloved Macap MXKR save one and that was changing beans. Having gotten deeper into home roasting and experimenting with post roast blending it's a breeze to switch between 3 or 4 different bean batches or an early evening decaf in a clever dripper. It also takes the counter space of one rather than 2 grinders. FWIW espresso on my Vetrano is around 22-24 depending on the bean and for filter the dot is rotated to the left side of the cover's hinge. Thanks again, I guess it's time to put the Macap up for sale and find her a new home!

redbone wrote:Be interested on your total in hand amount. Can only assume similar pricing to Ontario.

Just got my Niche this week in Ontario. it was $970 to Niche and $118.59 to the customs broker. Total ~$1090CAD. The shipping agent passes it to Purolator for final delivery, but I didn't get a tracking number so wasn't able to be home when it arrived. It shipped from the UK.

THREE things turn me against this grinder, but I don't need another grinder anyway...

-Can't stand the look of the lame wood trim/parts...
-Not into single dosing...
-Seeing what appears to be the gearbox being made out of some sort of plastic/nylon is a mechanical turn off... Likely is totally fine for how it's being utilized, just not digging it...

Guess they work great for many users and that's what matters at the end of the day!

Do we have confirmation that it has composite gears? They did not open the gear box in the video which the cover is yes not metal doesn't mean the gears are not metal.

I've seen this grinder in person and it does sound like the gears are metal but the gear box housing and sealed cast aluminum frame contain the noise very well. Not as quiet as let's say a Compak Silenzio which I had or a Eureka quiet model but very close (someone will surely do a decibel test and prove me wrong lol).

Also a funny thing about this grinder, it looks far better in person, the wood looks great. I think the sheen of the paint and the curvature of the device do not photograph well in most kitchen lighting. I personally have a thing for modern devices...square clean lines and so yes this is not my thing but I am tempted to machine a modern base and cover just for fun.

Also anyone complaining about single dosing in this thread is just flogging their own noggin.

Well, I got mine a couple of days ago and I thought I would share my experience. Now that I have it working I'm very happy with it. However, when it arrived it didn't work. The sweep arms under the burrs weren't spinning and the grinder would just jam up with coffee. I emailed James at Niche and he was very responsive. We exchanged about a dozen emails while we diagnosed the problem. I ended up pulling the grinder more or less completely apart to get at where there was supposed to be a snap ring on the gearbox shaft. Actually you can see it on the dissassembled picture on the video earlier in the thread. Apparently there was "a small batch" of grinders that left the factory without this snap ring.

Unfortunately, James is travelling on business and won't be back in the office until the 24th, so he isn't able to send me parts until then. I was pretty disappointed by this, but I guess that's what you get dealing with a start up. He also couldn't give me a specification for the part so I could buy one locally. Fortunately I have some machinist's callipers so I was able to measure it up accurately enough to try and find a part locally. I couldn't find a metric snap ring (and I thought Canada was metric), but I found an imperial one that is close enough for now. I got the grinder back together and it works great. All of this took me a few hours as James was very quick to respond when I sent him an email.

I was initially pretty annoyed by all of this, but I'm more philosophical about it now. They are a start up, with a staff of, apparently, three. Hopefully their service will improve once they're a bit more established. Having a North American dealer would certainly help. It's fortunate for me that I have experience in fixing stuff like this so I was able to deal with it. Otherwise my grinder would have been DOA.

As an aside, now that I've seen all of the guts of the grinder I am impressed by the design. I'm a retired mechanical engineer and I'd say the internal design of the grinder is pretty elegant. It's simple, easy to service and still very solid.

truemagellen wrote: I've seen this grinder in person and it does sound like the gears are metal but the gear box housing and sealed cast aluminum frame contain the noise very well. Not as quiet as let's say a Compak Silenzio which I had or a Eureka quiet model but very close (someone will surely do a decibel test and prove me wrong lol).

I did one a while ago. The Niche is about 72db from memory. I've used Mignons but not run a test but they seem close. With both you can have a conversation.