There is world of difference between "Made in USA" and "Assembled in USA". My Kitchenaid mixer is now 30 years old and still running just fine. If your only reason for replacing the old one is to match the red stove, unless you're going to leave the mixer on the countertop, I would return it to the store.

It depends on who made the older machines.

My kitchenaid will be 36 years old this year and is still going strong. Never had a problem, never been serviced. But mine was made by Hobart.

~Ann

It's so hard to tell what manufacturers do to their products, isn't it? My old ca. 1980s Cuisinart was a solid workhorse & probably would've continued to be for many years to come, if I had not snapped off the switch by slamming a cabinet door on it. The newer 1 heats up alarmingly & makes all kinds of funny sounds when running...

ann_t "It depends on who made the older machines.------"

It also depends on who and how the machines are used.

Kitchenaid mixers use magnetic universal AC/DC type of motors. Newer ones use magnetic DC motors. Both require care for their use.

When you buy a new car, you are often told not to drive faster than 50 miles per hour for the first 500 miles.

Same with mechanical appliances. With the motors mentioned above, they require what's known as proper seating of the moving parts and the carbon brushes for the motor commutators.

Otherwise, identical machines, one will last forever, and another will die prematurely.

dcarch

Lars, I have a great old Hobart Kitchen Aid (that does not have plastic gears) and the lever is the one thing I dislike about it. I wish it had a tilt head, because then I could adjust it myself. If I were you I would definitely keep the old one.

Nice mixer lars. Nice big capacity. I hope the reds match, ; )

Hold on to the old one for a while. I've made some appliance switches and tend to hold on to the ol' faithfuls. As much as storage can handle.

Mine is from a yard sale. Actually a whole kitchen sale. She realized that shopping was more fun than actually cooking. She gave up on cooking, never learned, decided to pack up her car and move south to a warm place within walking distance to restaurants. It was running a bit rough she said.

At home i fiddled and took everything that had a screw apart and found a tiny unattached screw that was meant to hold some part of the motor housing or something like that. (this was a few yrs ago). It now purrs like a kitty. Some basic maintenance might be in order if running different than new.

The new one does have a more metallic sound, and so switching from plastic to metal gears might be the reason. I think the advice to run it on slow to begin is good, and I will do that. I generally do not use the higher speeds anyway, unless I am making bread dough, and I have been kneading that by hand lately.

My tilt head machine is very difficult to adjust with regards to bowl height, and the old machine would never whip cream or beat eggs with the whisk attachment because the whisk would not reach the bottom of the bowl. With the new lever bowl, the bowl height is much easier to adjust. When I did adjust the bowl height with the tilt head, the whole machine was out of balance and would vibrate wildly and try to walk off of the counter. So for the past 25 years I have been whipping cream and beating eggs with a portable mixer, and that has worked okay, but I would rather do it in a stand mixer.

I have decided to keep the old machine for a while - especially for the summer - because I need it for the ice cream attachment. It does a great job of making 2 quarts of ice cream, and my Cuisinart ice cream maker only makes 1½ quarts, which means I have to adjust some of my recipes. People always expect me to make ice cream at my parties, and they want a choice of two flavors! If I could get another two quart ice cream maker, I would not need my old KA, but I'm not quite ready for that.

DC is right that appearances to matter to me as a designer, and the mixer definitely lives on the counter, as it is extremely heavy (the box says two people are required to "install" it on a counter), and I do not have storage for it. Anyway, I use the grater attachment all the time, although that will be stored away when not in use (It is white), but that is an easy matter. I do like that the cap covering the opening for attachments is now hinged, and so I cannot lose it like I did the other one.

"---as it is extremely heavy (the box says two people are required to "install" it on a counter),---"

I see at some point stand mixers will be much lighter in weight. Those of you who shop for cordless hand tools will notice recently the weight of drills etc. are much lighter with higher power. This is because the motors are more advanced.

There are brush-less rare earth magnet motors which are very high power and much smaller in size nowadays.

New mixer have better electronic controls. They use soft start PWM (pulse width modulated) speed control to give very high torque at low speed operation.

