Hey trick... it sounds like you were in the same spot I was about 3 years ago. I looked at or tried to look at the 4 brands you mentioned. To me, buying a new machine had value for the support and ease of repair (also wanted US made). What i discovered is there are a lot of the parts are pretty standard industrial gear (at least the USR is when it comes to fans/motors/etc). I had absolutely no luck engaging with Probat, multiple inquiries with no response. So they pretty much eliminated themselves from the pool. Out of the three remaining, the USRC is probably the least polished. I found lots of little things that could have improved my experience - better manuals, etc. And the gas module is super sensitive... we had to make a slight mod for better control. Overall I feel it still runs a bit hot when doing large loads, but I have no comparison roasting experience to really know. I'm pretty happy with where my roasts - but still strive for more consistency. Support overall has been pretty good with USRC... sometimes a bit difficult to get ahold of but solid people when you get to them. San Franciscan's appeared to be probably the best made machine... nice sales guy/owner. Overall I really like them, but If memory serves me right it was out of my budget. So it was down to Diedrich/USRC.. Dan (owner of USRC) simply sold me more. I did two visits to his locations in OKC before i made the purchase (a nice advantage of only being a 6 hour drive away).
Currently I use Artisan - for my volume it does me fine. I found the actual roast profiling is sufficient and fairly feature rich. Cropster has some real advantages if you can utilize the inventory / batch management, etc. It get's expensive fast. Hope this helps.. I don't know what your volume dictates (and how flexible the budget is).. but make sure you get a good sample roaster. I have a Quest and it does a good job.. but I would like something a little better.
Mike
Ha...
