Hi Everyone,
One of my pet peeves has always been misinformation in the sublimation industry, so I am just posting this to clarify some misinformation I heard recently at a trade show.
I was approached, and asked, whether we had the "Series 1 or Series 2" Ricoh GX7000. I replied that there was only one "Series" of the GX7000. This person then told me that he was told that we were selling an older "Series" of the printer, and that was why we had a lower price.
I have done lots of research on this, and have found only ONE "Series" of GX7000 printer. I do know that Ricoh raised their price significantly on these printers recently, but there has not been any changes in the printer.
If anyone has any other information on this I would love to hear it. Thanks.
The person I spoke with was refering to the GX7000 itself, and that was what really struck me as odd, but you make a good point that the Chromablast versus Sublijet could be confusing.
To my knowledge, there is only one "Series" of Ricoh GX7000. While there may (or may not) be occasional firmware changes within any printer from one manufacturing run to another, that doesn't necessarily cause any significant notification or changes to model numbers or the creation of a new "series".
My guess is that what this person was talking about instead is the fact that certain large sublimation supply houses initially purchased huge quantities of these Ricoh printers when it was determined that they were great for sublimation. Those original Ricoh printers were sold at a much lower price point by Ricoh. When Ricoh discovered their unexpected popularity, they raised the prices on the subsequent printers. Therefore, any printers sold by those supply houses from that original inventory may therefore be sold at a much lower price - if they so choose - considerably lower than the current market price that everyone else has to pay.
Kevin,
I was told relatively the same thing about your printers by another vendor as recently as early 2010 at a trade show. They were definitely referring to the GX7000 istself and it had nothing to do with Chromablast vs. Sublimation. I was only looking at Sublimation.
It does not matter what version you buy BUY THE EXTENDED WARRANTY, just go ahead and factor it in now. If you don't do it you will have a boat anchor in 15 months. The print head will fail and it can not be replaced or repaired. The warranty is not backed by Ricoh it is a Sawgrass warranty. This came straight from Ricoh.
Ricoh GX7000 Misinformation 
