Rich Siegel

“Which Mixer Should I Get?”

I get that question pretty often. The short answer is… well, there is no short answer. Mostly, the question that’s really being asked is: Tilt-Head or Bowl-Lift? The tilt-head KitchenAid mixers are excellent all-around machines. For most folks buying their first KitchenAid mixer to do general baking and food prep (with attachments), this would be my recommendation. They can also knead bread, but you’ll find that with heavier dough and larger batches, the head torques around the hinge pin. (This…    more →“Which Mixer Should I Get?”

The Movie Star

You may have seen this mixer on TV, or in a video on the Internet.

The Unusual Ones Get Names

This is Flossie (she’s pink like candy floss), but nobody calls her that more than once. To all the folks at the diner she’s “Flo”. Flossie is an example of an extremely rare specimen: the Accolade 400. This is a tilt-head that KitchenAid made for a little while in the early 2000s, and then discontinued. (Do you have friends at KitchenAid? I have Many Questions about the production history of this machine.) The motor and drivetrain are the same as…    more →The Unusual Ones Get Names

Pro Series Disaster Recovery

The story begins the usual way: eBay listing of a mixer being sold “for parts or not working”, cheap. Had a bit of conversation with the seller, “it’s running a little rough”. No problem. I provide my usual packing advice (because the seller had never done this before), Buy It Now, shipped, done. Then the story takes a twist. The package arrives, shipped via USPS. The letter carrier said, “Sorry, we know what’s in it. We picked it up by…    more →Pro Series Disaster Recovery

Family Heirloom

Every so often I encounter someone with a really old machine that needs repair, or even just long-overdue maintenance. The owner is very reluctant to let the machine out of their sight, because it was a treasured gift, or handed down from a loved relative. I totally get it — you never know what can go wrong if you let it leave the house. But really, it’ll be OK. As long as you send your machine to me. In “You…    more →Family Heirloom

“I’ve always wanted a blue mixer…”

It’s easy enough to buy a cobalt-blue KitchenAid mixer these days, but the color is really hard to find in older models. The KSM90 “Ultra Power” tilt-head was the first of the cobalt-blue machines; it was made as an “exclusive” for Williams-Sonoma. They’re findable on eBay, but frequently command a premium, even when sold “for parts or repair”. Even harder to find is the cobalt-blue bowl-lift model (K5SS). Seller-refurbished ones are selling on eBay for close to $500 (roughly the…    more →“I’ve always wanted a blue mixer…”

The Cake Machine

This machine (1997 K45SS) was in excellent overall condition, requiring only routine maintenance. Unfortunately, the head lock lever was bent in transit (the mixer tipped over and landed on it), but that was easily resolved with a replacement latch mechanism while the lower gear case cover was off. The owner had retrofitted the mixer with the 5-quart glass bowl. They were less than completely happy, though, because the bowl would only fit on the machine in one orientation, with the…    more →The Cake Machine

Plastic Mythology

There seems to be a trope going around that modern KitchenAid mixers are specifically inferior to vintage ones because their “gears are made of plastic” (or a similarly phrased complaint). This is categorically not true. All of the gears in full-sized tilt-head KitchenAid mixers, from a 60s-era K45, the 90s KSM90 “Ultra Power” or the modern KSM150 Artisan (and all the variants in between, but not the Artisan Mini or Accolade), are the same. This is also the same gearing…    more →Plastic Mythology

It’s Never The Motor Brushes

So, in “Hard Luck Cases“, I mentioned learning a valuable lesson. When I got the mixer on the bench, I didn’t even plug it in to see if it ran. Once I saw its overall condition, with the corroded power cord, crud, and all the rest, I just started right in on disassembling it. As a result, I had no idea whether it actually ran. The first thing I did was remove the motor brushes. There was no particular reason…    more →It’s Never The Motor Brushes

Hard Luck Cases

“Rusty” was another Goodwill find, a Hobart-era K5SS (bowl-lift, solid state speed control, 5qt bowl). This classic needed almost as much work as I’ve ever put into a mixer. Most of the time spent was just on getting through the layers of crud so that I could disassemble it and perform the necessary service. (I also learned a valuable lesson along the way, but that’s a story for another time.) On top of the wear consistent with many years of…    more →Hard Luck Cases