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Permalink Reply by Jason Shipley on February 17, 2009 at 12:06pm

We have had an Aurelia for the past year and a half, it is an excellent machine very stable and consistent and able to handle a rush very well. I've spent quite a bit of time on a Linea and find that the Simi is a better machine for a barista to work on shot quality is excellent and the machine is big enough and set up so that 2 baristas can work efficiently on the machine. I have not had the oppportunity to work on the GB5's yet, although the Simi is such a good machine it's hard to see the GB5 being worth 5 G's more.

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Permalink Reply by Jesse -D-> on February 17, 2009 at 12:45pm

both are good, but neither is the end of the line. THeese are like cadillacs, I'd rather drive a porsche (mirage/ e61)

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Permalink Reply by nik orosi on February 17, 2009 at 12:46pm

as i know, linea is not fitted with p.i.d., well, most of them...but you are able to upgrade...
i have new gb5 with teflon covered portafilters, barista lights on, p.i.d. and total fb80 machinery inside, works great...
had a pleasure to work on simonelli but i just dont like how it looks, and steaming is kinda strange...
but visual is not comparable to how it works in this discussion, and it works great...
but here are some other great machines like dalla corte or synesso ...
if we all stop just to one machine, nothing will improve...
what im happy with in simonelli is their grinder called mythos and its just fab!!!

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Permalink Reply by nik orosi on February 17, 2009 at 12:48pm

ah....i have e61 too...thanks for bringing it up...
Jesse -D-> said:

both are good, but neither is the end of the line. THeese are like cadillacs, I'd rather drive a porsche (mirage/ e61)

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Permalink Reply by Chris DeMarse on February 17, 2009 at 1:14pm

They both have their strenghts and drawbacks:
Simonelli: They have one of the most stable exchangers on the market. They are pretty solid and the steam valve, on personal note is desirable because of it's cutdown on the risk of carpal tunnel. However, it is loud in preinfusion, it's not as well built as a Marzocco in terms of internal structure, and the stock steam tips are awful.
Marzocco: They are built to last and have great components. A dual boiler, especially PID'd, is hard to beat and the saturated group needs little temperature maintenance. The Lineas, however, don't come stock with a PID or soft preinfusion, so they aren't always ideal. Unlike the Simonelli, the Linea is very modifiable ( is that a word?). YOu can put new group caps and flow restrictors as well as a PID system on them to make them a really great machine.

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Permalink Reply by Jason Shipley on February 17, 2009 at 1:39pm

The Aurelia is as graceful as a Mack Truck, really not much style at all. Thats the thing about the Marzocco it is beautiful it has an elegance to it that is just timeless. As far as owning a machine I will hopefully be at the point someday that having a Porsche of a machine at home will be a reality but in the shop I need reliability and ease of service. I've has a couple of minor issues with my Aurelia, replaced one flow meeter and for some reason the steam wand valve handles are designed to be a wear item. Also my machine is an early one so the safety tray under the drip tray rusted out, I understand on later models this is now plastic. I do feel that they should have given my the tray even though the machine wsa out of warranty, it was an obvious design flaw. The machine is very easy to work on, it's almost as if they hired Germans designers instead of Italians. What has been peoples experience with the GB5?

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Permalink Reply by nik orosi on February 17, 2009 at 2:11pm

gb5 is working great, once i had a trouble due to my forgetting of changing filters on my water+more softener, gb5 was as human, reacting noisy and not working prop, i just called la marzocco in firenze and in a second, all factory technicians were on the phone, sending me pictures by mail or phone an what to do (im in croatia, neighbor country to italia so not actually easy to fix a machine by phone but...) , all i can say, some cleanings of sensors, minor fixing latter and here we go again...la marzocco is so easy to clean, fix, change parts and with all that, solid and working fab! also, to topic of your tray, la marzocco gave me so many spare parts...will be nice for you to have that part new, its not about money or guaranty, its about us that are making them big actually...so some appritiation sometimes...

Jason Shipley said:

The Aurelia is as graceful as a Mack Truck, really not much style at all. Thats the thing about the Marzocco it is beautiful it has an elegance to it that is just timeless. As far as owning a machine I will hopefully be at the point someday that having a Porsche of a machine at home will be a reality but in the shop I need reliability and ease of service. I've has a couple of minor issues with my Aurelia, replaced one flow meeter and for some reason the steam wand valve handles are designed to be a wear item. Also my machine is an early one so the safety tray under the drip tray rusted out, I understand on later models this is now plastic. I do feel that they should have given my the tray even though the machine wsa out of warranty, it was an obvious design flaw. The machine is very easy to work on, it's almost as if they hired Germans designers instead of Italians. What has been peoples experience with the GB5?

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