Hoffman on the Duo

chlorox DW mate. You didn’t! :-)

Has anyone microwaved their coffee beans then put them in a grinder

LMSC Niche isn’t the only one that prohibits tampering with the products under warranty. So, either we don’t buy it we don’t like, or wait until the warranty expiry or fiddle with it straightaway at our own risks. 😊

Such as? Fellow, Lagom, DF, Zerno, and the more premium brands are also are all fine with burr swapping and actively encourage it. Has no impact on their warranty or support. Really it’s no more intrusive than the sort of maintenance and cleaning you should be doing to the grinder periodically anyway.

And that’s @chlorox’s point, lots of potential customers just like them have not bought it precisely because there’s no support for other burrs. You only need to step out of the bubble of this forum to see there’s a demand for other options, regardless of your opinion on specific burrs.

But many on here seem to be wanting it both ways, telling people who want different burrs to shop for a grinder elsewhere but then also getting defensive when people actually criticise the mazzer espresso burrs you are stuck with as a result.

@chlorox dont think sigs are working again, cant see yours

in reference to ssp burrs,

ive just fit ssp mp burrs in the filter carriers, they are a smaller diameter than the mazzer which in turn gives wiggle room on the horizontal plan, i had to shim the outer to level it up, in contrast the mazzer burrs needed upside down tapping to remove,

chlorox It’s up to Niche & for that matter Mahlkonig, Eureka, Baratza, Mazzer etc. what burrs they offer in a new grinder, with warranty. I don’t think anyone is saying that it wouldn’t be nice if Niche offered a wider option, but that isn’t typical for grinder manufacturers.

Some do & that’s nice.

MWJB
Don’t all those manufacturers make their own burrs or have deals with burr makers to make them just for them? Not completely sure about eureka but that’s the case for the rest…

MWJB I don’t think anyone is saying that it wouldn’t be nice if Niche offered a wider option, but that isn’t typical for grinder manufacturers

Aside from the fact there is users in this thread saying just that, it is typical for single dose grinder manufacturers now, yeah maybe not the old commercial companies but even they have started to sell alternatives to their standard burrs (including Mazzer).

MWJB

Fellow’s warranty does not cover:

“Damage caused by accident, misuse, abuse, improper care, or repairs performed by unauthorized personnel.”

I’ve not defended, or otherwise any manufacturer, your perception of any defensiveness is incorrect. People are free to do what they want & I wish them good luck with whatever they choose to do.

Fellow sells aftermarket burrs on its site, shows you how to install them and even encouraged it well before they started selling them. Their support is pretty good even for user error and you’ve just quoted a generic warranty line that does not mention swapping burrs?

FadedFrontiers Fellow sells aftermarket burrs on its site, shows you how to install them and even encouraged it well before they started selling them. Their support is pretty good even for user error and you’ve just quoted a generic warranty line that does not mention swapping burrs?

Fiorenzato grinder warranty

Any replacements that have been made using non-original spare parts (please note that replacements with non-original spare parts, in addition to voiding the warranty, also invalidate the “Declaration of Conformity” that accompanies the appliance.

Macap General statement in user guides

MAINTENANCE Only trained personnel must carry out the maintenance work. If, during maintenance, any worn components need changing, only original spare parts must be used.

Ceado Maintenance statement in user guide (this applies to changing burrs)

Maintenance must be carried out exclusively by qualified technical personnel.Care for the mechanical and electrical parts of the appliance is indispensable in order to guarantee their safety and efficiency. If any parts need replaced, authentic spare parts must always be used. The burrs are subject to normal wear and the manufacturer recommends replacing them roughly every 600 kg for model E37S and every 1000 kg for model E92.

Mazzer general sale T&C

8.4 It remains understood that none of the aforementioned warranties covers: (1) the defects of the Products resulting from their unsuitable storage by the Client or by his or her assignees, or deriving from the production process, or in any case deriving from alterations or interventions, to which they were subjected at the Client’s location or at that of his or her assignees; (2) the defects attributable to the deterioration and/or normal wear of the Products; (3) the defects due to the Client’s negligence or improper use and/or incorrect installation of the Product; (4) the defects due to use and maintenance non compliant with the product sheet and/or the user manual.

I could go on with other makes…. but the general theme is that

• Authorised Personell
• Authorised or OEM parts
• Alterations
• Incorrect Maintenance

Invalidate the warranty and in all cases this would seem to apply to burrs. Whether it’s actively enforced or not is unknown.

Offering the carriers with 151B or 151F should happen. It will allow people to buy 1 carrier at the start and then upgrade to the duo.

Offering a premium mazzer burr as a 3rd option would be fantastic.

as stated before the burr would have to be mazzer imo as the ssp dont fit as well as the mazzer,

so unless mazzer offer different burrs to cater to the ssp market?

also depends how big that market really is, as ssp add $350 to the bill

DavecUK There is a general assumption that SSP burrs will transform grinders that I suspect is erroneous. Will they be different – yes; day and night different –no.

Niche could offer the high-clarity Mazzer 151H & 151G as an upgrade without any issues. That would likely satisfy most enthusiasts. The Duo already satisfies most consumers who just drink coffee and do not visit forums.

