Slayer Envy

One thing that impressed me about the Synesso at Water Ave. Coffee in Portland was the old school paddles on the group heads. I didn't pay much attention to these until I did some research and discovered the Slayer. The Slayer is an American made espresso machine that is considered the utlimate in pressure control for espresso. This machine gives the barista delicate control over the brew pressure. Varying the pressure can prevent over or under extraction to get the holy grail of espresso, a smooth if not slightly sweet shot of espresso. Not too bitter, not too sour. Question was how can I afford a $18000 machine... I can't. So looking at the Linea form La Marzocco, it has a manual paddle group version although with very limited capabilities.  There are some modifications you can do which will get you close to the same control the Slayer gives you. Replacing the valve pins to allow you to read the pressure at the individual head instead of the boiler pressure is one thing. The other is to adjust the microswitch which turns the pump on to activate early before the pre-infusion stage. This is how a La Marzocco Strada paddle group is setup. These modifications allow the Linea to control the pressure similar to the way the Slayer does. The only difference is that the Slayer and the Strada both have individual brew boilers with allows two shots to be pressure controlled at the same time, where as the Linea because of its single brew boiler can only start one pre-infusion cycle at a time. I need to test this aspect though as it may not be an issue at all if the valves on each group respond independently.
So I did some research after thinking this through to see how much converting my machine would cost versus finding the machine I want. Had my machine been a new model with welded heads (2003 or later) I could have converted it a manual paddle system with relatively little expense compared to buying a ready made version. It wasn't, so I looked around. I found a 2 group Linea with manual paddles from local123cafe at a price that was less than the conversion cost. As a 2010 model it was in decent shape and perfect for what I want to achieve.