Hello, I recently upgraded from low cost low end espresso appliance to Gaggia Classic Pro (new classic plus EU). I paired it with sage/breville dose control pro. I am still waiting for OPV mod but I am tried to pull some shots today. With IMS basket and 18g even on finest grind settings I could not pull a shot that was not too fast. I mean 14-15s to get 2 1/2oz/70g shot from 18g basket. After replacing it with stock (non pressurized) basket, I can get 25s-27s shots (but still 70g mostly) from setting 1, 2 but it feels very sour/acidic. Is it because of OPV or am I doing something else wrong? I don't have bottomless portafilter only gaggia stock one. Today I wasted about 150g of coffee trying to dial in but from what I read sage dose control pro (or more used smart control pro but dose control pro has same burrs and burr settings afaik) should be adequate for gaggia, no?

Okay, fixed it! Apparently some "engineer" at breville decided that, no, inner burr settings are the actually ones that matter. From materials it seemed like inner burr settings are for fine tuning. Fat load of bull that was! I set it up to finest and then set up to finest outer settings and lo and behold gaggia choked! Finally! Swapped back to IMS basket and dialed coffee to 18g=40g at around 13/14 outer settings, finally not getting sour cream out of beans!

I found that the upper burr carrier in my Dose Control Pro had too much play even at the lowest setting. I added a cardboard shim and now it holds tight. A shim might help you with the fine grinds.