It’s far from unusual, and not just with grinders or even coffee gear more generally, for manufacturers to exclude warranty cover for non-original parts, and/or work by non-authorised personnel, and the logic behind that is pretty clear - if they haven’t tested a part, they don’t know if it’s suitable or not, or perhaps sufficiently durable or not.

So it’s common to exclude liability, which doesn’t mean that they can’t honour the warranty despite not being obliged to, if when they see a failed product, the failure is nothing to do with the unauthorised part. Legally, they’re on safer ground by excluding liability and then repairing broken equipment provided the fault wasn’t due to non-authorised parts, than if they hadn’t excluded that and then try to reject a claim when the user does something or uses something that caused damage.

On the same lines, if they supply a model with blank carriers and no burrs, an argument could be made that by doing so they’re encouraging users to try alternate burrs that might be incompatible, or wrongly fitted, and that as a result, they could be held liable. By not providing a burr-less option, they precude that argument from being made.

I have absolutely no knowledge of what Niche’s reasons for what they do or don’t offer, and this legalistic approach might be nothing to do with their decisions. I’m not a lawyer but I have seen that approach taken in other non-coffee product lines, for the reasoning outlined here.

In other words, their reasoning might be as simple as “lawyers said don’t do it, it might bite you”. That certainly wouldn’t surprise me, but I’ve … excuse the pun, Zero knowledge of what their reasoning actually was.

As for JH’s review, I found it interesting, particular the similarity in profiles in his graphs. It does somewhat undermine the flat v conical argument though, at least in as far as saying it’s not that simple.

Personally, as I think I said I another thread, I’m pretty happy with the Zero, and now after watching that, even more don’t regret my decision not to buy a Duo. Part (a large part, to be honest) of my reasoning is that I’m not convinced my taste buds are good enough to tell much of a difference anyway, and as I get a cup I enjoy from the Zero, it’s good enough for me. That’s not to say anyone else shouldn’t go Duo if they feel they’ll benefit - their taste buds may well be better than mine, or even if not, they may just want to try the Duo and, why not?

Cuprajake
If niche were to offer ssp burr option, they should also bring into consideration the cost that is saved from not using the 151B burrs in calculating the eventual price. That would bring the duo into competitive contention for the customers wanting the ssp option as they are comparing it against such other grinders like the df83V.

Cuprajake
Or niche could offer a specific burr carrier for their ssp option. If it opens up a significant new market for them, it would be a good business decision to take.

chlorox If niche were to offer ssp burr option, they should also bring into consideration the cost that is saved from not using the 151B burrs in calculating the eventual price. That would bring the duo into competitive contention for the customers wanting the ssp option as they are comparing it against such other grinders like the df83V.

Maybe. But the saving might not be as big as you think. A lot would depend on how much, if at all, their totalsales grew.

Think of it this way. In order to be confident in supplying, and then warranting, any 3rd party component, theyre going to want to do a pretty comprehensive sets of tests to ensure it’ll work, and not cause issues. And that costs. They have already incurred that costs for the current burrs, and every grinder sold is going to reflect a portion of that, and all other development costs.

Now assume they offer a new burr option. They can hardly charge existing ‘standard’ buyers for part of tge cost of that testing, so it’s all gong to reflect in the price of that extra burr set. How many of that model will they sell? Will any sales of that option be at the cost of not sellig a standard version they otherwise might have? If so, the proportion of the cost of testing existing burrs is going to be distributed across a smaller number of sales of the older burr versions.

And, of course, every extra SKU they offer comes with increased administratve costs, stockholding csts, etc.

It would need a good accountant, access to their manufacturing costings and a pretty good forecast both of sales of the new burr models, and any reduction in sales of the old ones, to be sure what adding that option will cost.

The result might, depending on those numbers, not result in much cost savings at all. It certainly isn’t as simple as deducting the cost of the previous burr sets fro the cost of the new ones, because other costs are involved.

It may also be that their estimates of any growth in sales from that strategy just don’t justify investing thetime in doing it. We can certainly assume that anything we see appear at retail as a product is likely to have been in development for a year or two, and that the things they’re spending their days doing right now will appear in a year or two …. if they carry on doing them. But they’re a pretty small team from what I can tell, and if crittical design or engineering staff divert to do testing on new burrs, they aren’t spending those hours/days on whatever prodducts they were developing.

It’s known as opportunity cost. Think of your own time - if you’re self-employed and decide to spend an hour washing your car, the opportunity cost is that you can’t spend that hour doing chargeable work for a client.

Friends that have never run ther own business often used to ask me things like “You’ve got all those printers and the skills, why do you pay an artist to produce <insert choice> artwork? You could do it yourself.”

And yes, I could, but if I’m charging £100/hour for my time, and paying the artist £25/hour for theirs, I can pay for 4 hours of their time by working one hour at what I’m good at. In my case, it’s probably worse even that that, because while I could do that artistic work, theprofesional artist will probably do it in a half or less the time it would take me. That’s opportunity cost, and at least a version of that applies to Niche - if engineers spend a week doing job B, testing other burrs, it’s a week they didn’t spend doing job A, and a week of delay in getting job A ready for market. That week of delay in Job A might bite further, if outside msnufactring contractors are waiting for an order, have a slot booked dand they miss the deadline because of working on Job B. It can all get very convoluted, which is to say, looking in from the outside, we have no idea how much cost would be saved by removing the original burr option. But probably not as much as you might first think.