PACE ADS200 Professional Soldering Station with 3 Tip Bundle - AccuDrive-Compatible High Powered, 120VAC

**edit 2** Im pleased to be able to update my review. Pace has been in constant contact since I finally reached someone via the aforementioned forum. The customer service has been miles beyond what I expected. They took care of my issue very quickly once I finally reached the right person. It seems I had some defective items. Thank you so much! *edit* I finally got a hold of someone from pace on the eev blog forum. Hes working with me to figure out what is wrong. Ill update this if they make it right */edit* Absolute garbage. I bought this to replace an aging hakko 935 which I had used for almost 20 years. It still works fine, I was just hoping this Pace unit would have a little bit better thermal performance. It doesnt. What Im really steamed about is the fact that I bought this less than 3 months ago and last week it had the tip I use most of the time go open. I thought this was a bit odd. Ive never had a hakko cartridge go open. Ive had to replace tips due to plating going bad, but literally twice in almost 20 years. So, I wrote Pace an email asking if this might be defective, or if this is what I should expect. Of course, they couldnt take time out of their busy schedule to reply. Well, today the second tip went open. This one has probably only been used a few hours total. So, since they cant bother to tell me if there is something wrong with the unit, I guess Ill contact Amazon to see if I can return it. This is ridiculous.

Very nice machine works great

I had been using a Weller soldering station for the past few years. Always a reliable work horse, it lacked two features that finally made me splurge on the Pace Soldering Station: 1.) short time from power-up to full temperature and 2.) short distance from grip to end of tip. The Pace station came through with both of those features. After powering up the station, grabbing the solder, and getting in position to make the joint, the iron is hot. And when I use fingers from both hands to steady the iron above the work, I no longer chance burning one of my fingers (is it just me?)-- the short distance from grip to work makes soldering so much easier.

When I had recieved the station and iron everything worked but the large chisel tip. After contacting their customer support the tip and iron hand piece were replaced within the week and everything works great.