I stumbled onto this thread 9 days ago, shortly after ordering a large 4-piece Santa Cruz Shredder. At the time, even though I already felt very good about my decision to purchase a Santa Cruz Shredder, I wanted to find out more of what people had to say about the SCS in a long, thorough thread that began years before the Santa Cruz Shredder even existed. Since then I have read from about page 120 to the end, and I received my shredder in the mail four days ago. Thankfully, due to the length of this thread, the five days I had to wait for delivery went by really fast.
The first thing I want to say about my new Santa Cruz Shredder may surprise just about everyone: This thing produces a ton of kief. (Apparently I got one of the newer ones, with a slightly coarser screen than earlier models.) So far I have only put about 2 grams of herb through it, and it has already given me nearly 2 full bowls of kief. I am not exaggerating at all. I'll share some pictures if I can find the patience to figure out how. I would also share the weight of the kief, but I don't currently own a scale that measures in units smaller than 1 gram.
Having said that, I also want to say almost everything else about this grinder is freaking awesome.
However...
There are a few things that bother me about the grinder, which I imagine are uncommon manufacturing flaws. First of all, there are a few imperfections or blemishes on the exterior. Not a big deal, but it's something I would not allow to pass inspection if I was in charge of SCS's quality control. In other words, I might be inclined to call this grinder a "second" or a "blem."
The other noticeable flaw is that the two middle sections (the piece with the collection chamber and the piece with the bottom teeth) do not line up perfectly
on the exterior of the grinder, where the two middle sections screw together. This seems purely cosmetic. Unlike the couple examples earlier in this thread (from the last year, I think), where people said part of their SCS was being scratched by another part of the SCS while in use, mine does not scratch, and it seems to function how it's supposed to function. Still, it feels weird every time I use it, because I can feel the imperfection in my hands (even though I have lost about half of the feeling in my hands, from multiple sclerosis).
I think with almost any other brand of grinder I probably wouldn't have a problem with these imperfections, particularly because most other grinder brands aren't said to be the best thing since sliced bread, nor do they cost anywhere near as much as what I paid for my grinder. However, this grinder happens to be a Santa Cruz Shredder, which commands a very high price specifically because their grinders are alleged to be as close to perfect as you can get, and especially because the people who produce this grinder have made the conscious decision to offer a lifetime warranty (which I now realize is a pretty half-assed warranty, by the way, as it only covers the teeth). SCS created my high expectations by producing such high-quality grinders, as well as by establishing a high retail price for their product and by offering a lifetime warranty, so I don't think it's unreasonable for me to expect this thing to be essentially perfect. And it most certainly is not perfect, although it is a fantastic piece of equipment.
So here is what makes my particular grinder great (but not quite perfect):
- It does exactly what it's supposed to do, easily.
- High capacity if you need it.
- It's so smooth.
- It's beautiful.
- It's tough; no new marks or dents on it after dropping it onto linoleum.
- The powerful magnet is great. I have already dropped my SCS a couple times--once on carpet and once on linoleum, each time from about 2 feet high--and I can tell there's almost no chance the top will come off if I continue dropping it.
- Threads are very smooth, and the grinder is easy to take apart and put together.
- Tons of kief.
I have two other grinders, both of which are pretty bad. One is a generic grinder shaped like a propane tank, with a screen right below the bottom teeth. Because of the screen, it's basically a tall 2-piece grinder with a kief collector that doesn't work (because ground flower gets trapped on top of the screen, making the screen more of a floor). My other grinder is a generic chrome 2" 4-piece with flaming dice on the lid. I paid $25 for it at a headshop, but it would probably cost less than $5 on Amazon, and it's essentially worthless.
So upgrading to the SCS was a huge jump for me.
The large SCS is perhaps a little bigger than ideal for me. However, due to my MS (weakness of hands, lack of coordination, etc.), I wanted to make sure to get a grinder that was big enough to give me plenty of leverage when grinding. Now that I have used it a little bit, I think I would probably prefer a small SCS to the large.
MY RATING: 4 STARS (of a possible 5 stars).
Could easily have been five stars, but I feel like there was some complacency in the manufacturing/quality control process of this particular grinder, which I'm pretty sure is fairly uncharacteristic of Santa Cruz Shredders. I bet most people who have an SCS consider it perfect, but mine has just a few too many imperfections.
My rating does not reflect this, but I am quite put off by things I've read about SCS's customer service; particularly the pattern of how they respond, or fail to respond, to customers with legitimate issues. There is no excuse for that, and all it does is drive away real, existing customers who don't want to have to deal with stupid, petty, unnecessary bullshit. It's a stupid way to conduct business. Existing customers like myself will probably never buy another SCS, even though I would like to, simply because I have read these things about their habit of providing horrible customer service, and because I don't want to have to go through that myself, nor should I have to.
Especially considering the fact that there seems to be relatively few complaints about the quality of Santa Cruz Shredders, which should make it easy for them to respond to complaints in a timely manner. However, they don't. And the few complaints I've seen about the Santa Cruz Shredder (company) are major complaints, which went ignored, repeatedly, by the people at Santa Cruz Shredder. It's obviously a pattern, and it scares me as a prospective repeat customer.
If I had read about their poor customer service before I placed my order, I probably would've bought a different manufacturer's grinder, because I have absolutely no interest in dealing with unnecessary bullshit. And if any of these horror stories I've read about had happened to me, my review would have been probably 2 stars, if not 1 star, because when you force ANY of your customers to have to deal with unnecessary bullshit, you considerably decrease the overall quality (or value) of your physically awesome product. But fortunately the horror stories I've read about did not happen to me, so I gave my grinder 4 stars.
I had more to say about the things that bother me about Santa Cruz Shredder's apparent reputation of providing poor customer service, but I decided to leave out several paragraphs. I may include this other rhetoric in a future post.
I hope this review has been helpful to someone. Sorry if it is excessively long, or repetitive, or monotonous. And I just want to re-state that even though I did say a lot of negative stuff about SCS here (mostly in the paragraphs I chose to omit), this grinder is awesome. If not for the numerous complaints I've read about their customer service (which I read after I had already ordered the grinder), and if not for the minor physical imperfections of my grinder, I would probably recommend SCS 100%. However, I can't do that right now.
One more thing: This thread is freaking amazing. Best thread I've ever seen on any message board, by far. I might even go back to the beginning and read the whole thing again and again. My sincere thanks to everyone who has contributed.
