Now VST are out there with this technology you can guarantee others will be trying to claim the same sort of product. There's mention earlier in this thread of some baskets from another US supplier which are exactly that. So it wouldn't surprise me if it's exactly what you said, and be prepared for lots of other people to be waving their hand in the air shouting "me too sir"! This is almost a verbatim quote from an earlier post, but the shape of the basket plays an equally important role to the holes. The basket you linked to, as you rightly mention, is the same shape as most other baskets so regardless of how accurate the holes may or may not be, the shape of the basket means the puck is going to extract unevenly making whatever they've done to the holes (if anything) largely irrelevant. As I also mentioned in an earlier post, important as all the manufacturing and design side of it is, that's only half the story; believe it or not, even with all the work VST do there are still variations in the hole pattern of the baskets as they come out of the manufacturing process. Not obvious to the eye, and not necessarily even if you took a photo and visually scanned it. But the issues are there, slight variations in hole sizes / shape which can affect performance. If VST have that problem with everything they do, I'm sure they're not alone. That's why the high-definition imaging / scanning / scoring step is such an important a part of the VST process to ensure all baskets perform the same. You may well have other also-rans selling their baskets for $10 and trying to claim they're VST equivalents, but if there's none of this scanning process (and considering it's patented and adds so much to the cost of manufacture I doubt it would be) there's no way to guarantee basket A is going to perform the same as basket B. This guy on the site you mentioned doesn't even has his facts right. First he says "If you have a PID, but dosing the basket incorrect, you better have no PID." Serious? You're telling me that if you incorrectly dose your basket you're going to get better results in the cup from a temperature curve that fluctuates by 20 degrees C than by 1 degree C? Come on. Then he claims the pictures of ugly holes apply to "All other brands, name brands, and OEMs" which is just plain wrong because VST for one look nothing like that. Lastly, at least one of the copycat manufacturers I know of is just starting with a standard tapering basket that's already made of cheap thin metal, then machines the bottom (making it even thinner) to make it look like the VST. The result is the bottom of the basket bursts through within a few months. Moral of the story is, whenever someone has a good idea that money can be made from, you can be sure others will try to copy the appearance without investing the money into creating a product that performs. If you want the real deal you'd best buy the real deal. Greg
