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| I'm guessing it paid for itself already and I don't plant lots of corn. Perhaps it's a better investment on an older planter where more things can go wrong without it being obvious. I have a 12rn 7200 vac and it really made a difference on the stand. The biggest thing is that I could tell right away when conditions had changed enough to affect planting and do something about it - ie. slow down, change vacuum, change downpressure, replace a sticky chain. It meant I had to get off the tractor more and diagnose a problem, but I didn't have any situations where I found a problem after planting 80 acres. We had a very dry august and for the most part yeilds held out ok - mainly because I had enough plants (good population and decently spaced) and the one field that let me down was due to insect pressure (the force tried, but it looks like I'm sticking root worm corn for a while).
I'm not sure if it's gone up in cost this year, but I'm thinking it easily earned the $5000 I paid last year. Maybe if you have all well drained consistant soils and a about new planter, the 20/20 would only be useful at initial setup and then it would just be a pricy population monitor.
Greg Sauder is also quite a salesman, but he tends to stick to the facts and doesn't really promise anything except that his products will allow the planter to work to it's potential. I'm usually skeptical when a good sales job is being done because I figure it's being done to cover up some deficiency in the product. In this case it's probably getting guys to get past the price, but I'm not sure it's priced out of line since the accelerometers, strain gauges and touch screen tablet pc are all pretty pricy items.
Thanks,
Pat
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20/20...are they worth the $$$?
