Laguna Buys Supermax Tools


Mick S

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27 minutes ago, Woodenskye said:

Wish I had bought one before this was announced.  

Do you think the prices will go up, or the quality will go down? I'm not sure what will happen, but I agree with you... I've been dragging my feet on buying a drum sander, now I wish I would have pulled the trigger. I have a Laguna band saw and I like it... but I just went through a merger at work and I can tell you that it's utter Pandalerium when it happens regardless of what press releases say.

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14 minutes ago, Gary said:

Do you think the prices will go up, or the quality will go down? I'm not sure what will happen, but I agree with you... I've been dragging my feet on buying a drum sander, now I wish I would have pulled the trigger. I have a Laguna band saw and I like it... but I just went through a merger at work and I can tell you that it's utter Pandalerium when it happens regardless of what press releases say.

I think eventually the quality will go down, but probably not for awhile.   The one thing that is good is there is competition so that could keep the quality high for a longer period.   Hopefully this will mean prices don't increase.  Plus I think some of the dealer network will be let go and that could be an issue.   I have never heard of any issues with the customer service from Supermax, but Laguna is another story.  Who knows if Laguna screws this up, the management could come up with a new improved DS, just like when they left Performax.

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11 minutes ago, Chet said:

Yea the sanders aren't instantly going to turn bad.  There were a lot of them in the pipeline long before the announcement.

Why do we always think things are going to turn to garbage.  It sounds like SuperMax was looking for a market network to help their growth.

 

My impression, too. Laguna has a large marketing budget and some of the best saturation of product in the industry. I could easily see it being a big boost for Supermax.

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26 minutes ago, Woodenskye said:

I think eventually the quality will go down, but probably not for awhile.   The one thing that is good is there is competition so that could keep the quality high for a longer period.   Hopefully this will mean prices don't increase.  Plus I think some of the dealer network will be let go and that could be an issue.   I have never heard of any issues with the customer service from Supermax, but Laguna is another story.  Who knows if Laguna screws this up, the management could come up with a new improved DS, just like when they left Performax.

Yeah, I hope the quality doesn't suffer. I mean in reality, Laguna is a high end Grizzly. They import everything that is built to spec... quite honestly I'm not sure about Supermax, but I'm assuming they are all imported and built to spec overseas... I have heard some real horror stories with Laguna customer service, but my personal experience has been stellar. Time will tell for sure! 

24 minutes ago, Chet said:

Yea the sanders aren't instantly going to turn bad.  There were a lot of them in the pipeline long before the announcement.

Why do we always think things are going to turn to garbage.  It sounds like SuperMax was looking for a market network to help their growth.

 

True, Chet. This may end up being a good thing in the long run.

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I think that Supermax is at least assembled here in the USA.  But having said that, if they are made over seas then SuperMax has some top notch Quality Control in place.

Customer service complaints aside it is hard to look at my Laguna 14-12 and not see some pretty good quality to the machine.

There is some junk being produced here in the United States too.  Were good but not perfect. :)

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All I will say about Laguna is in twelve years of ownership of my 16HD and a year with my 1412 I have never had a reason to call Laguna customer service...so although I have seen some internet posts about nightmare customer service I would say they make top quality band saws. I know the Supermax sanders are great so seems strange that they would change them, at least to me. 

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I don't think it necessarily goes hand in hand that the QC of Supermax products will suffer because Laguna acquired them. I've witnessed plenty of companies, including the one I worked for for years, improve both the quality of their products and customer service as a result of having more resources behind them following an acquisition. Personally, I've never had anything but positive support from Laguna going back some 30+ years. I'm looking very hard at getting an 18BX during the next sale. I'm going to the Felder open house in Anaheim next month and plan to stop in at Laguna while I'm there for a little touchy feely with their bandsaws.

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We bought our Laguna 14 SUV a few years ago and I've had to use customer service a few times - as has been said I find them to be stellar, even proactive.  Not having any Grizzly equipment personally but having seen some I would argue that Laguna is well above a high-end Grizzly.  Nothing against Grizzly - I'm considering their 15" helical head planer right now since my DeWalt 733 died, but Laguna is far and away better than any Grizzly equipment I've seen.

Our SuperMax 19-38 has also worked like a champ and their CS is also very good.  I see this as a good thing all the way around.

David

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