Since starting up my business about a year ago, I’ve had nothing but grief with the melter I chose to use, Martellato, I think. From day 1 it never would hold consistant temp, so I got pretty good with re-tempering on-the-fly. After 6 mths, it burned up, literally. Set the machine to 45 C to melt overnight, and when I came in the morning… gawd, burnt chocolate and plastic are pretty terrible. However, I got the melter from a reputable dealer and he promptly replaced it for me. After a month of use, guessy, guessy?…

Finally got a bomb-proof one. Knew there was a manufacturer in Quebec, but not matter how hard I googled, under a million categories, I couldn’t find it. It’s basically just a s/s water filled bain-marie with an accurate thermostat and element. The tank holding the couveture is completely immersed in water. I don’t mind hand tempering via the “seeding” method, actually prefer it to doting and relying on an automatic tempering machine. Thing is, I knew of a bakery supplier who would bring in this melter for me, he has sold quite a few of them to carious other places. However this is not the reputable dealer I usually use, but another guy. When I got the melter, I saw that the box it came in had all the labels removed, and the melter ORIGINALLY had the mnfctr’s sticker on it as well as a riveted on crest–these had been removed very recently, sliced-off aluminum rivet heads were in the tank, and the goo all over where the sticker had been. No paperwork–instructions, mnfctr’s blurb, warranty, nothing came with it. Store owner swore up and down that that was the way it came. When I got it to work, I had the melter upside down for a second and I saw a crumpled up sticker wedged on the bottom. Unstuck it, and read the address: http://www.dr.ca. ….

Checked out the dr.ca site, yup there was my melter and at a far cheaper price, lots of other stuff, a wheel to go with the melter, (about$600 cheaper than what the guy at the store verbally quoted me on), those panning bowls for Kitchen-aid mixers, but at $500 CDn instead of the usual $800….
Guess I’ll have to e-mail the factory and whine and bitc* and get the store owner in a lot of hot water–I’m looking forward to it actually….That’ll teach him to be more thorough when removing all traces of the mnfctr…