masonsailor2 wrote:Then of course you would have a Nova lathe and not a SS. What fun is that ?
Paul
To me it is no fun? But that was not the point! The point was the cost of the Power Pro headstock is nearly the same price of the Nova DVR lathe. It is the same technology. To me this proves the SS price is $300 to $500 too high
In the hay day of modern Shopsmith the Mark V model 500 costs less than equal quality,equal ability standalone machines. With the advantage that SS gave you fantastic accuracy on repetive operations. Example you could cut and finish sand a miter with the same setup.
Then the world moved on and through production strides were able to offer products that surpassed SS for less than Shopsmith.
Today Shopsmith has one advantage SPACE, but to get that you have to give up the fact that a standalone saw is better than Shopsmith in saw mode. That said to the average homeowner not in production mode that means little. And when you look at all the capabilities of the SS and have space concerns the SS is a good choice.
That fact is borne out by how many new SS users we see on this site. The problem is most refuse to pay SS price and buy used machines at 1/10 the cost of a new SS.
The question then becomes where did all these old machines come from? I believe most were impluse sales from live demo's. However today's costs far exceed the price limit of most people's impluse buys.
That is why Shopsmith has to sell under a new paradigm. I think Nick understood this and tried to shift SS's paradigm. But it was too little to late. However I think if SS offered video saw dust sessions like Nick had started where viewers could ask questions online their business would take a marked turn around.
Thunk! That is me jumping off my soapbox! And everyone cheered! Not because of what I said but because I was done.