Those of you who have very old mixers which you intend to keep using, you need to take your mixer to a repair shop and have them open up the machine and repack the gear box with grease. This will make your machine live longer. You can do it yourself, but is is a very messy 30-minute job.

dcarch

Kevin had an old ice cream maker when he first moved to Venice to live with me, and it was the kind that used salted ice. However, the motor was jammed, and so I suggested that we take it apart - nothing to lose since it did not work anyway - and we discovered that all the grease had migrated over to one side. Once we added more grease, it worked fine, but it was still a pain to use with all the ice and salt. It was not that messy to do. It is kind of a nostalgic way to make ice cream, but I have moved on, and I do not want salt water in my yard.

Depending on which one you have. Salt ice cream maker has larger capacity. For having parties, it's good to have one. And you don't need to use up freezer space.

dcarch

Lars, I'd also hold onto the old one. I know several people with new machines and they aren't all that happy with them, for various reasons. It's always good to have a back-up anyway, if you have room to store it.

My old "made by Hobart" KitchenAid was a gift from Nancy (wizardnm), it didn't match her new kitchen, and that did matter to her. It doesn't matter to me whether it matches anything, but I understand that when people put thousands or even tens of thousands of dollars into a kitchen, they want a certain appearance.

I love my old one so well (which has all metal gears, incidentally) that I bought one for Ashley at the local on-line auction. $40 and another $10 for a pair of brushes, which took me about a minute and a half to install, and it runs like a charm. Ashley's birthday is Saturday and she's excited, she wants to bake her own cake, LOL.

Annie

Well, I can't give you any helpful comments, but I do have mixer envy! It's lovely.

I agree, that is a lovely mixer. I love the glass bowl and now I am going to have to see if they make one that fits my current mixer. I also hope to one day get a copper bowl for the mixer for egg whites. If I knew someone that would love to have a stand mixer and could not afford the expense, I would probably pass the old one on. My criteria would be somebody who I already knew liked to bake, not just somebody who thinks that maybe someday... It is hard for me to justify holding on to something and taking up storage for something that somebody else could put to use.

Dcarch, thank you for the information about having the mixers greased. I really should have that done. The seal dry rotted on my first mixer and all the grease/oil came out. In retrospect, it was not a large surprise as I lived near Palm Springs, CA at the time where the climate is very dry and quite warm. We were having a difficult time trying to find a repair place so KitchenAid did a one time replacement, free of charge. That mixer was passed on to a friend who bakes when DH found a more powerful one with a larger capacity for a great deal.

I need to check my ice cream attachment and see whether it might work or not. I seem to remember now that it was supposed to work for both tilt head and lever models and that there were different parts at the top to make it adaptable. I'm hoping it will work, but I will have to make sure I have all the parts and that they fit. I think they might.

Good news! The ice cream attachment does fit with the new mixer - at least the bowl does, and so I am assuming that the dasher will fit as well - I will check that next. After work, I am going to an appliance store to get more info about the Bertazzoni stove. I need to figure out how to get a stainless steel backsplash to go with it. The appliance store does not sell them, but they said I could have one made, but I could also order one already made, providing the size works.

My DH surprised me with a white KA mixer about 41 years ago. The model that has a crank lift for the bowl. The only problem I ever had with it was when I TRIPLED a bread recipe. The motor over heated. Never again.

I do not keep it out on the counter, and now that I am reaching my mid 70s, I find that it is quite heavy to lift.

"---I do not keep it out on the counter, and now that I am reaching my mid 70s, I find that it is quite heavy to lift.---"

They make them overly heavy for two reasons:

1. "Boy this thing is heavy, feels very solidly built, probably will last a long time."

2. Heavy so that it will not jump around on your counter when mixing some thick stuff.

dcarch

I tested the ice cream bowl attachment with the new mixer today, and it works even better than with the old tilt head machine, and so I have boxed up my old mixer so that I can give it to a friend at work. I am so happy that I can use my ice cream attachment with the new mixer! So far, I have not used the mixer yet, as I have not needed to make any bread, although I should be doing that this week.

The mixer is heavy because the more powerful motors are heavier, but I will not have to be moving this one very much. The old one would jump around on the counter when I adjusted the bowl height, and I do not expect to have that problem with the new one.

Now we just have to get a matching stove!

Lars, I'm glad your new mixer works well, and that you like it.

Have fun shopping for that stove!

Annie